Friday, April 9, 2010

CPL 2.0 Wikipedia and an Earlier Life

I was happy and a little bit surprised to find a very brief article (two sentences) on my home town in Wikipedia,since it is so small that it doesn't rate an entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia. I was able to add a little bit more information to the article on "Lone Butte, British Columbia", and even managed to insert a reference, in good librarian fashion. I then found the article on the neighbouring "big town" and noticed that although that article mentioned Lone Butte, it didn't have a link to the article, so I added that.

Although adding the information to the article was easy, inserting the reference took multiple tries. The help pages were not very helpful, but I managed in the end -- I'm not sure how.

I looked at a few articles and found no signs of spelling or grammatical errors, but these were mainly to do with history and geography. I would expect the pop culture articles to contain more of those types of errors -- and having just checked the article on Britney Spears and found two grammatical errors in one sentence, I think that's a valid assumption!

On the book front:

I've finished Darksolstice, the second in Sam Llewellyn's Lyonesse series. It's a great read for older kids, whether or not they are familiar with Arthurian legend. Llewellyn does a great job of retelling the legend in a unique setting.

I'm just about finished Al Capone shines my shoes by Gennifer Choldenko, the sequel to Al Capone does my shirts. With its strong characterization, vivid depiction of Alcatraz,and compelling storyline, it is a worthy sequel.


On the adult side, I've just finished Sharpe's tiger by Bernard Cornwell. Chronologically, it's the first in the Sharpe novels. I got into Sharpe through the TV series (CPL holds all but one in DVD, but luckily for me my mother has the entire series on video). I'm a little bit in love with Sean Bean as Sharpe, but I also love historical fiction, so I'm going to read my way through the series in chronological order. One down, twenty more to go! Unfortunately, the second in the series is now only in LPE. (At least it's a paperback.)

Cornwell's newest series (The Saxon chronicles) is a good read, especially for those of us that liked Rosemary Sutcliff's books about Saxon Britain. It chronicles the life of Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Northumbria, who as a boy is captured by Danes. Despite killing Uhtred's father, Ragnor treats Uhtred as his own son. Uhtred becomes, for a time the warlord of Alfred of Wessex. The series starts with The last kingdom. The burning land is the latest.

I'm about to read the new Louise Penny mystery (The brutal telling) and catch up on some titles by David Hewson. He writes mysteries set in contemporary Rome and I really enjoyed the ones I've read.

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