Monthly Archives: December 2006

Children's literature, Spare time - Culture

And what about all those books?

Ok, I confess, last weekend I wrote about a lot of books that I was going to read over the holiday.  I didn’t read them last week.  Between the Christmas Eve-Eve party, the Christmas Eve church service, some last minute shopping, and our extended Christmas Day travels, we just weren’t home very much last weekend.

So the plan was to do lots of reading this weekend.  It’s Sunday; how am I doing so far?  Not so good!  One of Jim’s childhood friends came by yesterday with his wife (he and Jim had a fabulous jam session together), we had dinner with Jim’s mom and Bob yesterday evening, and, of course, I snuck in a little shopping at the Warehouse Store in Maynard, which is sadly going out of business.  No reading yesterday.  Today, a sleepy start by the fire with coffee cake and tea with honey, then food shopping, a walk, and soon a second walk.  It’s a beautiful day, and I can only get outside on the weekends (we’re not allowed to leave the library building during our working hours, and it’s dark and cold when I leave work in the winter).  Got to take advantage of my outdoor time.

Trying to fit a social life and outdoor time and chores into my limited out-of-work hours leaves very little time for reading, though of course reading is at the heart of my career.  I don’t have a solution to this problem; I only know that, as much as I love my job, I need to nurture the other aspects of my life, too.

Librarianship

Speaking of the new building

I’m just about to get ready for work, and trying to figure out what to wear today.  Maybe today would be a good day to wear less-than-fabulous clothes and scrounge around in the stacks for books that are in terrible condition and need to be replaced.  It’s a big project, very time consuming, and obviously very dirty.  I’ve already completed about half of the juvenile fiction section, and it would be great to finish the other half today, leaving just (just???) the juvenile nonfiction section and the early reader section.

Not only is weeding a necessary and essential part of any librarian’s position, it feels especially important to me right now as we enter the last months before the move to the new building.  Who wants to see scuzzy books in a gorgeous new facility?  Who wants to handle, let alone check out, a children’s book that was tastefully rebound in 1949?  (I kid you not, I’ve found many of those.)  The heat is on, so to speak, and I think I’ll see what progress I can make today.  Good thing I took a Claritin this morning…all that dust…

Children's book reviews, Children's literature

Books galore

Life is good – I’ve got a three-day weekend, and a huge pile of books waiting to be read.  Some of the books are a bit dry (asthma books aren’t exactly thrilling reading, but they are necessary reading), but most of them are pretty exciting to me.  I splurged just before leaving work on Friday, and checked out two new books in our advanced reader section.  These two books have received great reviews, and I’ve been anxious to read them, but wanted to give the library patrons first shot at taking them home.  But heck, they were fair game for me when they were still on the shelf at closing time!  So here is one of the books on my agenda for this weekend:

Larklight  by Philip Reeve

I first heard of this book through the Booksense flyer that I picked up at Nantucket Bookworks in September.  Since then, I’ve read many enthusiastic reviews of Larklight, and Philip Reeve is the featured author in the November issue of School Library Journal.  One of the reviews I read said that this book is difficult to place into any one genre (wish I’d realized that before I slapped the SciFi/Fantasy sticker on the spine), which I love.  I’m always intrigued by books that push conventional boundaries.

The book flap describes Larklight this way:

“Art Mumby and his irritating sister Myrtle live with their father in a huge and rambling house, Larklight, which is traveling through space on an orbit far beyond the moon.  When, during an ordinary sort of morning, they learn that a gentleman is on his way to visit, a frenzy of preparation ensues.  But it is entirely the wrong sort of preparation, and a dreadful, terrifying and marvelous adventure begins.  Art, Myrtle, and the extraordinary space pirates they encounter journey to the farthest reaches of known space, where they desperately attempt to save each other – and the universe.   Utterly unique and devilishly witty, Larklight is a fantastic Victorian space adventure with a gravitational pull all its own.”

Tomorrow:  the other book…

Blog administration

Back online…with style

Well, it took awhile, but I’m finally back online, and posting to my blog with the help of Microsoft Word.  In the past, using our ancient computer, I had to write all of my blog entries while online, posting directly onto WordPress.  (Our old computer was so outdated that it didn’t have enough memory to install a word processing program.)  Not only was it a bit precarious, since a slipped mouse click could lose my posting, it was also not particularly comfortable.  Our “computer room” is the supposed four season porch at the front of our small home, and, being a porch, it’s not well insulated.  Boiling hot and stuffy in the summer (the windows don’t work very well), and freezing cold in the winter (even with fuzzy slippers on, I have to prop my feet up off the floor to prevent chilled extremities).  Not an ideal situation, and not conducive to excellent blog entries in the summer or winter. 

Now, though, we have a fabulous new computer – a laptop.  Through much persistence, I was able to get a phenomenal deal on this laptop through Dell, and it ended up being even cheaper than an equivalent desktop.  Yay me.  So I’m writing this post in my favorite Ikea chair while sitting by the cozy woodstove, with the ability to spell check and edit and revise without losing my patience at our slow internet connection.  (Though Pippa-cat isn’t too thrilled at losing my lap to the computer, but she’ll just have to get used to the cat cushion on the floor.)

My brother Dan tells me that it’s advisable to create back entries to cover days that one was unable to post to a blog, so as I’m adding my usual daily “front” entries, I will also be trying to create back entries for the computerless days between Thanksgiving and today.  Thanks for your patience during that month!