Good Reads Updates

Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body by Jennifer Ackerman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book chronicles a "Day in the life" of your body, outlining the specific functions from dawn til night. I particularly enjoyed this because it perfectly combined the art of the human condition with the science and chemsitry behind why-we-do/feel-what-we-do. I particularly enjoyed various quotes from famous writers, thinkers and philosophers from history throughout, which evoke a sense of commonality from hundreds of years ago to present. Recommended for adults.


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This Is What I Did: by Ann Dee Ellis

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book moves fast- short sentences and quick pace makes it a nice read that can easily be done in a day. I would recommend this to late middle-early high school, people who like trying to "figure out what happened".



The content is a bit icky towards the end, not a particularly "happy" story, so I would recommend this for reluctant readers in 8th-9th grade, people who have read other realistic fiction books that have gritty happenings within them.


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The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Ted's different, his mind works in different ways from the "normal" kids. When he, his sister and his cousins Salim go to visit the London Eye ferris wheel, Salim gets on the ride, and never comes back off. While their parents reel with grief and worry, Kat and Ted create their own theories on how Salim disappeared, and much of the book involves them "testing" their theories to track down their missing cousin. I liked this one, and I think people who enjoyed the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime might also appreciate Ted's personality and logic.




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shocking

This afternoon, in the quiet pre-schoolage-kids-infestation at the library, a woman came in with her preschooler and toddler, needing to pay a tiny fine. As I proceeded with the transaction, I noticed the preschooler, head-to-toe in pink everything- stocking cap, coat, dress, tights, boots and shoes, is quivering. Her face is blotchy and eyes are red. She looks literally terrified, as if she's just seen a ghost or had some terrific meltdown that exhausted her. She was literally shaken, and I looked at her and asked (cautiously), "Is there anything I can help you find today?"
Her mother looks at me and then at her terrified daughter. She says, "Well, we've just found out something- something not bad, but certainly shocking while at preschool. Honey, do you want to tell her what happened?"

Silence. The girl has lost the ability to speak, and she is now panting. Her eyes well-up with the thought of the shocking news she just learned.

The mother looks at me and says, "Well she's just found her first loose tooth. We thought maybe we could get the Junie B. Jones book..."

"Oh how exciting! Congratulations! Of course I'll find the book for you..."

and we sent her off with a story to hopefully calm the terror in her eyes.

It is time.

It is time for me to update my electronic "portfolio"- something that I should've done a year ago, but couldn't bring myself to re-write the HTML and move all the files over. It used to be hosted on my LIS grad school server, and I'm coming upon it's demise since I've graduated.

So, if anyone who reads this (I see I have a FEW dots on the map now- hooray!) has an idea of a FREE place to host my portfolio, that'd be super fantastic. I'll take any and all suggestions, as I'm clueless and have only found ones that cost money. I don't really make much of that so I'm looking for cheap and effective.

About half of the webpages I created I made in Notepad, the other half in SeaMonkey, if that makes a difference.

This is the kind of thing I link to for my portfolio.

And this one....(not incredibly proud of this one)

and other things like this.

I also had a portion with a resume, coursework, biographical information, etc.

Ideas anyone?

exhausted

Is anyone else totally exhausted? I mean, the past three days have just sucked the life out of me. I imagine part of it is the weather- snow snow snow and cold cold cold. Other contributing factors may include: stressful holiday and work obligations, not having much physical activity, absorbing weight-of-the-world that shouldn't necessarily be shouldered by me, etc. I'm just tired.

On days I don't have to work, I wake up thinking about work, I'm dreaming about work. So it really feels like I am working all the time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing- seeing as much (if not all) of the anxiety around work is created and maintained by my own psyche, however- there are days I wake up completely panicked that I'm forgetting something...which might be why my stomach, skin and head are all acty funny and revolting against the stress.

I'm reading this book: Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream, by Jennifer Ackerman. It is neither helping nor hurting my exhaustion. Basically I'm understanding more about the constant flow of cortisol throughout my body and wondering why I don't have a fatter stomach. The book moves through the body as someone wakes up and goes throughout their entire day- lending insight into why you "hit the wall" at 3:00pm and can't keep your eyes open, or why some people get up to the initial ring of the alarm clock while others slap at it 4-5 times before rousing in the morning. It's giving me lots of ideas as to WHY my body reacts the way it does to stress- and it's definitely giving me the feeling that (as I've known all along): I need to exercise more- particularly when it's cold and I'm stressed, because it's cheaper and more effective than antidepressants (not a fan) and caffiene (my BFF). I really like the book, you should read it.

That being said, a couple extra hours of sleeping withOUT dreaming about work would also be a welcome release from some anxiety I'm feeling. That, or perhaps falling onto a mountain of cash.

Although, the book does mention how laughter truly helps human beings in a myriad of ways, so maybe I'll just surf fail blog or some other such funny nonsense on the web to keep my sanity?

I hope you all are not caving under the stress that is wintertime, wherever you are.

It's progress report time!

Here's to proper self-evaluation and performance appraisal!

books teachers books

I'm doing a booktalk in January. For those of you who aren't familiar with the librarian-jargon, a "booktalk" is where you hype up good books really quickly for an audience. Most of the time, in my albeit limited experience, this is done either one-on-one with a patron, or for a group of young adults or children. The upcoming january booktalk's audience is: teachers.

Teachers have always amazed me. From the ones I had as a child- Miss. Horvath & Mrs. Paxson, Mrs. O'Brian and others- their dedication and ways of thoughtfully uplifting a child while concurrently teaching them academically is astounding. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a teacher that made a profound effect on them in one way or another- and I've been blessed enough to have several of these teachers. Now I'm a grown up, and I deal with teachers again- not as often as I'd like. I wish teachers wanted to partner-up more with public libraries and librarians. I wish they'd remember us as a resource as often as they should. Sadly, many do not- but some do.

I also have the pleasure of working with a former teacher (former as in a 3 years ago or so) who handles our Homework Help Center. Younger than me, she's single-handedly supplied the HHC with the textbooks, rulers, protractors, T82 calculators, building blocks and colorful posters. She helps students ranging in age from 4 years old to high schoolers, on things like Algebra and basic introduction to reading. It is amazing to watch her remember such things, and witness how quickly she can recall algebraic equations and scientific terms. I'm in awe of her dedication. Like me, she's got a Masters degree and she (like any teacher) is not paid nearly what she is worth to these kids, their parents, their teachers at school, or to the library. But she loves her job. And it's really cool to watch her in action.

All of that being said, working so closely with a teacher has made me terrified of this booktalk. I would much prefer to be hyping up books to 13 year olds than to adults who work as hard as teachers do. My main concerns are that the books I will pick will be obvious ones, and the teachers will take nothing away from the conversation. I do not want to waste their time. My other (and probably more rational) fear is that I will freeze up, forget the book entirely, and just stare.

So in the process of readying myself for this talk, I've started frantically reserving a TON of middle-school age books. I brought home seven of them last night. I also brought home an adult nonfiction book and a Teen book that is NOT appropriate for middle grades- but both of these items are much more intriguing to me right now. So what am I doing? Of course: reading them instead.

HEre's to speed-reading over the next month or so, and let's hope that I can find some stuff that is age-appropriate. My own taste apparently doesn't linger around the middle grades much. Le sigh.

I will try to remember to post the books on here, so the two dots from my previous posting's map will have these books as resources. haha!

Who Reads my Blog?

Apparently these are the people who read my blog...wait a second, nobody's on here. Hmmmm....a hint perhaps?