Does the Public Library Have the Right?

Today I came across a story about a book challenge in a public library in Kentucky. The scary part? It was a library staffer challenging the book. The situation is this: A library staffer in a county public library in Kentucky came across the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume IV: The Black Dossier in children's/YA section of the library. She felt that it had way too many sexual situations and was not suitable for children, so she took it to her director who disagreed and put the book back into circulation. Her next step to stop children from checking out the book was to check it out herself, and keep renewing it. This was working fine for almost a year until she went to renew it on September day and discovered that an 11 year old girl had requested the book. The library employee was so distressed that a child would want to read what she considered inappropriate material that she asked a colleague to override the hold (can we say invasion of privacy?!?!). The director found out about this and both women were fired from the library. You can read more about the story here.

I obviously find a number of things were distressing about this story. But the worst thing (to me) is that this woman took it upon herself to decide what is appropriate or inappropriate for children. Who gave her this right? No one, that's who. It is not up to the library, or the school, or the teacher, or the general public to decide what is or what is not okay for your child to read. The only person who can make that decision is the parent of the child in question. Another thing: the book in question had been purchased for the library, which means that it was reviewed and someone made a decision to buy it knowing that it was going in the children's/YA section. It also survived the first removal attempt by the library worker when the director had it put back on the shelf. If there had been a real concern, the book would have not survived this process.

Do you think this library worker crossed the line? She and another colleague were fired for accesses records and removing a hold request on the book. Do you agree with the library board that firing these women was the right thing to do? I do, but I want to hear your opinion!

Overdue Books Find Their Way Home

I was driving to work this morning, listening to the radio (gotta love Christmas music in November!) and low and behold, there was a story about libraries! You can also read it here.

In 1959, a student at a Phoenix, AZ high school checked out two books from the school's library. His family moved to another state before he could turn them in and the books were packed along with the rest of his stuff. 50 years later, they have been returned to the library with a check for $1,000.00. The former student, who wanted to remain anonymous, sent the check to cover overdue fines at $0.02 a day, which adds up to over $700.00 for both books. The extra money is in case the fines have increased over the years.

The librarian said that the money would go to buy more books for the library and the two returned books would go back on the shelf.

I thought this was such a cute story. Not sure why the books are being returned after all these years, but this former student could have done a lot less than send the books back with such a large check. With the holiday season fast approaching and more news every day about the tough economic situation for libraries, doesn't it make you feel good to know that there are nice people out there?

E-Readers and Libraries

E-Readers are rapidly becoming the hottest new way to read a book (you know without actually holding a book). I've actually used Amazon's Kindle and really liked it (I was shocked too). It's light, but not too light, and can be held with one hand, but seems to be more comfortable if you hold it with two, just like a book. The regular font is a good size and "turning the page" by clicking a button didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. If I had $299 I might consider buying one, mostly because books are a good deal cheaper (especially new hardcover releases) and are delivered immediately to your device. So no waiting around for books to come in the mail (and no pesky shipping charges). Sounds pretty fantastic, right?

Maybe not. The more I started thinking about starting to save up for one, I realized that I had really cut back on the number of books I buy new. I'm a big fan of used bookstores, especially the ones that offer credit for books I turn in, PaperBackSwap.com, and of course, my local public library. The only time I've bought new books recently has been for a new release that I knew I was going to want to keep. So in the past 3 months or so, I've bought 2 brand new books. Everything else has been from the used bookstore, found used online (through Amazon Marketplace or Ebay's Half.com), traded in on PBS, or checked out from the library. So why should I buy a Kindle? Seems like it would be a waste of money.

But wouldn't it be great if I could check out e-books at the library? I can have my e-reader, buy books for it when I want to, but still check out others. I didn't think this had happened yet until I discovered Sony's E-Reader and their partnership with Overdrive, which is a global distributor of digital media (audiobooks, ebooks, music, videos, etc) to libraries and schools. According to this press release, its a quiet deal, but a fabulous one. Patrons can download ebooks onto their Sony device from the library's webpage and then the books are "returned" (they disappear) after a set amount of time. Hopefully with some good marketing, this will expand beyond major city libraries (NYPL has already jumped on board) and be available to everyone who has an e-reader no matter the library. While this seems to just apply to those in possession of a Sony device, hopefully all e-readers will participate so everyone can have equal access.

Do you have an e-reader? If you knew you could "check out" ebooks from the library and download them onto your device, would you do it? Does that make you more likely to want to purchase an e-reader? Tell me what you think!

Update on Summer Reading

My summer reading is going very slowly. I keep finding new books (i.e. new romance novels!) to read which is distracting me from reading what's on my list. I have managed to read three books. Well, really I read one, and skimmed the others because I really couldn't get into them. One of the things I'm really bad about is starting books, but if they don't hold my attention, I give up. With 1000 Splendid Suns and The Space Between Us, I just skimmed through them, reading bits and pieces. I liked the stories, but both of them are heavy books that make you think. And where I am at the moment, thinking isn't something I really want to do. I also found them to be sad and slightly depressing, not what I wanted either. I also read My Sister's Keeper and even though it was incredibly sad (I cried buckets) I was addicted to the story and read it in two days; I couldn't put it down. I've heard the movie is quite different, but still excellent so I think I'm going to go see it with my mother sometime soon.

The Time Traveler's Wife came in at the library the other day and I'm trying to finish an old Jennifer Cruise romance before I start that one. It also looks heavy, so it may not go well. Obviously, with school starting in two weeks I'm not going to be finishing my list. I do think I've made a big dent in it and I will continue to pick books off the list in conjunction with all the new romances I got at the used bookstore the other day. Hopefully, I will be able to finish the list, plus the ones I've added since I wrote it by the New Year. If not, I know what my New Year's Resolution is going to be!

How Well Read Are You?

In 2003 the BBC went in search of Britain's best loved novel. They later released a statement saying that the average person has only read about 6 of the 100 books on the list. I was tagged in a note on facebook about this and instead of responding there I decided to respond here. I have listed the books and put an "x" by the ones I have read. So how well-read am I?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X (do parts count?)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 1984 - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
Total: 6
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Total: 3
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Total: 3
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Total: 4
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Total: 5
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Total: 1
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Total: 2
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zol
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Total: 2
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mxistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Total: 4
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X
Total: 5

Grand Total: 35/100

I guess that's not too terrible. At least I'm better than the average person! This list seems a little odd to me though; why count the Complete Works of Shakespeare as one entry, but then later list Hamlet? Why are the Harry Potter books counted as one book, but Jane Austen's works aren't? Same with the Chronicles of Narnia. Although a good number of these books are considered classics, and I read a good number of them in school, I'm not sure that one should base how well read he or she is based on this list. This would be, however, a great place to start if you are looking to read more or branch out into a different genre.

How did you do?

New Features and Update on Summer Reading

I've added some new features!! I created tags (or labels) for each of my posts to make it simpler to locate posts on similar topics. While I don't have that many posts now, hopefully this will be helpful in the near future. I've also added the Shelfari widget. If you are unfamiliar with Shelfari, it's a social networking site that allows members to share books they've read, are reading, and would like to read. I'm not using the site to connect with other readers, instead I'm using its excellent blogger widget to share what I'm reading with you. Scroll down to find my bookshelf on the left side of your screen. The shelf only displays one book at a time, but I'll usually have two or three books listed depending on what I'm currently reading. Take some time to check out these two new features!

I'm sure you were all on the edge of your seat wondering how my summer reading is going so here's an update. So far I've read four books from my list (Bull's Island, The Sweet Far Thing, A Separate Peace, and The Alchemist) and started Mere Christianity, but haven't been able to really get into it yet. Of the books I've finished, I'm excited to say that I strongly recommend them all. Especially The Alchemist; if you haven't read it yet, get yourself to the library and check it out immediately. It has really encouraged me to follow my dreams and continue down the path of pursuing my Ph.D.

Next up on my list are The Space Between Us and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I decided that the best way to get all of these books is to use my public library in order to encourage me to read them before they are due back. I find this to be a good process. I've even requested ones that are not in the library currently so I won't have to wait long between each book.

I'm still reading romance naturally, but spacing it out between my summer reads. In the past week I've read Julia Quinn's What Happens in London and Eloisa James's A Duke of Her Own, both of which are excellent. If you like historical romance even a little, check out these authors. I received four free (and autographed!) romance novels at ALA this past weekend so I'm looking forward to having some others to read as well.

So far my summer reading is progressing nicely. Look for more updates as I keep reading through my list. Please leave your comments on how your summer reading is going and/or what you are reading; I would love to hear from you!

The Importance of Rereading

We got the Newsweek in today at work and as usual, I flipped through it. I was very excited about this week's issue because it's all about books. I turned right to the article about what books to be reading now and got four new titles off the list. Yes, I'm adding to my summer reading list. Sigh. I've got so much to read. Good thing I like reading. :)

Looking through the rest of the magazine I came across an interesting article about rereading books. I'm a huge rereader, but I've never given it any thought as to why. I have to admit that I didn't read the whole article, mostly because the way it was written was a bit much for a Tuesday morning at-work read. But I relished in the fact that there are other people out there who are just as passionate about rereading as I am. Granted, what this author rereads and what I reread are very different, but the concept is the same.

My absolute favorite books to reread are the Harry Potter series. I read all seven at least once a year, sometimes reading them quickly as if they are going to disappear, other times stretching them out in order to enjoy them more. Series seem to be my favorite to reread; I've read Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series several times over the past year (when I discovered it wasn't just for obsessed 14 year old girls), along with Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle. I also really enjoy rereading romance novels, anything by Nora Robers being a particular favorite, but Julia Quinn and Stephanie Laurens are good for a quick reread.

Why, you might ask, do I love to reread? I think its like David Gates (the author of the Newsweek article) said, the love of the characters; "I always come back for the people, and often simply for their voices". I feel a connection to the characters the authors have created; sometimes I feel like I know them and they know me. They are where I turn when I'm feeling misunderstood or sad. Their stories, their battles, take me out of my own world and into someplace else where my small worries no longer exist. It's for the escape, really, that I continue to return to these beloved books again and again.

When reading a book for the first time, the reader must be aware and alert because you don't know what is going to happen. You have to read carefully for fear of missing something. With a book that's been read before, you can relax, just like you can with an old friend. You know where the story is going, how it's going to end. But you can sit back and enjoy the ride. Escape for a little while into a comforting world of familiarity and, maybe, if you are lucky, you will find something new. Discover a little gem of information that you missed before. That, to me, is the true joy of rereading.

Summer Reading

As a future librarian and book lover I often get asked for book recommendations. I tend to not be very helpful when it comes to adult books because I've never taken an adult services class and the only bookstore I've every worked in was a children's bookstore (for more on that, look for a future post!). I only know about the kind of books I like, namely romance novels, which not everyone enjoys. So as a summer goal, I've decided to branch out and read other things. The list is rather ambitious for summer reading, but I read fast and have a good bit of free time now that class is over, so I think I may be able to get through a good chunk of it. If you're wondering why I'm just now starting my summer reading it's because I've recently become addicted to the Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon. If you like time travel, historical fiction, and romance, this 7-book series is for you. The books are incredibly long (700-900 pages each), but rich with detail and tons of great plot lines. I've only been able to read the first three, but I plan to pick them up again soon.

Hopefully, having read all of these books on my list, I will be able to better recommend books when people ask. Some of these are books I have been meaning to read for a long time and others are recent additions.

The Kite Runner
A Thousand Splendid Suns
My Sister's Keeper - I firmly believe in reading the book before seeing the movie. I probably won't finish this in time to see the movie in theaters but I can always catch it at the $1 theater or on DVD.
The Space Between Us - a recent addition to my list. I found it in Barnes and Noble and read the first few pages and became addicted. Can't wait to actually sit down and read it.
Mere Christianity - something I've been meaning to read for years. I actually own it, just never gotten around to reading it.
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Reader - another "read the book before seeing the movie" addition. The movie looks incredible and I love Kate Winslet, so I'm excited.
Sarah's Key - I seem to be on a World War II kick lately, so this just adds to the list.
Bull's Island
Return to Sullivan's Island - this and Bull's Island are by one of my favorite authors, Dorothea Benton Frank, who writes about the Low Country. Her books are light and humorous, a perfect summer read.
The Sweet Far Thing - the final book in the YA trilogy, the Gemma Doyle series. Set in Victorian England, they revolve around a trio of girls locked in an epic battle involving a magical world known as the realms. If you like fantasy stories set in the real world and don't mind a young adult series, check out the first two, A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels for a great read.
A Separate Peace
The Alchemist
A Lucky Child - another find at Barnes and Noble about a child survivor of Auschwitz. Sounds amazing.
Jesus of Nazareth - something else I've had on my bookshelf for years. Pope Benedict has an excellent reputation as an author and I'm looking forward to this historical and spiritual discover of who our Savior really was.
Eleanore of Aquitaine - a biography by one of my favorite historians, Alison Weir. She's a noted Tutor historian, but has also published work on medieval England including this excellent biography. I'm about 1/4 of the way through it, and while it's slow going, I'm really enjoying it.

Whew! This is a lot! I better get reading!