Caldecott Dreaming...

Last week a patron came up to me at the info desk and asked for "watercolor Caldecott books."  Usually when  a patron requests something so specific, the chances of the library not having it and them walking out disappointed increases tenfold.  The same principle can be applied to when patrons make the vaguest requests, "I want to reread a book I read for school about boy, I don't know the author or the title, and that's all I know."

I told her that I could narrow down our collection to Caldecott picture books, but the catalog record wouldn't list if they were watercolored or not.  Our public catalog shows book covers but searching on it is as frustrating as using AskJeeves on Netscape Navigator on 28.8k baud dial-up.  So I turned to Amazon which was perfect because of the "Look Inside" option to browse a few pages.  One of the earlier book results was A Ball for Daisy and I told her that I was researching Caldecott books a few months ago and that I wasn't really sure about that year's decision.  It was then she mentioned that she is also in her first stages of researching Caldecott books and that she wants to write a picture book.  When she also said that she was not impressed with A Ball for Daisy, I told her that I also want to write a picture book, but I want to win a Caldecott with my first book.  She just grinned at me and said, "Well, we should trade notes, we'll both win an award with our first book!"

I have the skeletal structure of a story in my head, I just have transfer everything to paper.  Another one of my dreams is/was to write a book series that starts in boardbook format and progressively works it way up through to an novel.  I just think that the idea of having a whole generation grow along with a character is pretty awesome.

Book Covers by Bibliotecher...

Didn't notice the "Real Deal" blurb til after.

My new at work hobby started with this find.  I couldn't find any worthy/inspiring books until a week later.  I had a hard time choosing which picture to use.  Not surprisingly, there's a boatload of pictures of people shoving/fighting/running to get that discount item from whatever Big-Box retailer.  I ended up printing 5 pictures and had my supervisor choose the best one.  Let's just say that I put in too much effort for this.

Operation Creepy Carrots

The Abyss...

My supervisor made the wise decision to place a picture book on the ledge of his cubicle.  Needless to say the book fell into the abyss a few days later.  It was a slow night, as usual, so he and I spent the last hour looking for items in the branch to use to retrieve it.

The circ manager saw both of us on his desk with our heads against the wall and asked us "what the hell are you two up to now?"  She told us it was a lost cause because the gap between the wall and cubicle was too narrow and the only way to separate the cubicle wall would be to dismantle the whole row of cubicles, 6 in total.  The circ manager just rolled her eyes and told us that it was impossible to get it back and to just mark it missing --- oh yeah, challenge accepted.  We only had an hour before closing so we called it quits for the night.

After clopening (Clopening; noun: when you are scheduled to close the night and open the next morning), we returned to our mission to free Creepy Carrots from the cubicle crevasse.  We ended up using two yard sticks and "chop-sticking" the book free.  I sent this pic of the successful rescue and she just replied, "So how much cursing and band-aids did it take?"  No band-aids were needed --- thank you very much, a few curse words though...

There's a book in my boot!

Judging an Audio-book by its Cover.

We have a book display, one display in fact, which is in front of the info desk.  It is currently filled with titles that we have multiple copies of.  Last week, I saw the audio-book and physical book covers for The Help and I almost pulled them from the display thinking they were different titles altogether.

This is the regular US edition cover.  Not surprisingly, there is a different cover for the UK version.  As you can see, it is very simplistic, it has a calming affect.  The cover is completely passive and no one would be able to guess the plot based on it.













Now we here is the audio-book cover.  It is such a stark contrast to its tree-based counterpart.  This cover is very aggressive and does offer some hints at the overall plot.  It almost has an "American History X" feel to it.

If someone checks this out looking for a gritty, violent story based solely on the cover, well, they are going to be highly disappointed.  They say not to judge a book by its cover, but it's going to happen, just looking at these two covers, it seems like they are two completely different stories.

This is the first time that I have ever noticed such contrasting covers for the same book, but I will keep my eye out for more.  This kind of trivial stuff interests me, what can I say, I like to live my life one check out period at a time.

Speaking of book displays, patrons LOVE them just as much as librarians do.  Anything you put in a book display will get checked out, ANYTHING.

I Love Childrens Librarians...

Dunnnn Dun, Dunnn Dun...  More Books Need Augmentation Apps...

Yesterday, the quarterly, biannual, whenever they feel like it, Childrens Librarian Management meeting was held at my branch.  Needless to say, I was really looking forward to it.  One of my old branch coworkers emailed me a week before to say that she was coming in extra early to say hi and catch-up aka gossip.  She even brought me a little goody bag with a bacon flavored lollipop.

I ended up getting stuck on the desk for the whole duration, 3 straight hours because the assistant branch manager had to set up the web cam for their teleconference and had to be present during the whole thing.  The video came through just fine, but surprisingly a good majority of the librarians are near retirement age and they had a hard time hearing the presentation.  I could only imagine the whole room going, "We can't hear it," "What did she say?"  "Can't you turn the volume up?"  It stressed out my manager so much that he had to take a break outside.

When I came in to work today, my branch Children's librarian was so excited to show me one of the things she learned in the meeting: the 2013 Guinness World Records Book augmented reality app.  Granted it only works on a handful of pages and it is actually pretty wonky.  I tried it on the branch's iPad and then on my Android tablet and both had their own issues but overall it's pretty damn cool.  My favorite pages were the dunking parrot and of course the shark one --- "DEEP BLUE SEA... THEY ATE ME!  A EFFING SHARK ATE ME!!"

Me getting paid to play with stuff at the Info Desk.

What Not to Wear...

I'm not going to lie, I'm a fan of TLC's "What Not to Wear."  I used to watch it on the regular back in the day.  My favorite part of the show is when they have that one person who swears up and down that they dress perfectly fine, but when they step into that 360 mirror, you see them begin to question their own judgement.   My librarian friends and I have been conspiring for awhile now about putting  a coworker, (or two, okay, a couple) up for the show.  It seems like the best way to meet Stacy London or Clinton Kelly.

IMPOSTERS!

So when I came across this title during my weeding report, I was more than disappointed to not see that Stacy nor Clinton were on the cover.  Let's take a look at what these charlatans have to offer.

Yes, this does say you "don't want to fuss too much with my clothes," which is why you just wear a jacket and nothing under it. 
These two have nothing on my Stacy and Clinton.

My Milkshake brings all the boys to the yard

Like a Boss.. a bra-less boss.

So in conclusion, the number #1 style tip from  What Not To Wear for Every Occasion: Le Brassiere...

No one cared about '50 Shades of Grey' until the media told people to.

Damn Sheeple!  Think for yourselves... Don't fall for the hype.

First off, the marketing team behind the 50 Shades books are pure geniuses.  They turned a trio of books filled with utter nonsense, into one of the most talked about  and read books in recent history.  If I was a billionaire, I would hire those people to run a nationwide campaign on using "Please and Thank You."  When I refer to the media, I am not talking about any reliable news networks, I am talking about those morning talk shows with those gabby hosts.

The only thing worse than the attention saying how "great" these books were, was the attention received from stupid libraries that said they wouldn't carry the book.  For all my hatred for these books, I do believe that libraries should add them.  You'd think the ALA would have a firm stance on libraries that declined to stock these books, since they love them some Banned Book ish.  But no, they pretty much turned all soft and said, libraries can do whatever they want, stop asking for our opinion.

For those claiming that 50 Shades are out-right "erotica" are highly confused.  The sex scenes, if you choose to call them that, seemed to have been written by Steve Carrell's character in 'The 40 Year Old Virgin': (obligatory NSFW dislaimer)





"I dated this girl... for a while, and she was really a nasty freak.
She just loved to get down with sex all the time.
She was like, any time of day, she was like: "Yeah, let's go. I'm so nasty."
And I'd be nailing her. She'd be like: "Oh, you're nailing me. Cool."
She loved to dirty-talk. Totally into it.
She'd be like: "Yeah, let's screw, let's... I wanna f**k."
God, it was so dirty.  She'd be like, "Me so horny, me love you long time."
You know, when you, like, you grab a woman's breast
and it's... And you feel it and...
it feels like a bag of sand when you're touching it."



Oh yeah, that's so urro-teak...  This is a disservice to those who actually write erotica.

I don't want to cause public panic or outbreaks of people shouting in the streets, "But what about the children!?!???"  But what if I told you that right now, there are millions of these poorly written smut-books sitting on the shelves in every library right now??

Okay, these are probably better written than '50 Shades'

Libraries chose to fall back on their trusty "Collection Development Plans" when it came to denying shelf-space to this trio of trash.  It's probably been a long ass time since they actually looked at them.  Libraries seem to be too busy trying to reinvent themselves as the "cool and hip" place to be, instead of working on their core principles.  Of course the media picked it up and that just further pushed the hive-mind agenda, the same rules apply to trolls, don't feed them.  Just let them starve from all the attention they aren't getting and we can all move on.  The libraries ended up caving in and bought the books anyway... pathetic.

My Short-Lived Teen Librarian Career...

So.Much.Pink.

With our youth services librarians busy with SRP and related book talking, they asked if I could help them go through donations to see if there is anything we could add to your YFIC collection.  I really feel bad for the YFIC demographic, I feel like our library system, as a whole, is neglecting them. 

This was only the first cart of many teen books to go through.  It was pretty ironic getting tasked to do this because I just read a Smithsonian article on how pink and blue came to define gender in society: 'When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?'.  Just after going through this one cart, my retinas were seared.  I liken it to being out in the snow on a sunny day for awhile and when you come back inside and everything white appears pink.

The Aristocrats...

There's a dirty joke around here somewhere...

Have we learned nothing from Jurassic Park?

I have a big head and little arms...

Despite how bad ass it would be to have my own pterodactyl to ride to work everyday, I don't think I would want any velociraptors running around my backyard.

What the hell is so great about '50 Shades of Grey'

More like 50 Shades of Ish

So the library has finally placed orders for 50 Shades of Grey.  It's only been requested by patrons every day I've worked for the past three weeks.  Last week, I finally decided to see what the buzz was all about.  Patrons always come up to the desk and tell me what I should read, I've followed through on a few recommendations and have not been disappointed.

One thing about me, I don't like to NOT finish a book once I've started reading it.  But 50 Shades of Grey is only going to be the second book I've stopped reading, the first was The Elegance of the Hedgehog, came off as really pretentious to me.  50 Shades of Grey is just a story with terrible writing with a terrible characters and plot.  Put simply it's literary smut, just because there isn't some Flabio on the cover, don't be fooled.

**Spoiler Alert**  Take one young, inexperienced female with low self-esteem who does not think she looks good, add one extremely rich, wunderkind, who looks like a male supermodel with a permanent Photoshop filter turned on, who gets whatever he wants and somehow only wants said-female and blammo, you end up with a bunch of ish.

All I know is that the people behind the marketing of this book series are pure marketing geniuses who could convince a slug to invest in salt.   Here's a great drinking game for this horrid, horrid book: you take a shot every time a character "murmurs."  You will undoubtedly end up in an alcohol-induced coma only a quarter into the book and you can thank me later when you wake up in hospital without any memory of the book.

My response to the patron who said The Hunger Games was "The Best Book They've Ever Read"...

Yesterday a patron returned a copy of The Hunger Games at the check out desk.  When my coworker was checking the book in the patron remarked how "it was the best book she ever read."  The instant I heard this my face looked exactly like Fry's. 

"Are you kidding me!?!?" 

I wouldn't have reacted that harshly if the patron was a tween or teen who has not read much, but this was a middle-aged patron.  Unless you're Suzanne Collin's agent, we need to have a one-on-one Reader's Advisory session.  There are tons of other books on the library's shelves that are better written and tell a better story. 

Yeah, yeah, "to each their own," but it utterly depresses me to think that sometime in the distant future, because of the power of hype and the hive-mind, Twilight and The Hunger Games could potentially be considered the "greatest works of fiction" or "classics" of our time.

Movies Based on a Book... Why the 'Hunger Games' movie will suck...

I have to say it, the Hunger Games movie will be a huge let-down.  It's bound to be that way.  Honestly, the book was a decent read, 3.5 out of 5.  Not sure why everyone and their mother thinks it's 5 out of 5.  I think it's the hype and the hive-mind at work.  And the trilogy only goes downhill from there: Catching Fire, and Mockingjay were just plain boring to me.

1. 8 out of 10 times, movies based on books are never as good as the actual book, which leads to reason #2
2. The book wasn't all that to begin with so yeeaaaa...
3. Hollywood ruins everything it touches, need I say more?
4. Have you seen the trailers?  Hate to say it, but I'm not feeling Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss; loved her in "Winter's Bone" though.
5. Hive-mind Hype: much like Harry Potter, the people who "love" the books, will not be able to admit that the movie is lackluster.  As someone who has never read a Harry Potter book, the movies were entertaining but nowhere near my all time greatest movies.

So yes, while I already am fairly certain that the movie will be "meh," I will still be watching it opening weekend with a bunch of YA librarians from my last branch.  Don't believe the hype...

'Knitting with Balls'... The Only Knitting Book Approved by this Non-Hipster.

A slow clap for the play on words.  There are so many play on word titles out there I could probably start a blog just for them.  Anyways, I thought of this book when I saw this video, they go so well together:

They Say Not to Judge a Book by Its Cover...

But if I were to, this has to be the best juvenile book out there.

I came across this brand new book this morning from delivery, it still had the fresh from the press smell.

This is my new favorite juvenile cover.

Don't Feel Loved? There's an Ice Cream Flavor for That...

So, instead of digging into your favorite pint, you should take a minute and think about how happy you really are with your life/career/relationship/weight/bank account right now.  This will probably lead to some driving back to the grocery store to pick up more ice cream.

I guess anyone can publish a book about anything.
I discovered the same was true with music CD's when I used to work at Best Buy ::cough David Hassellhoff cough::

"Creative" --- sure, "Great"--- not so sure...

I came across these books when I was checking in returns.  My first thought was all of the sets from the great sitcoms from the 90's when these books were published: Full House, Family Matters, Step by Step, Hanging With Mr. Cooper.

They say that fashion is a perpetual cycle, I'm just wondering if these decor will ever come back in style.  Time to swap out those brushed aluminum appliances and granite counters for some formica.

ILL's are for Serious Reading... WRONG.

Working with my branch's ILL's directly and with my years of checking them in and out, all of the titles have seemed to be for research or for some educational purpose.

This particular patron has proven me wrong.

Apparently, someone requested GhettoHeat's Convict's Candy.  I really have no idea why.  The County pays for ILL's and I'm left wondering why it was spent on this.  Yeah, I know, the library is open information for all but c'mon.  Just watch "The Wire" or something.

Starbucks New Logo and Strange Mermaid Sex.

I was a marketing major, so I pay attention to random stuff most usual don't care for, like this evolution of Pepsi and Coke logos.  

Starbucks recently unveiled its new logo and suffice it to say it really isn't "new" so to speak, just updated (de-worded).  It really isn't a dramatic change at all.  Guess after the updated Gap logo fiasco, Starbucks didn't want to push the envelope.

I was on the circ desk when the book to the left caught my eye.  I really don't know why it did (naked lady?), but I ended flipping through it to see what it was about (pictures of more naked ladies?).


I found the disturbing picture below:
The caption was as equally disturbing, "Siren With Fish in Her Vagina."  I understand the purpose of captions and yes, I do see that the picture is of a bass trying to get some mermaid ass.  But could you please explain WHY it is in her va-jay-jay to being with!??  Seriously, what is the symbolism?  I should go back to the stacks and look back at the book to see if there is an explanation for this aquatic freakiness.

It seems as though Starbucks is slowly changing its logo to focus on just the siren's face and not the fact that she is spreading her tail for just any flounder, herring, or salmon.  The secret is now out, this underwater horizontal tangoing duo has been fornicating on everyone's chai latte cup.

Maybe the most disturbing fact about this horny fish is that it is sculpted on a bench.... a church bench.

'This Book is Overdue ?'

Okay, so I got suckered into reading this book.  And like other books in the past that I don't like, I made myself suffer through it.

This was recommended by a few of my MLIS professors (shocker right?).  I always enjoyed reading books recommended by my business professors (The World is Flat, Superfreakonomics).  So I figured I might as well see what all this talk is about.

I placed myself on the somewhat long holds list, thinking that, okay, if there are this many holds, it must be a decent read right?

WRONG!  After I checked this awfully disappointing book back in, I took a look at the holds list.  EVERYONE on the list either was either a library employee, retiree, or a volunteer.

The whole thing read like some ALA-produced propaganda, "Libraries are great, Librarians are the best...etc."  I would have been okay with it, but there was a lack of support for these statements.  Not only that, but this was exclusively aimed at the public library, what about the rest of the "Superhero Librarians?"  No love for Academic Librarians, or any of the various Embedded Librarians?  She also has some strange fascination that there are librarians who cuss and have tattoos and who overall do not fit into the stereotype. 



My number one argument about why this book completely sucks is that there is one whole chapter on Second Life.  Seriously, I am sick of hearing about librarians on Second Life like it's the savior of the career.  Okay, so I understand from the few MLIS classes I have taken that librarians, in general, were not the quickest to jump onto the Google ship, which is now a huge regret they have, besides the fact that librarians should have created Google.  And for some reason, some librarians heard about Second Life and jumped on that bandwagon in the hopes that it would be the next biggest thing.  I'm sorry, but I personally only know one person who is one Second Life and she had to join because it was required for one of her MLIS classes.  She quickly deleted her account once the semester was over.

The only people saying that Second Life is the next future front for librarianship are LIBRARIANS.  You cannot justify that it is relevant because the only people Second Life librarians are helping are OTHER librarians on SL.


This book is utterly disappointing, thank goodness I didn't pay for it, LIBRARIES ROCK! : \