5 posts tagged “books”

Note: This is the first in a series of posts looking back at 2007, in some key areas of my life that were important to me.  

I read this year.

This was a year of rediscovery of books, something I started on last year, but really took it up to another level this year.  In previous years, I did a lot of rereading.  This year, I took advantage of our library and learning more authors.  Although I primarily read Christian fiction, I also got in a lot of instructional books, like knitting and crafting books.

This allowed me to try out interlibrary loan to get some that weren't in our system.  I expanded on my knowledge by creating wikipedia pages or enhancing existing ones for some of the most prolific Christian authors out there (my wikipedia profile lists the most important pages I've worked on).  I have been so helped by having comprehensive lists of the books that any given author writes, and so this is a super thing for me to participate in improving to help others who can't easily find this info elsewhere. 

Because of my reading, I helped out other aspects of my life (craftyness) and started to give of myself as a Library volunteer for the first time since I was a teenager.  This opened new doors for me as a knitter (building my confidence and becoming a help to others), and as a library volunteer, accepting a role for the Friends of the Library group (I'm now the secretary).

Recap: 232 books (plus a few more on my nightstand not yet recorded), with 139 Christian Fiction and 73 knitting (and other ones of other random categories)  There were a few I reread and couldn't reenter into Vox from my personal collection at home, too.

Pictured: My favorite writer this year was Lauraine Snelling, because of reading several series she wrote, but primarily the Dakotah Treasures.  Tracie Peterson's A Slender Thread was probably my favorite standalone book.  Besides those two, I read just about everything Lori Wiki and Beverly Lewis have written this year as well.  The most outstanding knitting book I read this year was Big Girl Knits because it had such valuable information about sizing, and I plan to buy it.

Bonus, a Vox Tip: You can add the year into any URL of tagged items to see just the items for that year with that tag.  For example, if you are looking at books tagged knitting, the URL shows http://kristine.vox.com/library/books/tags/knitting/.  Put 2007 after the item type as follows: http://kristine.vox.com/library/books/2007/tags/knitting/.  Voila!

• Prison Break definitely lost me as a regular viewer last night.  I was half-way hoping they would do something that would make me come back and be enough excited to keep watching.  Those boys are just so nice to look at, but it's not enough to make me want to watch.
• Quizno's Sammies don't look like they do in the pictures.  Good, but little.
• My computer is still fine this morning.
• It's starting to get cold at night, enough that I need to start adding more blankets to the bed!  I like the weight of a pile of blankets, too.  Of course, the ceiling fan is still on, and that helps with circulating the air, but the breeze probably actually makes me think it's colder than it is.
  
• Meal planning and reading old fashion books with strong pioneer women has me wanting to braid my hair and wear dresses :)

Yes, those thoughts have been floating through my head, and I could probably write an entire post about each, but the time to do that isn't as easily come by. :D

Where do you get recommendations for new books to read?

Mandie and the Secret Tunnel (Mandie, Book 1)

My favorite resource is actually looking at what other authors write for other publishing houses that I like.  I've been reading books by Bethany House Publishing since I was 8 years old, when my mom first bought me a Mandie book.  She read Janette Oke (tagged books), the first few books of multiple series, and then when I got old enough, I bought the rest of the books to those series and read more from the library.  So now, it's easy to recognize the spines of other Bethany books on the library shelf.  They have expanded their number of authors all the time, and so that makes for a larger selection too! 

As far as my novels go, I don't tend to read what other people are reading, so it's not as easy to just skim through sidebars here at Vox.  So things like going to the bookstore and browsing the aisles is a good way for me to learn of new authors that I may not have heard of yet.  This is true in the crafting/knitting area, and the Christian fiction (tagged books).  I did used to troll the romance aisles, but I just can't find anybody I love as much as my favorite Romance author, Jude Deveraux (tagged books), so I stopped trying.

When I'm trying to see what new knitting books I want to read, I like to go  to a site that sell knitting books and see what is the most popular, like Knit Picks' bestseller list.  Then I search for those on the library site to see which ones we actually have.  General crafting books or cookbooks (other book loves of mine), I'm more likely to go browse the library shelves until I find something interesting and somewhat current.

I organize my reading here on Vox, and then in the last year or so, I've enjoyed working on author pages on Wikipedia (my wikipedia profile has some links) to keep up the book lists and info about the authors I'm enjoying the most.  I tagged all of my books here on Vox with the series name and the author name so it's easier for me to see them when I'm looking to remember what books I've read from which author or whatever.

I'm interested to see if anybody in my neighborhood answered this qotd, it was definitely interesting to me!

Allison had a Library Meme that I just had to play along with...

1. How old were you when you got your first library card?

I think I had my own when we were in Paw Paw, but I don't remember for sure - I know I had one when we came to Washington, so that would be 10-11-ish.

2. What’s the first book you can remember reading from a library?

I read so much, it's hard to remember what the first would be.  I know I read the Little House books early on, but they certainly weren't the first ones.  The first books I remember requesting were the Betsy, Tacy, and Tib books - I had read one of them from the bookmobile, and wanted to read more.

3. Did you ever participate in a summer reading program or other kids’ event at a library growing up?

Yes, I sure did.  The summer I was 9, I came in 3rd place.  The summer I was 10, I was 1st and blew the competition away with 104 books on my list!!!  I still carry the book bag I received for winning, it came back out when I started going to the knit in and I needed something to carry books and knitting.  We moved very shortly after this (like within weeks) and the summer reading programs here in Washington were less of a "contest" so I didn't continue on my winning trend, but I definitely participated for quite a few more summers.  One of the summers, they had people color bookmarks for part of the contest, and I remember submitting one for that.

4. Do you remember when card catalogues weren’t computerized?

Oh yes.  I remember when the check-out system wasn't computerized too.  When I was 12-15, I volunteered for the library, and that was right before they got the computerized system and we actually managed all the book cards that were checked out.

5. When was the last time you went to the library?

Let's see, last Saturday?  That's actually longer than normal because we skipped going in the middle of the week this time.  I'd like to go today, but I'll probably wait because tomorrow is the knit in and I can go then.  But I could convince E we should go to the big library today still, we'll see :)  It's really nice because there's a library in the mall and our house is right above the mall - it's a little one, and you rarely can find something just by browsing, but it's nice for requesting books and picking them up.  There's a path through a retirement home just south of our complex, and it has these big stone blocks that I can sit on for a rest half-way there.  And then JCPenny has a bench outside that I can take a break in once I get there.  Someday maybe my legs will be strong enough to not need all those stop-gaps, but for now, it makes it possible for me to go on my own. :)

Anyhow, there are two books waiting for me - I request them and then go pick them up when they are available; there's just a big shelf where you can find your waiting books.  (Fitted Knits and a Gilbert Morris are the two waiting)

6. How many books do you usually check out of the library at one time?

Somewhere between 7-15 usually are out at any given time.  When I have knitting and crafting books out, it's usually the higher number because I hang onto those alongside the novels I'm reading.  Right now, I'm down to much less - I think I'm half-way through the last book I have to read (short one by Tracie Peterson), and the rest of the pile is just waiting to go back.

7. Name one great author you’ve discovered at your library.

So many!!!  I can't just name one.  I discovered that there was more to Christian Fiction than just what we had at home when I was still a volunteer, and when the ladies at the library I worked with realized I was requesting things that other people were enjoying, too, they started to let me make lists of books they should get.  That was the start for the library of a collection of Janette Oke, Gilbert Morris, and Brock & Bodie Thoene.  Now they have a great collection this way, and I can't help but think I was part of that.

8. What was the librarian at your elementary school like?

I didn't got to elementry school, but my favorite librarian when we first came to Washington was Sandy.  She has such a nice lady, she did the Children's storytime, and she always was so nice to me.  In years past, she's been known to stop and talk to my mom in the grocery store and ask about how we are all doing, and that was really nice.  In high school, the library wasn't very interesting, but in College, it was so cool to see how many resources were available - particularly in periodicals.

9. How many times a year do you go to the library?

Probably about once a week, so that's a lot. :)  It's only been in the last 6 mo to a year I've been able to say that.

10. If you could change one thing about your library, what would it be and why?

It's so big sometimes that I'm not sure how I can participate in helping grow the collection or just help in general.  That's more my shyness, and having a little more time now may help me find out some of those things.  Really, our library system is so great, we are part of a group of libraries (13 plus a nearby one that's not connected, and then we are linked to Portland's too), meaning we have a lot of resources.  I would like to particularly be able to recommend more knitting books and more Christian authors than what they have, even though they are keeping up fairly well.  I wouldn't mind if they got more copies of a book that has a humongous waiting list, like One Skein Knitting (the Leigh Radford one) that I've been on the waiting list for since Christmas.