Hi friends...
It's been a long while since I've posted. I did my book reviews this last year on my facebook because it seemed easier at the time. I've been slacking on reviewing books. I think because I spend so much of my daily life recommending the books I've read to students. I love my job. I love that I get to talk to teens about what they're interested in and try to match that to a book that will make them eager to have a few minutes of class time to read their books.
Maybe that's why being on an award committee is hard for me.
Last year, I was a reader for a smaller, local award. I only had to read four books. I was asked not to talk about them until the award had been awarded. That was still kind of hard. I wanted to complain about the one I thought was too didactic, to bemoan the one that had such an incredible idea but had been pseudo-self-published and would have been so so much better in the hands of a professional editor and agent, I wanted to talk about how interesting the one was that brought in legends I was unfamiliar with.
This year I've been lucky enough to be on a national awards committee. I love reading for a purpose. When I'm reading for me, I get distracted. I ramble. I pick books up and put them down. I get excited about one so I desert another a scant few chapters in. But for this award, I have an obligation. I know that I'm looking for a book that will blow me away. A book that will express the pieces and parts that make up the human experience. I want to find a book that I immediately want to start reading again as soon as I finish it.
I like to give books a chance. One of my favorite books took me until chapter fifteen (Wuthering Heights in case you were wondering) to fall in love with it. And everytime the beginning of a book doesn't wow me, I think of Wuthering Heights. I like to give books room to breathe and to establish themselves. It's easy to immediately strike something. It's harder to give a book a chance. And I've been giving so many chances. I've read nearly 50 books for this committee already this year (more or less over the last 3 months, actually). I love reading across genres and from pictures books up through young adult novels.
I hate not being able to talk about what I'm reading.
"But, you can talk to the other committee members, right?"
Sure! I can! But it's a virtual committee. I barely feel like I'm getting to know a few of them from brief comments and reactions. I spend my day talking face-to-face. For me, talking isn't just words. It's body posture, it's energy, it's face journeys. I want to talk about these books like I do with my co-workers. Where we talk about the ways they've made us different people. A little over a year ago, I started watching kdramas because I read Maurene Goo's I Believe in a Thing Called Love. Now I primarily watch kdramas, I get a Korean snack box, I have two different kpop group's sweaters and I do all the kbeauty steps. Her book, weirdly, made me a healthier person--at the same time that it gave me an interest that no one in my friend group shares.
This might sound pathetic but books have created every inch of me. The fact that I sing my niece songs about food comes from Eric Carle's Today is Monday My environmental anxiety probably comes from my childhood obsession with Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House. My soul is littered with the remnants of books from my childhood. Some so strong in feeling but faint in remembrance that I can remember exact illustrations but not the name of the books. I got a master's degree in books because I don't know how to live without them. The worst time in my life is marked in my mind by the lack of books I read. Some days reading is what keeps pushing me forward.
Reading is how I make connections with other people. I will absolutely judge a person on their favorite book. I'm trying to make the shift away from "you haven't read that???" to "lucky you that you still get to read that for the first time." but it's still a shock to my heart when people tell me they haven't read something like Harry Potter (which created so much of me that I still sometimes am like, where did that come from?, oh yeah all roads lead back to Harry Potter...). I connect through the shared experience of stories.
And right now, I feel like I can't connect. It's killing me to sit on the wonderful stories I've read. Of course, not all of them are going to match what someone is looking for. Not every book is going to appeal to every person. And I can walk circles around my own feelings about a book and still recommend it : "oh, I've heard it's really good!" "oh, it's got x, y, and z that you said you liked!"
After all, I'm a librarian.
But it's hard to not be able to talk about what I'm reading. To not be able to say, yeah I read that book this weekend and it was really good, you should pick it up. Or to say, eh that book was hyped up so much and turned out to be just kind of meh. Or that book was really boring or terrible or confusing. I'm a person with a lot of opinions. And now I have to keep them to myself.
It's been a long while since I've posted. I did my book reviews this last year on my facebook because it seemed easier at the time. I've been slacking on reviewing books. I think because I spend so much of my daily life recommending the books I've read to students. I love my job. I love that I get to talk to teens about what they're interested in and try to match that to a book that will make them eager to have a few minutes of class time to read their books.
Maybe that's why being on an award committee is hard for me.
Last year, I was a reader for a smaller, local award. I only had to read four books. I was asked not to talk about them until the award had been awarded. That was still kind of hard. I wanted to complain about the one I thought was too didactic, to bemoan the one that had such an incredible idea but had been pseudo-self-published and would have been so so much better in the hands of a professional editor and agent, I wanted to talk about how interesting the one was that brought in legends I was unfamiliar with.
This year I've been lucky enough to be on a national awards committee. I love reading for a purpose. When I'm reading for me, I get distracted. I ramble. I pick books up and put them down. I get excited about one so I desert another a scant few chapters in. But for this award, I have an obligation. I know that I'm looking for a book that will blow me away. A book that will express the pieces and parts that make up the human experience. I want to find a book that I immediately want to start reading again as soon as I finish it.
I like to give books a chance. One of my favorite books took me until chapter fifteen (Wuthering Heights in case you were wondering) to fall in love with it. And everytime the beginning of a book doesn't wow me, I think of Wuthering Heights. I like to give books room to breathe and to establish themselves. It's easy to immediately strike something. It's harder to give a book a chance. And I've been giving so many chances. I've read nearly 50 books for this committee already this year (more or less over the last 3 months, actually). I love reading across genres and from pictures books up through young adult novels.
I hate not being able to talk about what I'm reading.
"But, you can talk to the other committee members, right?"
Sure! I can! But it's a virtual committee. I barely feel like I'm getting to know a few of them from brief comments and reactions. I spend my day talking face-to-face. For me, talking isn't just words. It's body posture, it's energy, it's face journeys. I want to talk about these books like I do with my co-workers. Where we talk about the ways they've made us different people. A little over a year ago, I started watching kdramas because I read Maurene Goo's I Believe in a Thing Called Love. Now I primarily watch kdramas, I get a Korean snack box, I have two different kpop group's sweaters and I do all the kbeauty steps. Her book, weirdly, made me a healthier person--at the same time that it gave me an interest that no one in my friend group shares.
This might sound pathetic but books have created every inch of me. The fact that I sing my niece songs about food comes from Eric Carle's Today is Monday My environmental anxiety probably comes from my childhood obsession with Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House. My soul is littered with the remnants of books from my childhood. Some so strong in feeling but faint in remembrance that I can remember exact illustrations but not the name of the books. I got a master's degree in books because I don't know how to live without them. The worst time in my life is marked in my mind by the lack of books I read. Some days reading is what keeps pushing me forward.
Reading is how I make connections with other people. I will absolutely judge a person on their favorite book. I'm trying to make the shift away from "you haven't read that???" to "lucky you that you still get to read that for the first time." but it's still a shock to my heart when people tell me they haven't read something like Harry Potter (which created so much of me that I still sometimes am like, where did that come from?, oh yeah all roads lead back to Harry Potter...). I connect through the shared experience of stories.
And right now, I feel like I can't connect. It's killing me to sit on the wonderful stories I've read. Of course, not all of them are going to match what someone is looking for. Not every book is going to appeal to every person. And I can walk circles around my own feelings about a book and still recommend it : "oh, I've heard it's really good!" "oh, it's got x, y, and z that you said you liked!"
After all, I'm a librarian.
But it's hard to not be able to talk about what I'm reading. To not be able to say, yeah I read that book this weekend and it was really good, you should pick it up. Or to say, eh that book was hyped up so much and turned out to be just kind of meh. Or that book was really boring or terrible or confusing. I'm a person with a lot of opinions. And now I have to keep them to myself.
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