New Tag: Purchased for Library

I'm the YA person at my library. Part of my job is collection development. Since I started at the beginning of last summer, I've been a weeding machine. It's hard pulling books that you loved when you were younger, but I always remind myself it's so the new books have more visibility.

Probably my favorite thing about my job is buying new books. Our library has a pretty small book budget. My portion of it is approximately $4700. Can you imagine getting to spend $4700 on books? It's a dream come true. 

I'm making a new tag for books that I've purchased (purchased for library) so you can see what I'm spending some of the money on. 

Back When You Were Easier to Love

Back When You Were Easier to Love is an cute Mormon YA romance. I didn't realize it was Mormon until a few pages in. I generally don't read Christian fiction, so I probably wouldn't have picked it off the library shelf had I realized. However, it was fun.

Joy, the main character, dated Zan until he dropped off the face of the earth, without a word of goodbye. She was having agreat difficulty in getting over him, so she decided to drive to his college to get closure. Noah, Zan's friend, tags along. Joy viewed Noah as a "Soccer Lovin' Kid" who was too stereotypical Mormon. On the trip, Joy realized how Zan was something she never had and how Noah has many more dimensions than she gave him credit for. 


Back When You Were Easier to Love is a very very G rated book. Joy even reflects on how kissing among the Mormon kids at her school was a really big deal. The book's cover seems too forward for the romance in the story. In any case, it was an enjoyable read.

Overdue Library Books

I love Pearls Before Swine, this comic. Love, love, love.

Awesome Book Blog

I'm in love with Awful Library Books, a blog about library book that should have been culled years ago. We get lots of these types of books as donations to the book sale. In fact, I saw one of the books posted when I was volunteering the other day. I will find some good ones to share with you. In the meanwhile, check out the blog.

Book Sale Photos

We had a book sale a couple weeks ago. I took these pictures before the sale.

Classics:

Young Adult:
I started this section. YA books were all over the place, so I wanted to put the current ones in a good place so they could actually be found. I think it did pretty well. As you can see, there wasn't a lot. The next sale isn't until November, so it will be interesting to see what shows up before then.

Dollar fiction books on the left, dollar non-fiction on the right:

We raised about $5250 during the four day sale.

Library Book Sale

Earlier this year, I was selected to be the new chair of my library's book sale. The sale raises about $30,000 a year. We have three a year: April, July, and November as well as some shelves in the library year-round. We are lucky enough to have a dedicated space in the library basement.

Classics

Cookbooks

Wyoming and the West

The first sale I'll be in charge for starts next week. I'm a little nervous, to say the least!

Alcatraz

Last week for Thanksgiving, my husband and I went to San Francisco.

My favorite part of Alcatraz:

New York Public Library

I visited the New York Public Library today. In addition to Strand, it was a book must-do.

The facade is being renovated. The lions were still visible, guarding the steps.

The stonework throughout the building was beautiful.



Like any current library, the card catalog is online. However, the 1972 catalog books are still housed for the public to use.


The individual cards were combined in the pages. What a task that would have been.


This is the main reading room. It was so beautiful.



My guide book described the reading room as cathedral like. I agree. I find libraries as such sacred places. They reflect my belief in the power of knowledge and joy in books.

The Library Book Sale

My favorite volunteer activity is the library book sale. I have been working it for several years. We have our main sale in November with an Earth Day sale in April.

One of the reasons I like volunteering at the sale is that I can spend hours looking at the books and people don't think I'm crazy.

I also love helping people find books they are looking for (since the sale is such a treasure hunt) and suggesting new books to people. It's so interesting to see what books people pick up.

The one downside: I end up bringing lots of books home to add to my huge to be read pile. New books are usually a good thing, but I own more than 375 books I haven't read yet and I'm running out of room. Tonight, though, I did pretty good and only added a few to my TBR list.

Tonight's haul, all for $26.75:

For my friend Jessica and her classroom library-

Burned (Ellen Hopkins)
Election (Tom Perrotta)
Fever 1793 (Laurie Halse Anderson)
Flush (Carl Hiaasen)
Near Death in the Mountains (Cecil Kuhne)
The Perfect Storm (Sebastian Junger)
Black Hawk Down (Mark Bowden)
The Last River (Todd Balf)
How I Became Stupid (Martin Page)
The Monkey Wrench Gang (Edward Abbey)

Children's Books (no kids and no plans for them anytime soon, but I love kids' books)-

The Pushcart War (Jean Merrill)
Ramona and Beezus
Ramona and her Mother
Ramona the Brave (Beverly Cleary)
Olivia and the Missing Toy (Ian Falconer)
3 Magic School Bus books
Nappy Hair (Carolivia Herron)
Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (Rachel Field, beautiful illustrations)
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Judith Viorst)
The True Story of Smokey the Bear (Jane Werner Watson)
A Lion Named Shirley Williamson (Bernard Waber)
Is Your Mama a Llama? (Deborah Guarino)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (copyright '58, printed in '74, it's very retro cool)

Adult Books for me-

God is Not Great (Christopher Hitchins)
The Island of Lost Maps (Miles Harvey)
Falling Off the Map (Pico Iyer)