Books
The Weeding Monster
Posted October 1, 2015 by Tara Pealer
I am good at weeding. I’d go as far to say that I like weeding. Weeding, to me, is a relaxing way to organize, understand, and address the usage of not only a library’s book collection, but my own as well. I look at the book to see if it’s been read, if I would want to read it, if I would read it again, if I really want to keep it, and, finally, if there’s a place I can give it to improve the chance of it being used. Books that don’t make the ‘cut’, and are removed from my shelf, get donated to book sales, or, if it’s a textbook in good or new condition, with relevant material, donated to the academic library I used to work at. I also give children’s books to my five year old niece and other books to my friends if they want them. Cue, now, the looks I got from my LIS 401 classmates when I say this. How could I? Why would I? To that I…
Banned Books Week
Posted September 30, 2015 by Jill Silverberg
After recently looking over ALA’s ‘Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books’ from the past two decades (1990-1999 & 2000-2009), I realized that I have read quite a few so-called banned/challenged books in rather short lifetime. Some of the books on these two lists were notable for due to their reputations as being banned or challenged: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume; Blackboy by Richard Wright; American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Others came off as bit of a shock: In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak; Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling; and Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey. Yes, even Captain Underpants has been challenged for its content. While it is certainly true that there is a stark difference between a book being ‘challenged’ [an attempt to remove or restrict materials] and ‘banned’ [to completely remove materials], either act is a case of enforced censorship. Although ALA acknowledges that books that are challenged are usually done so with best intentions in mind, whenever I hear about a book that has been challenged -often within the context of…
Age and Maturity
Posted August 11, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
It’s my birthday on the 14th. I’m turning 25. It feels weird. It’ll be my first birthday celebration without either my family or my best friend. I have friends to celebrate with. Awesome friends who I am so glad to have in my life. We’re going to the Museum of Science and then finding food somewhere. That is my birthday plan. Growing up, I loved throwing birthday parties. Having a birthday in the summer meant that it was hit-or-miss for whether people would be in town to show up, but it also meant that I could throw my party basically any day. I would spend all summer planning my birthday party. When I was in my late teens, I worked at the Fair in my hometown. It happened to fall on my birthday every year. So every year I would work on my birthday. I started a tradition for myself to get a caramel apple on my birthday. I don’t know where to get a caramel apple in Boston. It’s weird to grow-up. I don’t…
Summer Reading
Posted July 20, 2015 by Jill Silverberg
It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, the city of Boston was still blanketed in snow, my apartment was a frozen tundra, and I was elbows deep in school work. Even though school ended for me back in early May, it still feels like just yesterday that I would spend a solid twelve hours a day on the Simmons campus working on final papers and projects. Fortunately for me, days like that are now simply just fond memories and hilarious anecdotes. And with the 2014/2015 academic year now a thing of the recent past, I’ve finally had the opportunity to do something that I only really get to do during the summer months: leisure read!!!!!!!! I don’t joke around when I tell people that I am a blbliophile. I REALLY love books. However, not even my love of the written word is enough to find time to read a book for fun while also working on all the reading and other academic responsibilities that require my attention during the school year. While…
One School, One Book?
Posted July 14, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
I recently finished The Martian by Andy Weir for “Somerville Reads”/One City One Book, and it was fabulous. Actually, I’ll admit that in the beginning, I thought it was just OK. However, right about the time I thought “I don’t think I can read 300 pages of this,” the perspective of the story changed, a whole bunch of new characters were introduced, and it really took off. Excellent, excellent book. Seriously — more than one night I’ve fallen asleep imagining that the characters were real people and wondering how the United States would respond if the situation in the book really happened. (Side note: I’ll get to continue my fantasy with the characters, since the movie version of the book is coming out soon — starring Matt Damon!) Anyway, back to the point. My family has really enjoyed One City One Book here in Somerville. A few years ago, my husband won a Vietnam War-era trivia contest based on when we read The Things They Carried. Last year, we read Dark Tide, and our local…
Outside the Box
Posted July 2, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
Between working in a public library children’s department, getting my master’s at SLIS, and hanging around with my kids and their friends, I spend a lot of time talking about, thinking about and witnessing children reading. For eager readers, there are limitless options for books to read, stories to write, and vocabulary to learn. For more reluctant readers, it might help to think outside the box. Lately, I’ve seen hesitant readers fall in love with the following: Poetry. Specifically, Shel Silverstein. His poems are short enough to not be intimidating, and interesting enough to encourage kids to stick with challenging words. Drawings help pull readers into the text. And– bonus! — people of all ages find Shel Silverstein hilarious. Graphic Novels. Even though there are plenty of Early Readers with the same number of words on a page and pictures to help you follow the story, something about the graphic format really captures reluctant readers. I love anything published by Toon, and, for older readers, Raina Telgemeier’s fabulous books and El Deafo by Cece Bell….
Happy 150th Birthday, Alice!
Posted June 30, 2015 by Jill Silverberg
It’s almost hard to believe that it has been 150 years since Lewis Carroll’s Alice fell down the rabbit hole and tumbled into the weird, mad, and impossible world of Wonderland. Since its publication in 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has not only become part of the literary classic but also a figure that squarely represents the innocence of childhood. Considering its age, it’s understandable that there have been quite a few interpretations on Carroll’s -or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s- most famous character. Indeed, the metaphorical journey of Alice has almost become as iconic as the girl herself. So, in honor of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland turning the big 1-5-0, I’ve compiled a top five list of Alices. But before I reveal the list, let’s get some things out of the way. This list and its ranking has been created based on my own personal opinions. So yes, expect some biases For the sake of simplicity, I’m only sticking to Alices from direct adaptions. There are simply too many Alices from works that are allusions or influenced by Carroll’s novel…
Author Events and Expectations
Posted May 21, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
Before moving out to Boston, I had never been to an author event. There were a couple in my old town, but they weren’t authors I was interested in, so I never went. Since moving out here, I’ve had the opportunity to go to three different events (and The Horn Book Awards, but I don’t count that). I’ve been a little spoiled though because the first event I went to was amazing. I wrote about the experience on this blog. I went to listen to Lois Lowry speak about The Giver. It was so much fun. I only had a short wait in a line to get my book signed, and then she spoke for an hour about her life and what inspired her to write The Giver. As someone who wants to write, I love hearing what inspires other authors. The other two events I’ve since gone to were hosted by the same book store. The first was to see Kiera Cass, author of The Selection series. My roommate and I got to the…
LibraryThing, My New Love
Posted April 24, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
There’s a lot to love about libraries, and there is definitely a lot to love about LibraryThing. Maybe some people knew about this fabulous program before SLIS, but I didn’t. When Candy Schwartz assigned a small LibraryThing project in 415 my first semester, my mind was basically blown. Oh, the possibilities! This semester, I used an assignment in 488 to do what I really wanted with LibraryThing, creating a website that weaves book recommendations through my personal and professional background. As part of the project, I cataloged over 400 children’s, adult fiction and nonfiction books with basic tags that I plan to refine over time. I’m only inputting books that I’d actually recommend to someone else — believe me, there were many that didn’t make the cut. I went through our library history, my old journals, all our bookshelves, fifteen years of my book club booklists, and my older daughter’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of everything she’s ever read. What a trip down memory lane. Even better than the fun of cataloging the books is the fact…
Books: 2015, 1st Quarter
Posted April 3, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
As I’ve written before, I keep a log of all the books I read. I don’t really do anything with the list, though. Occasionally I’ll have trouble remembering an author or title and it comes in handy, but it’s more just something I do for no particular reason. At the beginning of this year, I read Jessamyn West’s blog post about the way she tracks her reading, and decided to give it a try. A cursory look back at 2014 made me think that my reading was pretty evenly distributed between male/female authors, fiction/nonfiction, and authors of color (the categories she tracks). So, for the first three months of 2015, I tracked all that information, sure I would come out with a diverse, inclusive list. I was kind of wrong, and kind of surprised about that. Here’s what I read in January, February and March 2015: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes Kinda Like Brothers by Coe Booth I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer Not That Kind of…