MO LIBRARIAN

The Tumblarian blog of a newly minted professional Adult Services Librarian in a suburban midwestern public library.

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366 Days of Books - Day #365

While I was at college, every year the university would pick one book for all of the incoming students to read. One year, it was this book. If you want a real eye-opener on how people live in the most totalitarian regime in the world, please read this.

Synopsis from Goodreads: “Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years–a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today–an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them.”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6178648-nothing-to-envy

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366 Days of Books - Day #310

“Remember, remember the Fifth of November....”

I’ve already showcased a couple of Alan Moore books, but today I want to present my favorite one.  Of course, it’s fitting as this is what often referred to in the UK as Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night, the closest thing that Britain has to an Independence Day, really. In V for Vendetta, an anarchist rebelling against a futuristic totalitarian British government wears a Guy Fawkes mask.  In recent years, this same mask has been used by the Occupy Wall Street movement and the hacker group, Anonymous.  However, it was Alan Moore’s mind that first conceived of the idea of anti-establishment supporters wearing masks resembling Guy Fawkes. Synopsis from Goodreads:  Set in an imagined future England that has given itself over to fascism, this groundbreaking story captures both the suffocating nature of life in an authoritarian police state and the redemptive power of the human spirit which rebels against it. Crafted with sterling clarity and intelligence, V for Vendetta brings an unequaled depth of characterization and verisimilitude to its unflinching account of oppression and resistance.

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@bookofthemonthclub My first book from #bookofthemonth club. I got it two weeks ago but only just opened it since I need something new to read. Thank you!

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#lunch #librarylife #nofilter

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This is what you get when your birthday is on April 1st. #aprilfoolsbirthday

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New Blue Cover display

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*** This is an honest review for Netgalley in exchange for access to an advanced reader copy*** After having read a few other modern retellings of Jane Austen classics, I'm so glad to have finally read one that stayed true to Austen's original characters. The author did a wonderful job of bringing the classic romance to Amish Pennsylvania, mixing in some of the local Pennsylvania Dutch language and customs. Although Eleanor and Marianne's names remain the same, some of the names change, most notably Colonel Brandon becomes a pastor, Christian Bechlder. As this was written by a Christian fiction author, and since it is set in Amish country, God and the Bible is mentioned heavily, so this book should be very popular with readers of Christian fiction but may not appeal to secular audiences. All in all, I definitely recommend this book for those hoping to read a different interpretation of Austen's Sense and Sensibility without being so modern that the characters no longer resemble the original ones

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Librarians…

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** This title was provided to me by Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review** I just finished the book and am definitely glad that I did. The book is about Janet, a middle-aged librarian in a small coastal Washington town. She gets roped into helping a secretive group of ladies who are bound together by one commonality, they are all rejected writers. They submit their manuscripts and rejoice when they receive rejection letters. However, when one lady actually receives an acceptance let ** This title was provided to me by Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review** I just finished the book and am definitely glad that I did. The book is about Janet, a middle-aged librarian in a small coastal Washington town. She gets roped into helping a secretive group of ladies who are bound together by one commonality, they are all rejected writers. They submit their manuscripts and rejoice when they receive rejection letters. However, when one lady actually receives an acceptance letter, all of the ladies go on a crazy road trip to get the manuscript back. I gave the book four stars because at the beginning of the book, the two main female characters (Janet the librarian and Doris the leader of the Rejected Writers' Book Club) are annoying at best. The latter because she is portrayed to be far too bossy and pushy, and the former because she is such a pushover. However, once they get on the road, all of the hilarity that ensues makes the book completely worthwhile. By the end of the book, I was I love with all of the characters and I'm glad to see that the author is turning the book into a series set in Southlea Bay, Washington. Definitely recommend!!

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The Death of #366DaysofBooks

Hi folks!

So, it’s been a week since I’ve posted anything in my series and partly I’ve been busy and partly I’ve started to find it harder and harder to think of books that I’ve read that I want to profile. I hardly got to read for fun when I was in college, and when I did, it was a lot of series books. Before that, I managed a Christian bookstore, so my reading was pretty limited to Christian Fiction and Non-Fiction.  I plan on rectifying this. I have already read 20 books since I became a professional librarian almost two months ago. I also run a monthly book club, which has helped a lot. Today, I joined www.netgalley.com which will allow me to read electronic advanced reader copy of soon-to-be-published books, and then review them here and on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. I’ve already downloaded my first, The Rejected Writer’s Book Club by Suzanne Kelman that looks like it will be pretty good. All of this, along with the three book challenges I’m doing this year should really open up my reading to all kinds of genres. Suffice to say, I’m giving up this year, but I hope to bring back #365DaysofBooks next year. I’m sorry that I failed this year.

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Harper Lee dead at age of 89: 'To Kill a Mockingbird Author' passes away

Nelle Harper Lee, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 for her book, "To Kill a Mockingbird," has died at the age of 89, multiple sources in her hometown of Monroeville confirmed Friday morning.

Harper Lee just passed away at her home in Alabama this morning, less than a year after her sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird was published.

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366 Days of Books - Day #50

Fifty days have gone by and fifty books have so far been profiled! Wow! 316 days to go! Quite coincidentally, I’ve picked a second book in a row with a yellow and black cover. However, Watchmen is a completely different beast altogether. Watchmen was first published in 1987, while the Cold War still raged and just before it became fashionable for superheroes to be dark once again. Watchmen is dark. This ragtag band of “superheroes” is all too human and all too fallible. Read this and you’ll be hooked on graphic novels for the rest of your life. “Who watches the Watchmen?”

Synopsis from Goodreads: “This Hugo Award-winning graphic novel chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the super-hero is dissected as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin.”

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27 Products For People Who Are Completely Obsessed With Books

I like big books and I cannot lie.

My birthday is exactly six weeks away. Just sayin’!

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Patron, New

Our library just reopened after being closed for many months for renovations. A regular patron, who we hadn’t seen in all that time, came into the library with her brand new baby.

Me: “Aww, we didn’t even know you were pregnant!”

Patron: “Well, I had to do SOMETHING while y'all were closed!”

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What? Couldn’t take up cross-stitching? :-)

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366 Days of Books - Day #49

I had forgotten I read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves when it first came out in 2013. I only just remembered it when the name Karen Joy Fowler showed up in a list of books I was looking at today at work. This was a charming little book. It’s supposed to have a bit of a “reveal” about a quarter of the way through, but if you don’t guess long before, you’re not paying attention well enough. I’d recommend the book if you’re just looking for a strange story, and if you like animals. Synopsis from Goodreads: “Meet the Cooke family. Our narrator is Rosemary Cooke. As a child, she never stopped talking; as a young woman, she has wrapped herself in silence: the silence of intentional forgetting, of protective cover. Something happened, something so awful she has buried it in the recesses of her mind. Now her adored older brother is a fugitive, wanted by the FBI for domestic terrorism. And her once lively mother is a shell of her former self, her clever and imperious father now a distant, brooding man. And Fern, Rosemary’s beloved sister, her accomplice in all their childhood mischief? Fern’s is a fate the family, in all their innocence, could never have imagined.”

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The shop was only open for three days and then promptly shut down for not having the necessary health permits. It was not meant to be open long anyways, as it was conceived by a television comedian. You can read more about it here.

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Fictitious Dishes, Famous Meals From Literature by Dinah Fried

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