Friends Of The Library – Book Journey

YOU Choose The Next Book I Read and Then You Win That Book!

Published on October 11, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)41 Comments

choose

Hey everyone! Happy Sunday! If you have been around here lately you know that:

There has not been a lot of action (I don’t like that)
Our friends of the library just had their Fall booksale! (I LOVE that!)

What I have done in past years is I post my book sale haul…. (do not judge me… I am a book-a-holic who justifies book purchases by believing there are worse things I can do with my time and money…. like being a crack dealer or a hit man) See? That said, book buying…. not so bad AND….

our book sales books are 50 cents each.

I know right????

Ok, so I am about to post my haul and you tell me in the comments which book you would love to read. I will choose a winner by submitting comments into random.org. If you win and it is a book I already read, I will send it to you right away. If it is a book I have not read, I will read it next opportunity I have and then send it to you. This is a fun way to have a giveaway and at the same time give me a gentle push to read the books I have purchased.

Please note the following pictures are my entire book sale haul. Below each pic I will list titles (if any) that are not included in the giveaway, ones I wish to keep for my own collection. I will choose a winner this coming Thursday morning and post in the Morning Meandering. Please check back to see if you are a winner (I will also email the winner).

Ready?

Fun Fact – both of the Elizabeth Gilbert books are signed by Elizabeth to her grandmother

Keeping: Scarlett and the Angels and Demons copy (which is a cool large book with illustrations)

Keeping: Wizard of Oz and 100 Banned Books

There they are! Have fun choosing 🙂 To enter please leave in the comments the title of the book you would love to win and why.

Morning Meanderings… A Day Of Library Friends

Published on February 3, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)15 Comments

Good morning! Wow. *yawn* *stretch*

What a day.

Yesterday I went to my first Minnesota Library Association of Friends meeting in St Paul Minnesota. That involved me being ready and out of the house by 7 am and at the meeting shiny and ready to go by 10 am.

The Association supports the friends groups of Minnesota. By being a part of this board I am ale to have a voice in how we support our friends groups. I really am excited to be a part of it.

Then….

2:10 pm and I am out the door and heading for home. In the house by 4:30 pm, time to organize my notes, heat my sandwiches and out the door again for our Annual Friends Meeting. I was very excited with the turn out. We had a wonderful year. Our Spring book sale was a record-breaking sale. This year we plan on it being another awesome sale. We are actually for the first time ever moving the sale off site into a building a friend of mine owns for more space. I am super excited about the sale!

We will have our first children’s sale this year, our third Wine and Words… so much going on! 🙂

I feel energized and have much to do today to update our website, continue my author search for Wine and Words, and work on a few things for Camp Benedict too.

Yesterday I finished up two audio books (with the drive time), Girl On The Train and Afterworlds.

and as long as I am rambling here, three books that I am planning to read have release dates today. Keep an eye out for:

2015 Library Challenge

Published on December 2, 2014December 2, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)108 Comments

Hear me out.

I have to believe that most of you who read Book Journey are in fact lovers of the written word. A great percentage of you are not only readers, but reviewers and book bloggers such as myself. And quite honestly a library challenge may not be all that appealing to a book reviewer/blogger as we receive so many books for review in the mail that there is no need for a stop at your local library.

Hear me out.

HOWEVER, it would be remiss of me and perhaps you as well – if we did not acknowledge the struggle most of our libraries go through to show their worth in the modern-day of e-readers, and of course the ever-present pull of all things that take people away from reading.

I admit, I am not always the best library user. I am President of our local Friends group that supports our library, yet I have plenty of books of read at home to read and more coming weekly to my doorstep.

This challenge is also for me.

If we the readers that gush about books on blogs and social media and to our friends can not as well as promote and support our libraries than what are we doing? Not everyone who reads this blog is a reviewer or has access to the books through an e reader or in some cases have the means to purchase the books they wish to read. Our local libraries are simply a library card away and a book can be waiting to be enjoyed.

I don’t want to go on and on so basically this challenge will be for you to get to know your local library in 2015. If like our library, you have access to on-line holds, I suggest you do what I do when browsing blogs or other book sites; have the page open to your library reserve as well and borrow books as you see the awesome ones you wish to read. I will do it. Will you do this with me?

I obviously would be thrilled if you went the extra mile and found out what else your library has to offer and shared it on your websites (if you blog). For instance ours offers computer classes to teach people how to use their computers, IPADS, e-readers and more. We offer movies and book in the bag so book clubs can check out 10 books at a time. Anyone that has a start-up post for this challenge that mentions things their own library offers beyond the books will go into a drawing for a $20 Amazon gift card (I know I know… that defeats the purpose, but maybe get a book bag if you win to hold all your library books 🙂 )

And of course.. there are fun levels of commitment:

1-5 check outs in 2015 – NOVICE

6-11 check outs in 2015 – ROOKIE

12- 16 check outs in 2015 – INTERMEDIATE

17 – 22 check outs in 2015 – SEASONED

23 – 27 check outs in 2015 – EXPERIENCED

28 + check outs in 2015 – GOING PRO!

Check outs count for anything bookish – books, audio, even e-reader book check outs (yes, libraries have these now!). Go… meet your library again and fall in love. 🙂

And a shameless plug for the Friends Of The Library. If your library has this group, consider signing up. It is usually quite inexpensive to be a member and your membership supports your local library. As book lovers, we are a huge community asset and by sharing our love of books with others we are breathing life into the written word and into our libraries.

Sign up today – write a post and link it here.. I will announce a winner of the gift certificate on January 2nd. I will also post updates throughout the year to encourage further library exploration.

Write your post and use the link below to connect it. Now bloggers are welcome to join in as well, let me know of your participation and level in the comments below 😉

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Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

Morning Meanderings… MN GIve To The Max Day and HP Hook Up Link

Published on November 13, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)3 Comments

Good morning! I am still in Florida working away with long hours and exhausted sleep. We are working hard to get done and get home and I am all about that – even if it freezing and lots of snow in Minnesota. I miss my hubby, my puppies, my bed 🙂

Today is GIVEMN day where you can link up a non profit charity and of course I am promoting our library. I am not sure if this is a thing for all states or not – I suspect it probably is. Anyhoo – here is our Library link and our goal: Brainerd Public Library Give MN

For the HP Readalongers… the link for your first review is up and if you have not found it yet – add your thoughts here. I need to catch up on House Points so please watch for that soon. Remember you earn points by writing posts and also by commenting on posts.

It is not to late to sign up to join this readalong that started in November and will go to March 2015. Check out all things about this here.

I am off to work for the day. We are still splitting hives. Hope to finish this part in the next few days here so we can get all the bees delivered, queened, and fed.

Morning Meanderings… Library Friends Networking

Published on September 16, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)20 Comments

Good morning! Happy Tuesday! Yesterday morning I made apple butter with our apples from our trees and my home this morning still smells like cinnamon and apples….

mmmmmm.

Yesterday afternoon I went to a workshop in Roseville Minnesota to network with other Friends Of The Library. It was pretty fun and they used our Friends group in Brainerd for many examples – website description of what friends of the library do, our Wine and Words event, summer brown bag author events… it was cool to know that we were on the right track in many ways.

I enjoyed listening to the other things that friends are doing in other areas – 5k walks and runs, bowling for books, and my personal favorite (wish I would have thought of it!) The Great Gatsby Gala that they had planned to make $20,000 and they raised $47,000! Holy smokes!!!! Granted it was in the bigger Minnesota cities so more people and more money… but still…. WOW. I hope to attend this one next year so I can see what they are doing up close.

I think the saddest thing at this workshop was the Itaska Friends group. Their library is open one day a week; Wednesdays from noon to 4 pm. That is heart breaking, yet this group raises money and awareness for their library through book sales, and being in the Fourth Of July parade.

One emphasis they put out there was being POSITIVE. I could not agree more. Having negative people on your teams sucks the life and energy out of the team…. in any circumstance. You need to stay positive and work to make events fun!

Anyhoo… it was a good time, it was fun meeting others in Minnesota in Friends groups. I did not arrive back home until 11 pm last night, but was able to listen to audio for my 2+ hour drive each way so that made it awesome 🙂