Libraries

…And Again

Published on April 5, 2011 | 22 Responses

I am horribly afraid that this is becoming a habit. You all keep telling me I’m showing restraint, but spending $50 on books twice in a week really is a rare thing for me, and not something that I can sustain in the long run. At any rate, the sale was a total of 70%, and this time I fully intended to do damages. I drove 30 minutes each direction to a more rural Borders that was going out of business.

They had a much greater selection to choose from. Within 30 seconds of walking in to the fiction section, I found the volume of Adichie short stories and I felt my heart skip a beat I was so excited. Some sections of books were practically full: African-American literature, for example, had nearly a full set of Toni Morrison in paperback that I some how walk away from. How I wanted them all! So pretty!

I had at least 15 books in my arms at one point, and then I put some back so my total would not go above $50. My thought was to focus on the books I cannot get in the public domain and/or that I’ve already read and loved. So, back went the Theodore Drieser and Winesburg, Ohio. Back went All the Kings Men, which I’ve never read yet. Among other things.

Here’s what I ended up with in the end.

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt (I loved Possession, even more on retrospect than I did when I first read it)
The Chosen by Chaim Potak (I loved My Name is Asher Lev, and I can’t remember if I’ve read this one)
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid (inspired by Elena’s recent posts on post-colonialism)
Kindred by Octavia Butler (I don’t love this particular cover, but I did love the book! Now I have it forever.)
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamamnda Ngozi Adichie (Oh my heart stopped.)
The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe
Ghost Stories (from Everyman’s Pocket Classics Library)
Sylvia Plath poetry (Everyman’s Pocket Poets)

The only one I have buyer’s remorse on is the Achebe. It’s essays and now I’m afraid I just won’t get in to it. Has anyone read it? It has high marks on LibraryThing, but I’m not sure how well I’ll do on political essays.

And then, I wanted to show my pretty bookshelves. I’ve been busy culling books I don’t want to read and frantically buying (ok, on a set budget schedule) the books that I do want. I realized after I finished taking the pictures and annotating them in Flickr that I had forgotten to shelve the books I had just bought. So after I took the pictures, I ended up shuffling books so they’d fit. Sigh. I love my books. I love organizing them, too.

See my flickr set for my bookshelves. I annotate them and you can zoom in to see the titles. If you are as geeky as me and you want to, that is.

Kid’s Corner: Suggestions Needed for Early Chapter Books for Older Beginning Readers

Published on November 5, 2010 | 20 Responses

photo credit

My mother teaches English as a Second Language to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at a public middle school. Although for the most part these kids are intelligent and have been successful in school in the past, most are learning English for the first time after moving to the USA from every continent. She has had students from China, Korea, Europe, Russia, Mexico, and even rural Africa. A few are a bit more advanced, having taken English classes in their native country. But they are all in her class because they cannot read English at a middle school level.

Since reading more helps one become a better reader, it’s important that they have reading material available to them, not just for academic subjects but for fun. However, being in the public school system, my mom is limited by the school library, which is, in her words, “pathetic.” Beyond other issues, it only has books at a middle school reading level. She’s been given the chance to spend some money (certainly not enough) on lower reading level books to support her students, but she needs some help finding the perfect books to spend the money on.

She’s hoping to find some books that will help her students feel confident about their reading, even though it’s below their peers’ level. The books will give them the experience they need to gain vocabulary and reading competence. The books need to be no higher than a third-grade reading level, but the subject matter must be appropriate for a middle school student: interesting, entertaining, and certainly not something with a babyish-cover that would embarrass them in the middle of an ever-judgmental middle school crowd.

I have not read most of these books, since my son is below the early reader age and early chapter book age. In addition to those below (which are mostly early chapter books), early readers that do not say “I can read!” and First steps to reading!” on them might be useful for the lowest level kids. Any suggestions that you may have, or comments on these books that you have read, would be appreciated!

I found the interest levels and reading levels (which refer to grade levels) from the Scholastic Teacher Book Wizard tool, a nice resource for discovering books before you buy them. Many of the books I’ve listed say “interest level grades 3 to 5;” I’d be interested to know whether they might also appeal to grades 6 to 8. Please comment if you know!

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You can see one of my old Target shelves next to it! This new one is four times as big!

Blogging the Bookshelves + Some Finds

Published on May 12, 2010 | 24 Responses

I thought about doing a vlog of my bookshelves. But I don’t have a good way to do so. Plus, I’m feeling kind of in a rush to finish some books, so time is at a premium. Among others, I still need to finish my book club book (The Painted Veil) for next week, as well as one of my Classics Circuit books (Strong Poison) for Monday’s post, not to mention Milton, who is getting the shaft this week.

All that to say I am not sharing a vlog of my bookshelves. But surely a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

We got a surprising amount back with our tax return, so I convinced my husband to put a new bookshelf on the “what to do with it” list. I have not had a new bookshelf (for myself) since the year 2000 or so, when I bought two cardboard-backed fake-wood Target bookshelves for about $25 each to store my college collection of books . (We did buy a small bookshelf for our front room when we bought our house last year. It stores our pretty coffee table books in it.) I hope it’s needless to say that my books (of which I’ve been acquiring rapidly over the years) do not fit on those two four-shelf Target things. I had books crammed in them and even then I had some of my books in a box.

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Library Loot and Friday Finds

Published on April 16, 2010 | 20 Responses

I blame it on my library. They have warnings on the website sharing that all hold request functions will be disabled next week. What would you do? Exactly. I requested a lot of holds this week.

In the following vlog, I talk about some of them. I also talk about Spotlight Series (particularly the upcoming highlight of the classic books publisher New York Review Books), Persephone Week, the Orbis Terrarum Challenge (which is my new favorite challenge), and some other challenges (too many to link to!)

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Dear D____ Public Library,

Published on October 11, 2008 | 19 Responses

I really love your library system in many ways. It is so great that I can request any book in a Chicagoland library and receive it within the week. That pretty much takes care of any book I’ll ever want to read! I like to visit your branch and browse. Your children’s room is likewise chocked full of books, and my son likes finding himself a board book. That was smart of you to put it within his reach! He likes to dump them all out of the bin. He has yet to learn how to put them back in.

But I have a complaint. (more…)