Six more reasons to keep me away from cataloging!

I know, you're like, "Just six? Not eight? Thirteen?" And I am like, dudes, this would be so much worse if I hadn't figured out how to keep all of my holds from coming to me all at the same time. I think I have about eight queued up just right now to come to me in January!

Also, this pile is much better because I've actually finished half these books already! Go me!

Here's what we've got:

1. Small Space Decorating, from Better Homes and Gardens. This is one I've read through already — I've got a smallish space and I have really no idea what to do with it, so picking this one up made lots of sense. There are lots of interesting ideas for maximizing storage space and making rooms look larger, but unfortunately not a lot of ideas for what I can do within the parameters of my existing furniture, my smaller-than-their-spaces space, and my current lease agreement. I will definitely go back to this if it's ever time to throw out all my furniture and just start over, though!

2. Upcycling, by Danny Seo. I found myself paging through this instead of working, so of course it ended up coming home with me! My dear Scott is a big ol' packrat, so I figured it might be a good idea to make something useful out of all that stuff he hoards. :) A lot of the stuff in the book is a little too purely decorative for me, but I'm definitely going to copy out the instructions for a wine-cork bathmat, glass bottle plus take-out chopsticks diffuser, and the take-out chopsticks trivet... and maybe get around to making them sometime.

3. Geek Girls Unite, by Leslie Simon. I just finished this one, so expect a real review in a couple days. But here's why I picked it up: nerd glasses on the cover, the tagline "How fangirls, bookworms, indie chicks, and other misfits are taking over the world," and the name-dropping of Amy Poehler, Felicia Day, and Zooey Deschanel on the back cover. Could you help but be intrigued? I think not!

4. Physics on the Fringe, by Margaret Wertheim. I've mentioned my love of physics in previous installments of this series, and so, really. It's got a pretty cool cover, but what really interested me is that this book talks about "outsider physicists," who are not generally academics or even degreed physicists but who make awesome giant smoke rings in the back yard with a fog machine and some garbage cans. That's cool physics and I am excited to learn more.

5. Those Across the River, by Christopher Buehlman. It is possible I am just a sucker for a sufficiently creepy, backlit, leafless tree. This book has two of them on the cover, and also sufficiently creepy, backlit, Southern woods on the endpapers. And that's almost enough for me! I nearly did decide to just let it go, but then I read the jacket copy, which promises small-town intrigue and a mysterious presence, and I was so in.

6. The Language Wars, by Henry Hitchings. As you may already know, if there's any non-fiction topic I'm a sucker for more than popular science, it's language. So of course this title grabbed my attention right away. It's subtitled "A history of proper English" and purports to discuss the ever-changing nature of "correct" English and how we decided what was correct and what was HORRIBLY TERRIBLY WRONG, anyway. Considering the recent loss of "literally" to the non-literal masses, I figured it might be interesting to see how else we've destroyed the language over the years. :)

Also, how do you like that Christmas tree we've got up? There are about four ornaments and ten lights on it, which is not really enough, but I figure we've got a month to make it look a little nicer!

Eight further reasons to lock up my library card

I mean, there are WAY more than eight reasons. My husband just gives me a Look every time I bring a new library book home now, because he's bored of admonishing me. But whatever.

Here are eight more books that I have collected from the library solely because I saw them while cataloging, in roughly chronological retrieval order. Again, I have failed to read any so far, but that's not the point, right? The point is pretty books!



1. These Children Who Come at You With Knives, by Jim Knipfel. Nuts! I'm only one book in, and already there's an exception. Technically, it doesn't count because I didn't catalog this book, but I'm counting it because I only heard about from cataloging anther Knipfel book I don't recall anything about. I was wondering if that other book would get a genre label, so I looked up the author, and then I saw this title and I was like, "OoooOOOOoooh." Short stories? Retold fairy tales? I was intrigued. And then it promised me "a magical snowman wrestling with the horror of being alive," and I was like take THAT, evil snowmen, and put a hold on it. I should be reading it for RIP, so maybe you'll hear about it soon?

2. Mice, by Gordon Reece. This could probably go for RIP, too! This one has fog and a lone tree on the cover, combined in a deliciously creepy way, and the jacket copy promises more creepy: "At first, they [the main characters] flourish in their cottage haven, drinking hot chocolate and listening to Brahms by the fire. But on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Shelley wakes to hear a creak on the stairs. Someone is in the house...." Augh! Someone in the house! Interruption of BRAHMS! It is meant to be both scary and funny, so I'm intrigued.

3. The Edinburgh Dead, by Brian Ruckley. I might be sensing a theme here. Whatever. The back cover offers grisly medical experiments on corpses, and also more "sinister" forces, but it's really the tagline on the cover that got me here: "There is a law against murder. But there are no laws for the dead." What does that even mean? I must find out! Also, it's got an 1820s setting and is allegedly gothic. They've got me!

4. The Postmortal, by Drew Magary. I almost set this book aside because it has a bit of a trying-too-hard cover and a blurb from the Shit My Dad Says guy that includes a reference to facial urination. Riiiiiight, moving on? But then I read the book's description, which basically describes the most recent season of Torchwood without all the parts I hated — the world figures out how to stop aging, although death is still allowed, and it leads to all sorts of weird stuff like religious cults and government euthanasia. Please, tell me more.

5. Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward. Confession: even though I was intrigued by this book from the moment I saw it, when I found out that it was going to get an "African American" sticker, I got the image of all those terrible-looking romance novels that plague that section and I very nearly put this book right out of my mind. But then I was like, "ALISON. BAD." So here it is! Salvage the Bones is, according to the dust jacket, a book about a poor family in Mississippi threatened by an approaching hurricane and also dealing with a crap father, teen pregnancy, a lack of food, and a new litter of pit bulls. The book spans only twelve days, so I'm anticipating a very suspenseful read.

6. Death of the Mantis, by Michael Stanley. It's a murder mystery. That's all I really know. But the writers (Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) are out of Johannesburg, so this is totally going to count for the Global Reading Challenge, and that (along with, you know, MURDER) is good enough for me!

7. Paper Covers Rock, by Jenny Hubbard. Huh. The back cover of this book doesn't really tell me anything about why I put a hold on this book... but if I recall correctly the answer is twofold: a) boarding school, and b) mysteriously dead person. I am so easy to please. Also, the guy on the cover is wearing a knitted tie. I have no idea why.

8. My Beautiful Genome, by Lone Frank. Look! A book with no death in it! It's not even fiction! WHAT. This is a book all about genomics and designer babies and what your genes can really say about you, and I kind of adore Gattaca and if there's no reference to it I'll be quite sad. Also, Mary Roach says (of her own free will, I presume) that it's "sharp and funny." So that's a bonus point right there.

Endings

My dear friend Cari has a post up today about book endings and which ones she likes and dislikes. I started to write her a comment, but then it got away from me a bit, and I had to go to work, and so now you get to see a slightly better-put-together version. I hope. :)

One of the things that got me right away was how Cari said "However, we don’t often talk about endings. It’s a taboo subject because, well, no one wants to spoil it for someone else. In fact, in this post, I will not bring up any specific books because I do not want to ruin them, either." And I thought, oh, man, I spoil endings all the time on my blog! Well, not as in "and then this character TOTALLY DIES," but more as in, "and then there's some lame twist ending" or "and then you don't at all find out what happens and it's kind of awesome."

I do this probably because I like it when others tell me what style of ending a book has, because there are some books that I know that I enjoyed a heck of a lot more on re-reading when I knew that there wasn't going to be an easy ending than I did when I got to the end the first time and was all, "What." And so knowing that the ending is going to annoy me usually makes it annoy me far less, and I hope that you guys don't mind it!

And, of course, there have been books I've read that are nothing but lead-ups to the AMAZING TWIST ENDING OF OMG I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING, and those are fun, too, and I won't say anything about said ending when I tell other people about it, because that's not fair. Although sometimes I have to throw in a "yeah, yeah, the first 300 pages are crap but then the end is spectacular!" or else they'd never read it!

I was telling my book club the other day, in re: The Book Thief, that I adore books that spoil their own endings. The ones where right from the get-go, you know everyone dies in the end or that every survives or that a plague of monkeys is going to come down upon the earth. I like them because it means that the author has to work that much harder on the beginning and the middle to keep things interesting, or surprising if they must. I prefer interesting.

So, yeah, endings! (I am personally bad at them!) What's your take?

Thirteen Reasons Why... I shouldn't be allowed to catalog the books

No, seriously. My husband is threatening to buy me a new bookshelf so that I will have more space to store my LIBRARY BOOKS. This is bad news. But here's why:



These are books that I have cataloged, been intrigued by, put on hold, and retrieved from the library in the last six weeks. (These are not all of the library books I currently have in my house.) I have read... none of them, so far. In fact, one of them has to go back to the library tomorrow because someone else wants it, and I'll have to put it on hold all over again!

So this post is twofold — one, these books do look very interesting and I should share them with you while I have them. Two, I need to remember what they all are so I can eventually put most of them on hold again!

In approximate chronological retrieval order:

1. Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson. This is the one I have to give back, which is unfortunate because I've just started hearing really good things about it from the bloggingsphere! I didn't know much when I put it on hold except for the vague jacket copy: "Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love — all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may be telling you only half the story. Welcome to Christine's life." Spooky, right? I liked Memento, which has a similar premise and is mentioned in one of the author blurbs on the back, so you know I will eventually get around to this one.

2. The Mathematics of Life, by Ian Stewart. I like math, I think it's safe to say. I got a little lost at differential equations, but anything before that I was pretty darn good at. I also like popular science books, which is what this really is. It promises to talk about how math and life science are combining today, and I am intrigued.

3. Remembrance of Things I Forgot, by Bob Smith. "It's safe to say your relationship is finished if the only way you can imagine solving your problems is by borrowing a time machine." Yes, I would say so. You all know how I feel about sci-fi romps; this book about an apparently "wickedly comic, cross-country, time-bending journey" had to come home with me.

4. How the Hippies Saved Physics, by David Kaiser. Uh, well, I majored in physics. I like popular science, as I mentioned above. I am amused by the idea of using LSD to become more scientifically creative. On the shelf it goes!

5. The Interrogator, by Glenn L. Carle. This one I'm not actually sure I'll read, because I find memoirs very hit or miss. But The Interrogator is about... an interrogator... for the CIA who was also a long-time spy and basically a professional liar. And then he apparently took on a job that made even him question what the heck he was doing. It seems like it might appeal to the psychological-thriller-lover in me.

6. The End of Everything, by Megan Abbott. Edgar-nominated author, you say? A disappeared young friend, you say? The left-behind young friend taking up the case and also learning more than she wanted to know? Gimme!

7. The Shotgun Rule, by Charlie Huston. This is another I might not finish reading, but I'll certainly give it a try. The jacket flap promises teenage boys who race their bikes, get high, and steal neighbors' medications, and then one day they do something really stupid and steal some hard drugs from some "petty hoods." It is not at all my usual cup of tea, which is part of why I want to read it.

8. Happily Ever After, edited by John Klima. Oh, you know. Fairy tales. Retold. Neil Gaiman. Gregory Maguire. Charles de Lint. No big deal.

9. Dominance, by Will Lavender. There is a bloody ax made of books on the cover. There's a murderer teaching a college class called "Unraveling a Literary Mystery" from his prison cell. There is a secret game called "the Procedure" that may lead to death. I kind of want to go read this right now...

10. The Talk-Funny Girl, by Roland Merullo. An odd title is a sure draw for me, and although the other parts of this novel are less so — A dying factory town? A girl speaking "a kind of mountain hybrid of English"? Said girl becoming a stoneworker? I don't know — I am still intrigued. I may wait to hear more about this book before I delve into it.

11. Life on Mars, by Tracy K. Smith. I don't read enough poetry, and I've never read a collection like this that is a little more science-y. How science-y? The first stanza of the title poem goes like this:
"Tina says what if dark matter is like the space between people
When what holds them together isn't exactly love, and I think
That sounds right — how strong the pull can be, as if something
that knows better won't let you drift apart so easily, and how
Small and heavy you feel, stuck there spinning in place."
...Wow.

12. Raising Stony Mayhall, by Daryl Gregory. I found Gregory's Pandemonium enjoyable, and also: zombies. Specifically, a zombie baby raised by non-zombie parents who grows up and learns that he's not alone in the world. Creepy? Intriguing? Yes.

13. Like Bees to Honey, by Caroline Smailes. This is apparnetly a story of "family, redemption, and ghosts." I like that last one, but the first two are a little eh. I was wavering between putting it on hold and ignoring it, and I had decided to ignore it, but then I flipped through its pages and the formatting of the book is, like, weird and stuff and then I started reading the first chapter and I had to remind myself that I was at work and maybe I should go ahead and put that on hold. I'll tell you how it goes.

Books That Followed Me Home

As noted in yesterday's post, I'm trying out a couple of things I might do for my library's blog, to help people find new books to read. Yesterday I did books that intrigued me but stayed on the shelf, today I'm looking at the books that have a new shelf home for the next six weeks.

Goodness knows I have plenty of books to read at home. Most of them are library books, and most of those find their way onto my shelf because I've heard good things about them from a friend or the Internet (which can often be a friend in these situations!). But sometimes during my volunteer shift, or after, when I'm wandering around the browsing area, something catches my eye and I know it's coming home with me. Here's what followed me out the library door this week; they're mine for now but they'll be back soon!

In the Shadow of Gotham, by Stefanie Pintoff
It was actually the sequel to this book, called A Curtain Falls, that caught my eye, with a dead chorus girl on a Broadway stage and a hint of a ferry disaster. But then I noticed that it was a sequel, and I set off in search of the first book, because I like reading things in order. Luckily, Gotham is no less intriguing, with the book jacket offering a murder taking place in the victim's own bedroom, in the middle of the day. And the victim is a math student at university, which promises some scholarly intrigue. It's also set at the turn of the 20th century, which means I can add some historical fiction to my sadly small pile of such.

The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge, by Patricia Duncker
I played in bands and orchestras for a really long time, so I was drawn to the "composer" bit of this title, and one of the characters is in fact a musical composer. This is also a mystery novel, which I like, and it promises to interrogate faith, immortality, and passion, which I would like to see. And I really liked the cover. I'm not sure that this will be near the top of my reading list in the very near future, but I'm pretty sure I'll like it when I do.

Killer, by Dave Zeltserman
An admission here — I wasn't really interested in this book for its title or cover, and I probably would have passed it over entirely if I weren't currently attempting to read a book for every letter of the alphabet using titles and authors. Z happens to be a toughie, so I really grabbed this only for the Zeltserman on the cover. But then I read over the back, and I perked up a bit. This book is about a Mafia hitman who turns state's witness and is released from jail, only to find that, you know, it's not paranoia if someone's really out to get you. I read a book along the same lines last year and liked it, so I thought I'd give this one a shot.

The Caretaker of Lorne Field, by Dave Zeltserman
Zeltserman strikes again! This one grabbed me with its blurb from NPR: "There's a new name to add to the pantheon of the sons and daughters of Cain: Dave Zeltserman." I recently read through a few of Cain's best-known novels and I liked them a lot, so I checked out the jacket flap on this book. It promises a slightly different feel than Killer — here we have a caretaker who wants to leave his job, but has to wait (for an unclear reason) until his son is able to take over for him. That's not terribly exciting, but this is: "[If] the field is left untended, a horrific monster called an Aukowie will grow — a monster capable of taking over the entirety of America in just two weeks. Or so it is said..." That's a little creepy. I like it. I might read this one first!

Eye-Catchers

As I've mentioned previously, I'm going to be doing some readers' advisory stuff with the library I'm volunteering at, which is pretty delightful. One of the things they want me to do is put together a "volunteer column" for their blog, which is starting to come into its own. Very exciting. I'm not sure exactly what form my column is going to take, but I figured I'd throw up a couple of "demo" posts, as it were, and see what sticks! You might see what comes next up on the library blog at some future date...

It's one of the perils of volunteering at the library — you've got a cart full of books that you're tasked with putting back in their proper place, but nearly every time you pick one up, you find yourself thinking, "Hmm. That's an interesting title." And some of those times, you think, "That's a really interesting title. Let me just see what this here book is about," and then you're checking out the jacket flap and maybe the first page and then sometimes you even find yourself putting the book right back on the cart, so that you can check it out yourself when you're done for the day!

Terrible, I know. Luckily for me, and you, and the library, I have plenty of books checked out right now, so I can't take home every book that intrigues me. But if you want to head over to the stacks and grab one, I won't stop you!

Here are a few books that caught my eye the other day:

How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gates Gill
It can't be overstated how much I subsisted on Starbucks for the greater part of my college career. So I couldn't help but be attracted to this title, though I admit I was hoping it was going to validate my use of caffeine to write last-minute essays and solve last-minute problem sets. I guess not, though, as the subtitle to this is "A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else." Looks like it's more of a riches-to-rags story, which doesn't really pique my interest. I imagine, though, that if you've ever worked at a Starbucks-like company or if you've ever accepted a job just for the money, you'll probably find something to like about this book.

The Trail to Buddha's Mirror, by Don Winslow
I was intrigued here by the visual image I got of myself, trudging along some dirt path, possibly up a mountain even, on my way to find a mirror that was perhaps once used by Siddhārtha Gautama. Well, apparently the mirror is actually a lake, and that trail is probably metaphorical, but the plot still sounds pretty good: "Robert Pendleton, a biochemist and fertilizer expert for AgriTech corporation, has gone missing from a conference in San Francisco where he reportedly became smitten with a beautiful Chinese woman. After locating Pendleton and meeting the stunning Li Lan--and nearly being killed by an unknown assailant when the pair flee from him--Carey soon realizes that more than mere fertilizer know-how is at stake." The Carey mentioned here is Winslow's detective, and this is his second book; if you're the kind who likes to read a series in order, you'll want to start off with the book called A Cool Breeze on the Underground.

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, by Sam Gosling
"Does what's on your desk reveal what's on your mind? Do those pictures on your walls tell true tales about you? And is your favorite outfit about to give you away?" I'm afraid the answer to all of these questions is yes. Even worse, there's a book out there that anyone can read to find out just what all that stuff is secretly saying about you! Gosling professes to be able to tell how reliable a significant other is, or how committed an employee is to her company, just by looking at how things are arranged in medicine cabinets or cubicles. I'm not saying that you should start spying on your closest friends and neighbors, but if you're just interested in "getting to know them better," I think this book could help.

First Among Equals, by Jeffrey Archer
This one really only caught my eye because of a book by Jasper Fforde called First Among Sequels that I did not previously realize had taken its title from another book. Unfortunately, I don't think Archer's book is going to have anything to do with a book-jumping, time-travelling literary detective. Instead we have this: "Charles Seymour, second-born son, will never be the earl like his father, but he did inherit his mother's strength-and the will to realize his destiny...Simon Kerslake's father sacrificed everything to make sure his son's dreams come true. Now it is Simon's chance to rise as high as those dreams allow...Ray Gould was born to the back streets but raised with pride-a quality matched by a sharp intellect and the desire to attain the impossible...Andrew Fraser was raised by a soccer hero turned politician. Now it's his turn for heroics, whatever the cost. From strangers to rivals, four men embark on a journey for the highest stakes of all-the keys to No. 10 Downing Street." I'm not terribly keen on historical or political fiction, but if you are, you might want to check this out.

Replay, by Ken Grimwood
I wasn't terribly drawn in by the title or cover on this book, but when it fell off of my cart I caught sight of the back cover copy, which proclaimed that the main character was going to get to live his life over and over again, in a 25-year loop, until he got it right. Yes, I know this was done to a lesser extent in Groundhog Day, but I LOVED Groundhog Day and also Replay did it first by six years and won an award doing it, so I think this book might follow me home sometime soon.

Speaking of books that followed me home, I'll have another post up tomorrow detailing what did find its way onto my shelf full of library books this week.

Notes on a Sunday

Wow. It is really fall here in Florida now... after many weeks in the 70s and 80s a big storm has taken us into the 50s and low 60s. I will be spending many hours warming up in the solarium, reading and drinking hot chocolate. In fact...

Mmm, hot chocolate. -sips- Much warmer now.

It has been an interesting week for reading. I don't do monthly tally posts anymore, but I do keep a tally in a lovely Google spreadsheet, and I discovered that in October I managed to read 18 books, which is the most I've read in any month this year, including the two months during which I had to read 20 YA novels for a class. This beastly total was helped in part by the six books I read for the Read-a-thon, and also by an unexpected airplane trip and, of course, my general lack of employment.

Of course, I'm not going to get anywhere near that this month... I haven't yet finished a book! This is mostly because I started The Name of the Rose this week, and while I think it is going to be very interesting I found myself skimming through pages and generally not paying any attention to the story. So I am putting it aside until such time as I can actually focus on it. This weekend has found me reading The Little Stranger, which I should finish today or tomorrow and which I am currently madly in love with. I have no idea what's going on, but I can tell that it's the kind of book where you're not supposed to, so I'm not terribly concerned yet. What I do know is that it's quite creepy and reminds me vaguely of The Fall of the House of Usher and also The Haunting of Hill House, which is a good sign for me loving this book.

It's also been an interesting week at the library — I volunteer there, as I've probably mentioned, and so far my duties have consisted of shelving things and also unshelving things that people want to read. It's actually a pretty good time, and I'm sure the library loves that I take many things home with me every time I'm there. But, having one of these degrees in library science, I've been begging to be allowed to do more, and this week I was finally able to present a list of ideas for readers advisory (matching readers with books, basically) that I'd like to help with. Everything has to get cleared through the director, of course, but as of my meeting with the assistant director it looks like I will be doing some blogging, creating fun bookmarks Twinsburg Public Library-style, and possibly helping out with a book group. I am possibly far too excited about this, but it means that I have more things to do! I like feeling useful.

All right, back to reading!

When library policies ATTACK (your ability to browse the shelves)

I found this post on a very odd library policy via @maureenjohnson yesterday, and found myself very confused. If you don't want to click the link, the idea is that there is at least one library out there (probably more...) that enforces age-restricted access to the children's and young adult sections. As in, if I, as a 24-year-old, went to this (these?) libraries, I would have to ask for special permission to browse around (retrieving specific materials is okay, apparently) the children's and young adult sections unless I brought my youngest brother or borrowed someone's teenager. Um, what?

The first principle of the ALA Code of Ethics espouses "equitable service policies" and "equitable access"; this policy seems to maybe a little bit totally break that principle.

It's like the opposite of what happened in Wisconsin last year, where some of the adult patrons wanted to move the "inappropriate" books from the YA section to the adult section, making it harder for the young adults to find them.

This particular age restriction policy also makes it more difficult for children under the age of 13 to get at the young adult materials — they seem also to have to go get a librarian to escort them, though young adults can use the children's section as they please. As a person who was reading at an eighth-grade reading level by first grade and who was also painfully shy until about the age of 19, I can't imagine that I would have read nearly as many books as I did in my childhood if this policy had been in place at my library.

I don't know what the staffing situation is at this particular library, but this policy doesn't seem to be very friendly to any situation. If there are plenty of librarians and staff in all sections, this policy seems to say that teen and children's area staff aren't competent enough to keep the area a comfortable space for the teens without age-restricted entrance. If there are fewer librarians and staff floating around the library, escorting through the YA section adults or children who could take care of themselves takes away time that could be used to help less knowledgeable library users or to work on making the library better. If this policy completely replaces a librarian or staff member in these two sections, well, that just doesn't bode well for the future at all.

In short, this sort of policy affects a lot of people, is silly, and is antithetical to good library service. What are the upsides?

Happy Christmas!

This is my Christmas tree this year... Scott and I made it together! Last year I made our tree myself out of construction paper, but this year we wanted to take it to the next dimension! This was actually the third or fourth design that we attempted for the tree — do you know how difficult it is to make a pipe-cleaner tree look halfway decent? I mean, unless you're Martha Stewart. Then it's easy. Whatever, ours was made with love.

I'm not really big on Christmas, but I will enjoy spending today with my dear parents and brothers and tomorrow with whatever family members stick around at Scott's house (they are a very come-and-go bunch, which is odd to me). I will also enjoy watching this video probably, oh, five hundred times in a row. I am such a sucker for Muppets.

Should you become a librarian?

Not if you believe this. This makes me a little sad. But a little more mad.

Firstly, and most obviously, because I am in library school. I'm certainly qualified to do other things, I like respect, and my cat has a historical cat name — crap. I guess I should just quit now, right?

That's the secondly: Seriously? Seriously? Because I want respect as a librarian (this seems to be the overarching theme of the flowchart), I can't be a librarian? So we're going to leave the profession to people that don't want respect anyway? This seems a little bit off to me.

Some of the commenters on the post find this flowchart funny, and maybe that's its intent. Because while I'm sure that public librarians, especially, find themselves feeling like overpaid babysitters at times, I'm also sure that there are times that make those librarians say, "This is why I became a librarian." Because otherwise, why would they still be going to work every day? But to have this flowchart out there, where non-librarians and potential librarians can see it (potentially) taken out of context... that's going to drive away some really great future librarians.

Other commenters note that librarians are going out of style, that they're being replaced by paraprofessionals, that soon enough everything is going to be automated so why should anyone enter library school right now? To that I say, because library science and information science are changing, too. MLIS students don't just learn how to shelve books. They learn how to use new information tools and how to teach others to use them. They learn how to put together and maintain digital libraries. They learn how to be a librarian of the future, not of the past that these commenters seem to be living in.

If your boss doesn't respect you, and especially if you don't respect your boss, figure out why not. If it's a personality clash; find a new boss. Get out of there. If you're doing something wrong, make it right. If your boss is doing something wrong, make it right. Take initiative.

If the customers are fighting you, and you are doing your best to help, you need to find a new way to help. Ask more questions. Put yourself in the customer's shoes. Don't be confrontational. Make the customer happy, even if you can't answer the question.

If your coworkers despise you, you are probably doing something wrong. Fix it. Or possibly you are doing everything right. Fix them, but be respectful about it.

If your mother cries and begs you to join a religious cult, your mother is crazy. Get her professional help. (Okay, this one's obviously meant to be humorous. But just in case.)

I agree with one (sadly anonymous) comment: "Instead of whining about being a librarian, go be something else." If you don't, there's a chance you'll soon become the disrespectful boss or co-worker that ruins things for everyone else. There are plenty of excited young students (I am one of them) who want to change your profession for the better. Let us do it.

Google vs. the Dewey Decimal System

The other day I found myself a bit confused by a question from a relative: "Do we even need the Dewey Decimal system anymore, now that we have Google?" Her question was mainly based on not knowing what Dewey Decimal is at all, but might it be a valid question?

Well, let's look at this. Google is, as I'm sure everyone who can read this knows, a search engine. If you're looking for, say, information on whether you get more wet by running or walking in the rain (this is an example given to me by the aforementioned questioner), you can use Google to find the answer, or at least potential answers on a variety of websites.

The Dewey Decimal Classification system, on the other hand (and along with its friend the Library of Congress Classification system, among others), is an organizational tool. It says that if you are looking for, say, an item about whether you get more wet by running or walking in the rain, you can find it on the shelf in probably the 530s (that's the lovely physics section) or so. But the trick is that sure, you can find books on physics in the 530s, but you might find the answer to this particular question somewhere else entirely. Like in the 613s in a book on health... I suppose you'd want the best way to avoid a cold, after all. You're really better off finding the book you want via the catalog (or Google, as I did here) and then heading for the shelf with decimal in hand.

So you cannot use Dewey directly to find an answer; that's what the books are for (which you can locate in your library using Dewey). You cannot use Google to find a book on a shelf (unless, of course, it gives you a call number), though you could use it to find a digitized book pretty quickly.

And that's another thing. Now that Google is digitizing books like a madsearchengine, I can see why Dewey and other classification schemes would be falling out of style. Who needs a call number for something intangible? But even with this mass move to the Web, libraries are still housing books that need to be organized. And even on the Web, people are interested in finding items that are related to the ones they are looking at now.

Why else would we have social bookmarking sites or an online encyclopedia that has at least a few good articles or even Google image search? Clearly, information wants to be organized (or at least we silly humans like it that way). Is there really a difference between using Dewey to sort books into categories like Technology and History and using tags to sort blog posts by the celebrities they mention?

No. Not really. So maybe Dewey and his decimals aren't going to prevail in the world of digitized books, where books can be "shelved" next to any other book that shares a tag (and really, that is a much nicer system to use!), conflicting topics be damned. But the concept behind Dewey, that of being able to sort and organize information, of being able to figure out which darn Google link is going to give you the answer you want... that's definitely going to stick around.

Teen Read Week!

Teen Read Week is this week! What is this Teen Read Week, you ask? Why, it's simply a week in which libraries (and probably other people, too), persuade teens to read books! Yay reading!

I'm not a librarian just yet, so my ability to push books into the hands of teens is limited and I need your help! :) If you parent a teen, know a teen, see a teen on the street, whatever, remind them all week that reading is fun! If they need some convincing, here are some books you can tell them to read, ones that I have read recently and enjoyed:

Liar, by Justine Larbalestier — The story of a liar who is totally going to tell the truth this time, honest.
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart — Secret societies, they're all fun and games until you infiltrate one and then get in lots of trouble.
Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer — Because being a teenager isn't difficult enough without worrying about the moon looming ever closer.
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins — Because being a teenager isn't difficult enough without worrying about being forced to kill other teenagers.
Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi — Because being a teenager isn't difficult enough without worrying about being stranded on a colony planet.
Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns by John Green — Because being a teenager is just difficult.
Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow — Awesome teenagers take on the government using even awesomer technology. Recommended in e-book form for your tech-savvy teen.

Bookaholism and a children's books question

So. I went to my local library tonight to do an assignment for my Foundations of Library and Information Science class. And then I walked out with seven books. I am addicted to the bookahol. I am excited, though, because this means more books for my Read-a-thon pile (what's that? I should make a list? I'll think about it...)!

Two of the books are from the children's section, because my youngest brother's birthday is coming up and I can't figure out what to buy for him! He has asked for fiction books and "learning books" (aw, cute!), and I've gotten him two of the latter but I want to do a one-of-each thing for his birthday (at the end of November) and Christmas (at the end of... oh, you know when that is?).

I plan on giving him The Maze of Bones for Christmas, because that's got trading cards and stuff that I don't want my parents to feel obligated to throw in the Christmas stocking, but I need something for his birthday! The two books I got from the library are A Midsummer Night's Dork and Measle and the Wrathmonk (that one mostly for its awesome name!), and then I was also planning on picking up Diary of a Wimpy Kid but they didn't have it. But I am always looking for more suggestions! Here are the requirements/suggestions:

1. William is going to be 11, but his reading level's not quite that high.
2. He won't read anything that's too long (I'd say 200 pages maximum).
3. He is obsessed with the A-Z mysteries series, he likes Goosebumps, he has read the Magic Treehouse series and liked it, and I don't know what else he reads.
4. He is a boy's boy and doesn't like things that are girly on principle, but if you can sneak a rockin' female sidekick in there...
5. He watches a lot of television, especially Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
6. He is also obsessed with Bakugan/Yugioh/Pokemon/etc.

Got anything for me?

Donors Choose

A post not about books! Shock! Awe! But really, it's sort of about books, so keep reading! There's even a part where you can coerce me to read more!

So there's this organization, called Donors Choose, right? And all year long they collect donations tiny and gigantic to fund projects requested by teachers at schools all around the country. Some teachers request copy paper, so they can print things. Others request pencils, so their students can write things. Some request really fun books, so their students can read really fun things. You know.

And each October, Donors Choose hold a contest for blogs/social media to get the word out about the cause and, obviously, get people to donate. I heard about this a while back from Tomato Nation, and in the past few years TN readers (and Sarah Bunting, the genius behind this site) have raised more than a quarter of a million dollars for all these different projects. Whoo!

You may have guessed by now that I would love it if you would go to Donors Choose via TN's giving page and donate a dollar or two dollars or this week's Starbucks budget or whatever to your favorite project, especially if it involves books because books are awesome but even if it involves history which is boring. Because how are the kids going to know how boring history really is if they don't have the resources to learn about it? (Sorry, Amy, but only like 20 percent of my history education was ever actually interesting. Feel free to leave a comment about how awesome it really is!)

Right. Anyway. This thing lasts all month, but there's nothing wrong with getting your donations in early (and often)! Also, if you check out the Tomato Nation site, there are all these contests and stuff going on and maybe your $5 donation will turn into a really cool prize!

Now for the interesting part: I'm going to do a bit of a readathon throughout the month in honor of Donors Choose and I personally am going to donate $2 to a project for every book I read between now and 31 October. If you want to do the same, just drop a note in the comments or in my e-mail so I know to stalk you later. :) You can donate as I read, or take your whole sum and drop it on a project on the 31st, so long as you do it through Tomato Nation and so long as you tell me so I can feel good about myself. A note for the budget-conscious: I read about 8-10 books per month on average, my highest total was 15 over the summer. I don't think I'll be breaking that, but of course I will try. (And I won't cheat with Golden Books.)

Books read:
1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

Also, you know, tell your friends. TN raised something like $110,000 last October, but their goal this year is $210,000... that's going to take a lot of people to accomplish. Spread the word!

Quick notes

One: LeVar Burton was on Talk of the Nation yesterday reminiscing with callers about the death of Reading Rainbow. I was kind of disappointed that they didn't really address the reasons for the show's cancellation, but I was glad that people called in in support of the show. And really, he was only on for fifteen minutes so I'm just happy to have heard his pleasant voice.

Two: I generally tell people that if they really want me to read a book, they should put a copy in my hands because then I'll feel more obligated to read it and return it. But maybe I should stop that, because I came home from my friends' house last night with six books to add to that pretty sidebar over on the left. We'll see how long it takes to get their books back to them!

Three: Online course are difficult and annoying because I'd really rather be reading right now than watching four hours (I hope that's an exaggeration) of taped lectures about how to buy a computer.

Happy Belated Birthday to Me!

Oh no! I've been sitting here thinking that I started this blog sometime in September of last year, because I'm crazy and a) did not make a "look at this blog I started!" post and b) copied over the reviews from my hand-made site to fill up space and make my blog look less lonely. And somewhere along the way I got the idea that I started it in the middle of September, though now that I have the correct info I have no idea where I went wrong.

But! Anyway! Looking over at my LiveJournal, I see that actually, I made my first post here on 26 August 2008, a stunning review of The Stepford Wives. So... yeah. Happy 371 days of blogging to me!

Farewell, Reading Rainbow

Reading Rainbow has its last episode today (after 26 years!), and NPR did a story on it. I think what's interesting to note is that funding is shifting more toward TV shows that teach kids how to read rather than shows that give kids new books to read. I, personally, think that's a crying shame.

I didn't really watch Reading Rainbow on purpose as a kid, because I was generally well above the reading level of the books on the show. But part of the reason I read so well is because I read. A lot. I would regularly grab 10 books every time my mother took me to the library and have them read in a week or less. Did I grab so many books because someone once taught me phonics? Heck no!

I read then, and read now, because someone once gave me a love of reading. My teachers and my librarians said, "You should read these Baby-sitter's Club books! Or how about some Bruce Coville? Oh, I bet you'd love Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys!" And I did. And I read them all, because they were good. And then those teachers and librarians looked at what I was reading and suggested similar but more difficult books. And I never stopped reading.

My 20-year-old brother hated reading until my grandmother gave him the first three Harry Potter books. Now he reads epic fantasy, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at! My 10-year-old brother has had to deal with all of the ridiculous Ohio achievement testing and teachers having to teach to these tests since he started school, and gets poor marks on the reading sections because he reads lower than his grade level. But he's already given me his birthday and Christmas list of books I should buy him, so I think he's going to turn out better than the good readers in his class who don't want to read.

I was pondering taking some youth services courses for my library science degree, but this article, among other things, is really making that decision seem like an excellent one.

On Serialized Novels

In case you haven't noticed, my "pile I'm reading" sidebar has two books that have links on them, Makers and Dracula. These are the two serialized novels I'm currently reading and the first ones I've ever read as they were serialized. I have, of course, read a few Victorian serials in my life as an English major, but those were already put together as books! So what's with this return to the serial?

While I sit around and read books cover-to-cover all the time, I know that there are employed people out there with less time on their hands for whom reading a quick blog post is much easier than picking up a book. There are also people, of which I was one while employed, who have some downtime at work but can't be seen reading a book. To the internet!

An interesting thing is that I'm reading these two novels in serialized form for entirely different reasons. Dracula is a book that I've always meant to read, but never wanted to enough to just sit down and read it. Makers is an entirely new book that will be published as a whole in October but is being serialized from now until January. I started reading it because it's by Cory Doctorow and I enjoyed Little Brother, and now I'm reading it because I'm curious about Doctorow's vision of the future even if I think the book kind of stinks. And I can do that, because a new installment only comes out every other day and there are lots of other things I'm reading in between installments.

On the reading experience: Makers is easier to follow along, because installments come out regularly and are a chapter long each time. Dracula, the original novel, is epistolary and the blog version has a new post for each letter, with dates matching up in "real time" as it were. So near the beginning there were lots of journal entries from Jonathan Harker; right about now I've been reading many shorter entries from other characters. I think the blog is a great conceit, but some of the entries are so far apart, and the topics so disparate, that I have no idea what's going on!

What do you guys think? Are you interested in serialized novels? Can you keep track of the action? Is there a book you've put down that you might read as a serial? Is there a serial you've stopped reading that you would have preferred as a book? Is your RSS reader too clogged up already?

Wisconsin Library Debate

This showed up in my Google Reader today and links to a CNN article about a public library in West Bend, WI that has some patrons railing against inappropriate books. These books include The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Baby Be-bop, neither of which I've read, but both of which are apparently inappropriate for teens.

But what really strikes me about this protest is the proposed solution. CNN, of course, latches on to the radical group that wants to burn some books, but the intent of the original protesters was to have the books moved from the young adult section to the adult section. Young adults would still be allowed to check out Chbosky's book, but they'd have to know that they wanted it and either be able to use the library's catalog or be willing to ask a librarian to find the book for them.

While I agree that the books should not be moved, mostly because browsing is how I found many a book before I joined the book blogging world, this does bring up the question of how and why we separate books into children's, young adult, and adult. I read plenty of novels that are considered children's or young adult and I am not either, anymore. Conversely, I was reading YA books at the age of seven or eight and venturing into the adult section not long after. But in all crossing-over cases, I was pointed to a specific book either by a blog, now, or by a friend or librarian, years ago. And there are plenty of books that I've recommended to friends that I've purposely not declared young adult, because said friends don't read "kid books." Doesn't this arbitrary separation itself limit access to a lot of great novels?

The other day I noticed books 5-7 of the Harry Potter series in the adult fiction stacks at my library. A quick look on the library's online catalog shows that they are also in the young adult and children's areas. How was this determined?

I'm sure these aren't questions that can really be answered, but what makes a young adult novel? What makes an adult novel? Why can't we combine them? Why can't there be a section for "sexually explicit" material (and wouldn't that really just encourage kids to read them, anyway)? Is there a better way to lay out the library?

Things I Did Today

I saw the new Harry Potter movie today, really only because my dear spoon dragged me to see it, and it was okay. Better than the fifth one, certainly (not hard to do!), but still not terribly good. This is probably not helped by the fact that I haven't read the book since it came out what, four year ago? and as such I have little to no recollection of most of the book. I spent most of the movie trying my hardest to remember the things that happened in between the movie's scenes so that I'd have any idea what was going on, but it was mostly futile. So. If you haven't seen the movie yet and plan to, you should maybe go read the book first.

I was already going to rectify this "not having read a Harry Potter book since 2007" thing with the Summer Lovin' Challenge, but now I feel it is imperative, if only to get the bad taste of the movie out of my mouth (brain? whatever). So, starting whenever I finish my current book, I'm going to dive back into the world of Potter. I'll try to read one or two of the books every week, but, you know, I might get distracted by other things, so no promises.

The last thing I did today was finish logging all of my books in LibraryThing, because I am that big of a nerd. If you're on there as well, stop by and say hello!