Skip to main content

Speak Out With Your Geek Out

I've worn glasses since I was 4 1/2, so I've always been a bit of nerd, which led to me being okay with geeking out about things. Well, it turns out that last week was a great week to talk about all things geek. Unfortunately technically difficulties prevented me from posting this last week.

As a librarian, I get to interact with all kinds of geeks, and I have to say, it's wonderful being in a profession where I get to meet so many people who get so excited about their interests.

But I want to be selfish here and talk about the things that make me a geek. From my earliest years I could be identified as geek because of my passionate love of books and reading. Even before I could read, I loved being read to. Luckily I had parents willing to indulge (even if they were sometimes the ones to fall asleep while reading). One of my aunts is a librarian and every year for my birthday she would get me a new book and that book was always one of my favorite presents.

In high school I was the kid who looked for the long books on the required reading list to devour so that I wouldn't finish my reading requirements for the semester in the first week. Thanks to this I discovered that Anna Karenina is one of the greats of world literature, and that while Steinbeck may not be my favorite author The Grapes of Wrath is still a good book. I read Hamlet three times because I didn't get it the first time, but since the test wasn't for another 2 weeks I had time to understand it on the second read through, and love it on the third.

Given that past, it should be no surprise that I became a librarian. Now I don't read many of the weighty tomes I did when I was in high school. Instead I focus on appropriately geeky things like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead, and Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter (yes, I geek zombies). But not just campy zombies, I'm also a huge fan of the Walking Dead comics (I haven't had a chance to watch the TV show yet) and I'm going to get around to reading World War Z someday.

In truth though, there are plenty of things I geek out about besides reading and zombies and in tribute to those of you who also proudly call yourselves geeks here's a random list of a few of my geek accomplishments:
  • actually met wizarding rock legends Harry and the Potters when I invited them to perform at my library for the teen summer reading program
  • attended a bachelorette party that took place in Orlando so that we could visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
  • saw all but the first and third Harry Potter movies on opening weekend
  • saw all of the Lord of the Rings films at midnight on opening night (ditto for other similarly geeky movie releases around that time - we went to the movies a lot in college)
  • was my school's Geography Bee Champion in sixth grade
  • still know all the words to the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? theme song
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PLA - Day 1

Today was my first day at the Public Library Association conference, and I'm not sure how I'm going to do 2.5 more days and keep my head from exploding. There's just so much that's so relevant to my job, I can find something interesting everywhere I look. This morning I went to the Get Your Game On: Gaming in Libraries Preconference, and it was wonderful. I realized that I need to stop playing the role of wife of a gamer and own that I know a thing or two about video games, too, and what I don't know I can learn. Eli and Aaron spent the first half of the program talking about the benefits of gaming and why libraries should be doing gaming, which is something I'd always bought, but never been very good at articulating. Essentially it boils down to all the different types of literacies learned through video games and what are libraries for if not promoting literacy. It was also interesting they argued that the way libraries get the most value out of gaming is by...
Post a Comment
Read more

2016 Reading Resolutions

As has become the norm in recent years, I'm going to try to read 100 books total, but I'm not going to get picky about counting them, so how ever many books Goodreads said I read this year is my total. Progress: 100 of 100 I really hated reading from a specific list of titles last year, so this year I'm going to go back to an Alphabet Soup Challenge. This year, I'll try to read a book written by an author whose last name starts with each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Progress: 23 of 26 A: Alire, Benjamin Saenz - Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe B: Bradley, Anna - A Wicked Way to Win an Earl C: Cline, Ernest - Ready Player One D: Dickens, Charles - Oliver Twist E: Ellison, Ralph -   Invisible Man F: Faulkner, William - Absalom, Absalom! G: Garcia, Kami and Margaret Stohl - Beautiful Darkness H: Holm, Jennifer L. - The Fourteenth Goldfish I: Ishiguro, Kazuo - The Remains of the Day J: Johnston, Aaron and Orson Scott Card - Ea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reflections of a New Community College Librarian

After months of searching I finally found found a job and I have to say that I'm really surprised with both where I landed and how much I'm loving it. After focusing primarily on the public library reference jobs that were similar to my most recent position, I stumbled onto a couple openings at nearby community colleges. When I'd first graduated from library school I heard somewhere that people who worked in community college libraries claimed they were this magical land where public meets academic, where you don't have to deal with spoiled rich kids and people are looking for things more stimulating than the latest James Patterson novel. But I went to library school so I could become a public librarian and I loved the public library job I eventually got, so I never really thought about that statement. While I loved my public library job, one of things I discovered I loved most about it was teaching public computer classes. Eventually it clicked with me that academi...
Post a Comment
Read more