litmajorz

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[litmajorz]

New selection! Advance copies of YA novels to share with our teens!!

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Messy bookshelves are the only kind to have

[litmajorz]

First day of Teen Café! The games closet is fully stocked (with many additions from my gracious best friend).

The room layout worked pretty well, but the snacks did not last long!

The teens did some mini graffiti boards (where they list their favorite foods, books, hobbies, etc. on each page) so I can start getting to know them and their interests.

Then they broke off into their own groups and did various activities - computer/video games, board games, reading, chatting... I sat down with each group for a while to tell them a bit about me and what daily "services" I offer (reading/writing help, ACT prep, Adulting 101).

Many of them expressed how happy they were that the café is back, and they helped me clean up afterwards without me even asking. It was a great group and a promising start for the new program!

[litmajorz]

[litmajorz]

🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

“A British bookshop chain held a vote to find the country’s favourite book. It was The Lord of the Rings. Another one not long afterwards, held this time to find the favourite author, came up with J.R.R. Tolkien. The critics carped, which was expected but nevertheless strange. After all, the bookshops were merely using the word favourite. That’s a very personal word. No one ever said it was a synonym for best. But a critic’s chorus hailed the results as a terrible indictment of the taste of the British public, who’d been given the precious gift of democracy and were wasting it on quite unsuitable choices. There were hints of a conspiracy amongst the furry-footed fans. But there was another message, too. It ran: ‘Look, we’ve been trying to tell you for years which books are good! And you just don’t listen! You’re not listening now! You’re just going out there and buying this damn book! And the worst part is that we can’t stop you! We can tell you it’s rubbish, it’s not relevant, it’s the worst kind of escapism, it was written by an author who never came to our parties and didn’t care what we thought, but unfortunately the law allows you to go on not listening! You are stupid, stupid, stupid!’ And once again, no one listened. Instead, a couple of years later, a national newspaper’s Millennium Masterworks poll produced five works of what could loosely be called ‘narrative fiction’ among the top fifty ‘masterworks’ of the last thousand years, and, yes, there was The Lord of the Rings again.”

— Terry Pratchett, “Cult Classic” (A Slip of the Keyboard) (Still burning mad that at least one critic did the same exact kind of carping about Pratchett’s body of work being praised by its fans, shortly after his death.)

[litmajorz]

Here is my thesis bookshelf!

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The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real … for a moment at least … that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to middle Earth. 

-George R.R Martin

[litmajorz]

Basically my master's thesis summed up in 4 lines.

CS Lewis: God is real and God is super great.

Philip Pullman: God is NOT real and if He were He’d be evil.

George R.R. Martin: if there is a deity it doesn’t involve itself with human affairs that’s just human scheming.

J.R.R. Tolkien: YES there is a God but he’s a JERK and NEVER THERE WHEN YOU NEED HIM smh.

[litmajorz]

What are good ways that residents can support their local libraries? (Your posts are reminding me of just how great and valuable they are)

The best way to support your local library is to use it.

Honestly.

A lot of funding can depend on usage–and that means circulation stats, door counts, program attendance, internet use, etc. (All of this is anonymized for statistics, of course, just pure numbers.)

If you go to a library program and it was great, tell your friends. My storytimes have gone from an average of 2 people to an average of 20+ since I started there–and partly because one of the dads is really super outgoing and tells all the playdate parents to bring their kids. All of these numbers go to our statistics to shore up the argument that we should a) stay open and b) receive funding.

Got a couple of extra hours a week? Ask about volunteering! Volunteer duties can be a variety of things, and you can let your library know the areas you’re interested in helping. If you’re great with kids, offer to be a storytime assistant, or help out at children’s craft programs. If organizing is your jam, offer to alphabetize shelving carts (or do shelfreading! god, shelfreading never, ever ends). 

And–I probably shouldn’t have left this to the last, so I’m going to make it bold–

VOTE FOR YOUR LIBRARY

Sometimes libraries put levies or tax measures on the ballot for operating costs–you know, buying books, paying the people who work there, keeping the lights and the internet on–and when those measures fail? We cut services. It’s not revenge; we just don’t have a choice. When the economy tanked in 2008, a lot of libraries that had been open 12 hours a day cut down to 8 hours a day. Ten years later, many libraries are still stuck at 8 hour days. Because we can’t afford to stay open longer.

So: Use it, talk about it, volunteer if you can, and for the love of all that is good and sweet, vote. 

[litmajorz]

Harper Perennial Classics 

[litmajorz]

Looking at wands inside Platform 9 3/4

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The local bookstore has entered into the spirit of the season.

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“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

Ray Bradbury

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Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut FYI–this is 1 of 10 vintage paperback classics that comprise our current giveaway. Check it out! :D

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Once there were four children...

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