Skip to main content

February 2016


#somethingwickedthiswaycomes

It seems I may have been dwelling these last few days on innovative ways to get people reading.  After the comments I made in my previous post about possible future iterations of "the book", I stumbled across this example whilst aimlessly surfing the Googles:

Macbeth is #killingit (link to Booktopia)

 Yep, it's #Macbeth.  And apparently #Macbeth is #killingit.

 This is somewhat stretching my idea of what I was talking about in my previous post, i.e. innovative ways to engage kids in reading.  I dunno, this just seems somewhat... lame.  I mean, on the cover Lord and Lady Macbeth appear to have their heads substituted with emoji.  With. Emoji.  And they are checking in to their various locations and presumably hash-tagging their adventures whilst snap chatting the latest #epicdeadbody or #crazylady.  Students can see though this guise pretty quickly, they are very wise to these adult attempts to appear "cool".  The fact that I just used the word cool probably instantly dated to me another era.  We can't help it.

 Don't get me wrong I guess I appreciate the effort, but hoping that Macbeth et al. plus smartphones will somehow make Shakespeare more appealing?  I think it kind of underestimates the intelligence of the students, and also the complexity and nuance of Shakespeare.  Does it take away from the telling of the story, or add to it?  Does it reduce the impact of these glorious words for the sake of a passing gimmick?  You be the judge.  I am almost tempted to buy one of these and test it out on a student.  Just to get the empirical evidence and all that.  Maybe I will #eatmywords.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using librarian skills to uncover a network of dodgy shopping sites!

In all my posts over the years I'm not sure if I ever mentioned I am an avid steampunker.  Like many of my quirky fellow librarians, I love a good dress up and recently found myself searching for a great pair of boots to go with the Steampunk Aviator Superhero costume I'm assembling (trust me, it will work!). One evening whilst idly thumbing through Pinterest I found a picture of these undeniably AWESOME combat-boot style boots.  I followed the link to the website ( www.chichola.com ) and although it didn't look dodgy and offered PayPal, I am a cautious online shopper and always check the customer reviews first.  They were 1000% abysmal.  Like the kind of reviews that say SCAM, THEFT and CAN I LEAVE 0 STARS.  So despite loving the shoes, I was definitely not parting with my money on this occasion. Fast forward a couple of months and I see an ad for Victorian-style cosplay boots in my Insta feed.  Did I mention that I am an avid steampunker? ...
24 comments
Read more

Academic vs. Public

For those of you who have followed my story from the beginning (yeah, just me!) the whole idea of The Ambidextrous Librarian is that I am a newbie librarian working two jobs; one in a public library and the other academic.  I try to blog about my experiences and provide a bit of insight into each library environment, maybe provide other newbies with a bit of an idea what each is like.  My version of worldly wisdom and all that! But enough intro - I'm sure you're dying to hear my thoughts. Since the beginning of the year I have been getting a lot of shifts at the academic library. These were very welcome, not just for the extra bucks but because the job gave me interesting things to do - long term projects that require me to plan and create and research and present things. I've made it sound all very high-brow but let's not get too excited, it's basically just a Digital Literacy learning plan for struggling new tertiary students.  Still, I was part of a ...
2 comments
Read more

Saturday Librarian be like...

It's Saturday.  I'm at work. I work Saturdays - Saturday is my permanent shift and I gotta say I am used to working them now, it also helps that I don't have any other family routines to conflict with the concept of the weekend.  I used to think that one day was pretty much like the other.  The sun rises, you do stuff, the sun sets.  Turns out though the cultural attitudes and expectations that are associated with certain days (Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday), still linger quite strongly, even if your schedule is no longer based upon the routines that give these days their flavour. So now my Saturday is like my....  Tuesday.  Kind of.  Friday is Monday.  Monday is Friday.  Does that make sense?  Probably not.  Either way, working in an institution that is open every day is a little weird (and I'm also talking Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years, even if it just for chute clearing).  The entire year just morphs into a ...
Post a Comment
Read more