Average Girl Reads

Blameless by Gail Carriger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Genre: steampunk, supernatural, romance

My husband ABM has been on a DIY kick for the past several weeks. One of his projects was to refurbish our bedside tables. Once mine was finished, I decided to use the bottom shelf for library books. Yes, every book in that shot came from the library. Up until now we were keeping them in a canvas bag or a milk crate. I think this is a better option because it helps me keep track of all the books we have out and let's the kids browse the selection more easily.

What I really wanted you guys to see is how many library books we have out at any one time. There are three books missing from that shot, for a total of 29 books. That may seem like a lot until you know a bit more about our reading habits. My kids will read the graphic novels in an afternoon. The same goes for my husband and me with the how-to books; knitting books, cookbooks, and home renovation books don't take long for us to flip through. As for the novels, the kids will read the ones they like in a couple days and reject the rest. By the end of next week, half the books on the shelf will have been returned to the library and replaced by new selections.

Today is National Bookmobile Day. I have a soft spot in my heart for bookmobiles. When I was kid growing up in NY, we moved around a lot. I didn't know the location of the local library branch in each of the neighborhoods we lived in, but there was always a visit from the bookmobile. In my mind, RIF (Reading is Fundamental) and bookmobiles go hand in hand. Those two things impressed the importance of reading on me at an early age. I sorely missed the bookmobile visits when we moved to NC and lived way out in the country, far from the library or anything else.

Our library system covers two counties and it has a bookmobile, but it doesn't cover my county. Even though our local library branch is across the street from my kids' middle school, I still wish they had the chance to experience the bookmobile. There is something magical about getting on a bus and seeing all the seats replaced by shelves of books!

How many of you still have bookmobiles in your neighborhood? Do you make use of yours?

Well, maybe you shouldn't HUG the librarians, but at least let them know you appreciate their work. Today is National Library Workers Day, and if I was able to get to my local branch I'd give the workers there a big "Thank you!"

The women who work at my small-town library branch are rather cheerful. I don't know them by name, but they recognize me and give me a big smile when I come in for our weekly library run. They always engage me in light chit-chat about the more unusual choices in my check-out pile without commenting on the embarrassing ones (yes, I prefer not to discuss why I'm checking out Sex: A Book for Teens: An Uncensored Guide to Your Body, Sex, and Safety). This branch is right across the street from the middle school and gets a lot of kids in there after class lets out. The women never seem to lose their patience with all the teens that invade their small building in the afternoon, including my twins C1 and C2. They should get a pay raise for that alone!

With branches cutting hours and salaries, those of us who still utilize the library should remind the workers there that we appreciate their service. So go give the workers at your branch an extra smile and a "Good job!"

One of my favorite pop-culture podcasts is Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. There is a corresponding blog called Monkey See and one of the writers, Linda Holmes, posted a piece today about rediscovering the public library. When she was on Twitter last week talking about how she was amazed that the library let her walk out with all that cool stuff for free, I thought she was just trying to be funny. Apparently Ms. Holmes truly wasn't aware of the variety to be found in today's libraries.

I have to admit that I understand her surprise. Even though I've been a consistent library user for many years, I pretty much checked out older books. I was highly surprised the day that I went looking for a book and found a new section housing graphic novels. When I started following book blogs and looking at bestsellers' lists, I didn't expect to find any of those new books at my library but they are getting a lot of them in. If there is one message I would like to get out about libraries, it would be that being a regular library patron does not mean you have to sacrifice reading the popular or trendy books.You may have to wait a little longer, but that gives you a chance to read something else in the meantime!

--My daughter C1 is knitting a Slytherin scarf (in the Prisoner of Azkaban style) for one of her friends to use for Harry Potter cosplay. This got me thinking about the status of the Harry Potter series as a newly-minted children's classic. I tried to get my younger kids interested in Harry Potter series when they were 10 and 11. Not all the books had been released yet and the Hogwarts fever was high around the country. They were having none of it and turned to other stories. Now all of a sudden, my kids as well as their classmates have gone potty over Potter. Could it be because the movies are still being released, or is the series really a classic that they have finally become old enough for? Years from now, will there still be little groups of geeks who consider themselves Potter aficionados the way there were "Lord of the Rings" geeks in my school back in the day?