Good morning and happy weekend! *doing a little dance with Coffee Cup*! I am doing a quick check in here as I am leaving for the cabin in about ummmm….. 20 minutes here for the weekend. My friend Laura and I will be working on some craft projects before Christmas and hopefully a little reading too. 😀
Have an awesome weekend, I am putting up the WHERE Are You Reading Challenge today, I hope you consider signing up – it really is a lot of fun.
Good morning! I am a little wired. (COFFEE!!!!) and a little tired… which in reality is probably stimulating the wired. Yesterday… two audio books came int o my home and I am so THRILLED! Mainly because my house was empty of all audio cds that I had not yet listened to. Sure, the IPOD is still full of good audio – but my kitchen cd player and my car… empty.
Trust me… that is so weird.
Yesterday arrived two audio books I had ordered from Amazons Black Friday sale, one of them was Linger by Maggie Stiefvater. I had read the books a few years ago and thought the audio might be fun. When I put it in the cd player yesterday I wondered if it was really wanted I wanted to listen to right now, a YA about wolves…. and then I heard the words that sold me.
The book is set in Minnesota. I seriously smiled when I remembered that.
“Why is that a big deal Sheila? Why? Why?” (Told you I was wired!)
Well, it is a big deal because I have been working the last couple weeks on updating my WHERE Are You Reading Challenge and I was saddened to see that I had not read anything in my home state of Minnesota this year.
Now – I have fixed that. Let the wolves rule the woods of Minnesota! 😛
So I can not present to you my updated and current WHERE Are You Reading Challenge. I will be posting the new 2013 sign up hopefully yet this week as I LOVE this challenge! You can see here the books I have read and where, and you can see my map here (which is super cool!)
I have to get moving this morning but hope your day is FAB! If you have been working on the WHERE Are You Reading Challenge with me this past year, I would love to hear how you have done! (If you have or havent, I would love for you to consider signing up for 2013) 😛
Last week I was thrilled to be a part of the initiative for this new program to build the strength and integrity of libraries and literacy programs throughout the state of Minnesota. 6 libraries and 6 Literacy partnership agencies were chosen to partake in this institute. 3 people were sent from each area, I represented the Brainerd Library along with the Librarian and another Library employee.
The institute was this past Thursday and Friday. It involves another weekend in November, an assessment in January, and a wrap up in May of 2013. To be a part of the Institute you have to be available each step of the way.
Our common goal?
“The foundation funding of $388,540 will support an initiative to strengthen the leadership of rural libraries and literacy organizations in order to enhance the service these organizations provide to their communities. The initiative will offer training sessions to small cohorts of library and literacy leaders on critical aspects of running a rural library or literacy organization, from budgeting and board development to strategic planning and cultural competency.”
Our first day we spent going over our strengths as individuals. We all had taken the Strength Finders test as past of this group (I reviewed this book a while back and if you have never took the test I highly recommend it – it is enlightening – the code to take the test is sealed in the back on of the book). They then explained the strengths and how they work together with those in our own groups, as well as with other in the Institute. I had taken this test over a year ago for work and it was fun to do it again and see how my strengths lined up this second time:
It really is quite fun!
That evening we had a dinner where they sat us together by our top strengths. I was with a table of Strategic people and we had questions we would answer as table discussion. It was interesting to get to know the other participants.
On Friday we switched gears and had discussion on raising money which normally is not something I enjoy but a particular discussion had me taking notes like crazy, talking to people afterwards for more information, lining up a phone meeting and well… I dont want to say too much right now but I hopeful that I am on to something that could be rather exciting and raise funds next year for our Library and Literacy programs locally.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
😀
As Friday went on we had the lunch speaker, author Kao Kaila Yang who I wrote about on Saturday. Later in the day we spent time discussing goals with our assigned mentors who will be guiding up through this seven month process.
I really enjoyed my time working with this institute and learning more about our local Library and how it functions as well as the literacy obstacles we need to overcome as a state (funding cuts in schools, etc…) It really is an honor to be a part of this and I will keep you informed each step of the way.
Here is some more information on what we are doing.
Good Morning. 😀 For a while now I have been wanting to put my own twist on a Sunday post. I like the Sunday Salon, but wanted to implement another cool thing I have seen occasionally around the blogs and that is when people kind of check list what they have going on in different areas of their life. Today I am going to give it a test run and see how it goes.
Today….
The books that entered the doors this week are:
All are review books except Lord Of The Flies is a win from Banned Book Week and fall to grace was a book I bought after a raving recommendation by a friend.
For those of you who know that I did the Monster Dash yesterday morning (and if you didn’t you do now! :razz:), it was cool out but wasn’t cold until I stopped running then I got COLD fast! My friend Amy (AKA Wonder Woman) was a trooper and waited for me when I had to make an unplanned bathroom stop at an Assisted Living Home on route as I was not sure I would make it the whole way. GAH. I will post more picks of this event next weekend for Saturday snapshot but for one of us in action:
For the last two days I have been a part of a Rural Library and Literacy Leadership Institute that is embarking on a seven month journey together. This was our first meeting together and I was thrilled to be a part of it, representing along with two others, the Brainerd Minnesota Public Library. I will write more later about what we are doing as a group, but this morning I wanted to share one happening from yesterday.
Yesterday afternoon when we broke away for lunch our lunch time speaker was Kao Kalia Yang. She is a Minnesota author that not only overcame great hurdles to learn English, but wrote a book, The Late Homecomber that has won two awards. I am sad to say that prior to this encounter yesterday I was unfamiliar with Kao or her book.
When we walked to our seats where we would be dining I was excited to see that we each had a copy of the book waiting on our chair. I whispered to my teammates that I loved events where books were given out! As we started our salads, this petite 31-year-old woman took the microphone and I wish (WISH WISH WISH!) that I had recorded what she had to say, but wasn’t sure if that was the polite thing to do and she spoke so elegantly, so passionately that I am not sure I could have held my phone up anyway.
I found this speech of hers on You Tube, don’t be frightened by its length, if you can listen even to the first 4 minutes of it you will get why I was so impressed on.
When Kao spoke yesterday I was so impressed by the passions she carried for her book. I have heard other authors speak about hardships in their memoirs and it is like after talking about it so much they lose the power of the words they speak of – does that make sense? Its like when they talk, it is so longer themselves they are speaking of but some other person. This is not the case with Kao. When she read from her book with such genuine emotion I knew I had to read her book… and read it this weekend.
SO this morning I will be putting on a wedding dress and zombie make up and participating in the Crosslake Monster Dash, but this afternoon… I will be reading The Late Homecomber and if it is as good as I think it is going to be…. look out Bookies Book Club I will be plugging this to you as well. 😀
Good morning! I like this picture because it really captures most mornings for me…. coffee coffee coffee, like fuel to a car. 😛
Those of you who have blogged for any amount of time have probably had offers made for people to guest post on your blog. The truly funny ones are ones that have nothing to do with what you blog about, they could be offering to share with your readers about tires for your car, UGG Boots, vitamins and vacation destinations… all of which have been plugged to me…. and no they did not offer anything in return or I may have caved on the vacation one and Book Journey would have become “Traveling With Book Journey” or something like that…. and I would go to fascinating places like Hawaii and Aruba and telling you what I was reading while sipping some delicious fruity drink and sporting some amazing tan…
well,
a girl can dream.
I digress..
SO, a couple of days ago I receive the email says that they noticed I talk about zombies from time to time. 😯
I do?
This is a stretch but their may have been zombie like creatures in the Passage that I read a couple of years ago… Flyers or Virals I believe they were called… hmmmm….. well anyway, it was the next line that caught my attention…
we thought your readers may like detailed information on how to prepare a barn or garage for the zombie apocalypse.
Well… what sort of person would I be if I did not pass this vital information on to you? And seriously, what if this post…. saved a life? 😛
And honestly, we are still five days out from Halloween… plenty of time to grab a couple of buddies and put up a pole barn. 😉 AND as the article says, since money will soon be useless, why not opt for the concrete floor? This will lead to avoiding zombies tunneling under your building.
The article goes from how to design your pole barn, to how to stock it, the weapons you need… a team. One of my favorite parts of the article is choosing your team…
Isn’t that awesome? That’s my funny for the day. I am still in the cities at the library/literacy Leadership Training. Day one was good and in about an hour we will kick off day two. I will be heading back home tonight after 5. Hope your day is wonderful. I am listening to I, Michael Bennett this morning on my IPOD, love that series. 🙂
Oh… and if you want to read the rest of the article on Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse, ummm…. you know, just for ummmm…. research. Feel free to do so here.
Wow.
I have to say that going into this week I had no idea that I was going to go MIA this week. Life has a way of zapping all my time and energy lately. I thought this week was going to be mellower, but if this gives you any inkling of how things are going, I am currently in a car going to the cities for a Library Assessment/two day meeting.
No… I am not driving. 😛
I did actually write a fun post yesterday morning and my computer did that AWESOME thing again where I hit post it logged me out of wordpress and I had lost half of the post and no time to rewrite before work.
So anyway I am alive, just still living a crazy life that should (really…) slow down after I get back from Florida that first week of November. I will keep in touch now throughout the weekend – I am in a hotel in the cities tonight so should have some time to review and write a little. 😀
Good morning! Happy Tuesday! It is drizzly here in Minnesota this morning. I am up early serving for IHN and now sitting down to write a quick post before I go to work.
Yesterday I spoke in a nearby town to a group of 40 retired teachers about Banned Books. I know right? SO how did that happen?
A woman who is on the Friends Of The Library board “witnessed” my passion for banned books a few weeks ago and asked me if I would speak to this group. I said yes and it sounded like a really good idea at the time…
until when I was driving their yesterday and thought, I wonder if some of these teachers will be teachers I had as a student? AND…. I wondered if they would think that grown up Sheila is kind of a “rebel with a cause”talking about banned books....
When I arrived I was thrilled to see 4 of the teachers were teachers I once had. And they remembered me which always amazes me because throughout my life time I probably had about 40 teachers and they have about 1,000 students throughout their career….
AND talking about banned books was actually fun. I brought some of my own, had pictures of the ones I did not own and went from the current champions of banned: Hunger Games, Harry Potter, SPEAK, to the surprises: LORAX, The Dictionary, Lord Of The Rings, and of course the classics… It was actually a lot of fun and there were questions afterwards – a great question was,
“Do you think an author may sometimes try to be a bit controversial to hit the banned books list, after all… ban a book the kids want to read it more…”
While I can not speak for the authors, I figured in most cases no…. but who knows really…. 😛
When I was done speaking I was given a gift, a banned book bracelet (SSSQQQUUUEEE!) I have always wanted one! It really was a good time.
In other news, I noticed that The Twelve by Justin Cronin is now available for purchase. Serious SSSQQQUUUEEEE worthy. If you have not read The Passage (click for my review)– oh my… you MUST. And when you are done, be sure and give The Twelve a try. I have yet to read my copy of The Twelve and that is really insane since The Twelve was the one book I wanted most when I went to BEA in June and I have now had it on my shelf all these months.
SO off to work. I plan to be back later with a review. Have an awesome day!!!!
Good morning. What a week and it has not ended yet. I have a full morning and then a friend from Book Club and I are going to the cities to have dinner with Sandra Brannon and then go to her book event at Magers and Quinn Booksellers. While I am tired now, I suspect as the time draws nearer I will get more and more excited. 😀
For Saturday Snapshot today I was hoping to have pictures for you of my new and finished book shelves – but no, while the racks are up… the shelves are not. So… I will show you before and current state… and next week, hopefully the finished look.
And now, the beginning phases:
I am excited to get the shelves up and start organizing books! 😀
Ok, final thing this morning…. winners from the BBAW week:
The Gods Of Gotham : Lindsey from Literary Lindsey!!!
Seconds Away by Harlan Coben audio Elizabeth from Silver’s Reviews!!!
Night Road by Kristin Hannah: Joys from Joys Book Blog!
and the $15 gift card goes to Karen White!!!
Thanks everyone – winners email me your mailing info (no po boxes please) to journeythroughbooks@gmail.com and I will get those shipped to you this week. 😀
It started in late June of this year. I was just back from BEA (Book Expo of America) for a few weeks and had been staring down that copy of The Fault In Our Stars for far too long. It was starting to feel like summer and I was in the mood to try this author I had heard so much about. I opted to go audio with this one as life was already getting active and audio works better for me in the busy summer days.
I will never forget that I finished listening to The Fault In Our Stars from the back on my husbands motor cycle on the fourth of July…. crying. Now before you say, “Uh no thanks Sheila, why would I put myself through a painful book about young people dying of cancer!”, let me remind you that you would also probably never wanted to read the Hunger Games, a book about kids killing kids. BUT – if you read Hunger Games, chances are you loved it (if you haven’t you are missing out – but that is a whole other post for a whole other day… :razz:). What I am saying is that The Fault In Our Stars is blow you away good and one of the best audio books I have listened to this year and I am certain it would also be one of the best books.
And so, it was on the Fourth Of July that I finished The Fault In Our Stars, and began listening to Will Grayson, Will Grayson. While Will Grayson x 2 took a little longer for me to get the flow of, I was soon loving it as well… listening to it throughout my day and while mowing the lawn. I now knew that John Green was not a one hit wonder. He has a knack for creating characters that are smart, and witty, and bookish, and even a bit geeky and all things I LOVE. And so my book love affair with John Green grew….
Now on a John Green self-appointed read-a-thon I found my way to Looking For Alaska, and find myself in a college setting of characters alive and “college style daring” – pranks and rule breaking and I am now even more infatuated with these fun and flawed characters that have been brought to life through John Green’s imagination and created through his fingertips as they are written out on paper and tapped out on keyboards.
Then in August I finished up listening to Paper Towns and found that Margo reminded me a bit of Alaska, reckless…. but Margo even more so in a self-centered sort of way that fascinated and annoyed me all at once. Margo did not make the book for me but the other characters did and that is another brilliant thing about John Green’s characters… there may be a main character, but all of his other characters play big supporting roles and you see that throughout all his books but can really see it and feel it in this one.
An Abundance Of Katherine’s was an impracticable story (really… only dating girls names Katherine?) BUT – in John Greens way with words… this did not matter. I loved this one for the sheer joy of listening to the characters come alive, for laughing out loud about crazy scenes (really… a wild boar?) and just because John Green makes me smile. This is also my second encounter with John Green where he uses two characters who share a name and something about that… seems smart, like why would you do that? And more importantly… why wouldn’t you do that?
And so now here I am…. going Green… but I seem to be out of books. 😯 Yes, I know he has a Christmas read, but I can not read Christmas books when the temps outside remain in the 80’s. That one will have to wait. It’s hard to explain all the wonderfulness of John Green’s writing. He is extremely quote worthy. You will be reading along this funny YA read and suddenly something written will give you pause. You find yourself tucking it away in your brain files or writing it down on the scrap peace of mail that is closest to you so you can refer back to it later.
