Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Stop with The Hat!

When you see in his photos that your retired brother-in-law is wearing That Hat, you know the "trend" is DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!!!

You KNOW the hat I'm talking about - the one with the narrow brim, that wants to be a fedora, but EPIC FAIL!

Both genders are wearing this, but it looks best on teenagers.

And bro-in-law has TWO of them!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

How Books End Up in the Library

Hahaha! I tell my friends stories about stuff that happens in the library.

They tell me I should write a book.

I ask if they would buy it.

They say they would borrow it from the library.
___

They do not know how things work in the library. They assume every book written will eventually be found in a library, the library, THEIR library.

If that's the case, why do we get calls every week from publishers and authors? (And by the way, shouldn't those publishers know librarians need to see review copies? Man up and send us the book!)

We have to decide if the books are fit for our patrons. Believe me, there are some that are not.

Why? Well, first of all, we do have a budget. For the fiscal year for our section, it's in the five figures.

The LOW five figures. So the books need to fit the budget.

They need to fit the clientele. We need to look at books the patrons request, too. We just can't buy them all.

Are all books well-written? No. We, the librarians decide that. We ask questions like: is it age-appropriate? If there are illustrations, are they of good quality and appealing to children or young adults or adults? Can we follow the story? Is the book well-made? Can it hold up to a dozen or two dozen checkouts? Do we have something already in our collection as good or better? Does it fill a need in the library?

I'm not even going to go into the details of buying ebooks!

This started out to be a post on what I'm reading. I'll get to that another time.

Do you even go to the library?

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Two movies in one week

I'm usually not a fan of Hollywood movies.

I think they're too slick, the stories predictable, and the people too pretty.

I usually like small foreign films from which I can learn something about the culture, and indie films that are more realistic. I loved Winter's Bone and most anything the Coen brothers have done. Yes, I have a dark and quirky sense of humor.

I went to see 50/50 - despite the fact that Seth Rogen is in it. "Who was that gorilla?" asked my husband. Indeed! Rogen is actually quite good in this. But Joseph Gordon Levitt as Adam is terrific. And it's based on the real story of Will Reiser. Anna Kendrick, Anjelica Houston and Bryce Dallas Howard were good in this, too.

I'm not a fan of disease movies, either. But there is so much humor and warmth in this one. And a lot of it is about people feeling resentful of and put out by Adam's illness.

See it!

On Saturday, neither of us was very hungry at 5 pm. So, the choice of movies was between Moneyball - about baseball - or Ides of March. The showtimes for the latter worked out.

Since I don't like chick flicks, I'd never seen Ryan Gosling in a movie. He was not great, but he was very good in this Clooney-directed vehicle.

And let's just say George was very presidential.

The story had several twists. Oh, and Paul Giamatti was superb - such a great voice and excellent characterization! Philip Seymour Hoffman and Marisa Tomei were good, too.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

October: Read

Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt.

Read it!

The fathers in his (YA) books are truly awful. Find out if there's redemption for this one.

Doug, the main kid, finds hope in art in a library, and becomes a guy who makes things happen.

What's not to love? Art, library, change and growth!