Focus Group

Just an idea. I need a focus group to tell me about their experience of the Library and LRCs. There are two sorts of people I'm looking for:

1 Students who use the Library lots
2 Students who never use the Library


Uh, actually there are *three* sorts of people I'm looking for. The third is staff - could do with a couple of tutors too.

The qualifications you need to join? Just be opinionated about everything, that's all.

Email me! hcrowther@blackpoolsixth.ac.uk

The Curious Incident of the Book-Club in the Library

Well, that's a shameless rip-off of the title of our first read, 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time', by Mark Haddon. Christopher is the protagonist, a boy with autism, who numbers his chapters with prime numbers, and tells us constantly he likes to think logically (although if he sees five red cars in a row, he knows it's going to be a Super Good Day and he feels instantly better - so not that logical then.)

The book is also about how people react to Christopher - through his eyes, we see their incomprehension, impatience and frustration - though, as he tells us, he can't always judge mood or feeling in others. In fact, several Book Club members reported that the mathematical problems with which Christopher regales his readers can be pretty relentless and frustrating!

Look out for the picture of an alien in the book - Christopher draws it. It's like a robot: we tend to anthropomorphise aliens when we imagine them, but Christopher doesn't. This alien has no face.

Our next books (for we are reading two side-by-side) are 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess, and 'Not without my sisters' by Kristina Jones. We chose these because the vote was even! Read together, both are depictions of violence and the struggle to assert freedom - so the choice was inspired, if you ask me.

We've also got some sponsorship to buy the next read - so if you're a bit of an entrepreneur, we'd like to hear from you!

See Helen if:
a) You'd like to join
b) You like a jolly good argument
c) You need inspiration to try different books

TTFN.