Posts by Hailey M Mooney

The Big Year was an intentional find in the stacks for me. When reading for pleasure I often browse and hope to simply alight upon a good title; sometimes something else leads me to a particular volume.

It all started this summer when I decided to feed the birds...

It didn’t matter that I can just barely describe bird watching as a newfound hobby and can probably identify only a dozen bird species—you don’t need to be a birder yourself to be swept into the drama of the Big Year adventure. Obmascik traces the stories of Komito, Harris, and Levantin back to their childhood roots, to investigate what drives someone to devote an entire year of their lives to birding. The lengths that these men go to in order to chase down birds are incredible.

Sourdough is a magical story. The sourdough culture is alive, the bread is amazing, and the story is rollicking.

Han’s book provides insight into current events—Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Russian propaganda, etc.—Big Data is the new Big Brother and it is Big Business. All of our sharing, all of our liking, all of the tracking of our every digitally connected movement (both voluntary and involuntary) has created the digital panopticon. We are transparent, we are quantified, we are stored and retrieved, we are added and reduced. We are packages of data to be bought and sold. But, Big Data is a Smart Power. It is friendly and it is Likeable. The power of Big Data is that it knows us and increasingly it can shape and predict our behavior.