Sarah the Librarian

Ever since my grandmother bought a book about all the presidents for one of my early birthdays, I've had a bit of an obsession with the (so far only) men who've occupied the highest office in the nation. This has manifested itself in various ways over the years, but with my recent obsession with reading lists, I've decided to go ahead and try to read a book about each President in order. #1 - George Washington - George Washington  by Ron Chernow - finished 10/23/2017 #1 - George Washington - George Washington  by John MacGregor Burns - finished 2/8/2018 #1 - George Washington - You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington  by Alexis Coe - finished 1/3/2021 #2 - John Adams - John Adams  by David McCullough - finished c. 7/2003 #2 - John Adams - John Adams  by John Patrick Diggins - finished 2/16/2018 #3 - Thomas Jefferson - Thomas Jefferson  by Joyce Appleby - finished 3/1/2018 #4 - James Madison - James Madison  by Gary Wills - finished 3/14/2

It's funny, because I'm now in a position where I don't buy a lot of books, and even then they're more technical manuals and online reference materials than books you read from cover to cover for enjoyment. But my habit of reviewing what I read on my own time is certainly still in tact. And I do find the easy organization of what I've read in Goodreads to be a really helpful Readers Advisory tool, especially now that answering random questions at the reference desk is just about the only time I spend any significant time on RA. Anyway, I felt this milestone should be marked, but I'm out of profound organized thoughts on the subject.

This year I'm squeaking in under the wire with 100 books in my Goodreads timeline, although I'll admit a lot of them are picture books I've read with my kids, but I guess the millions of times I read and re-read most of them covers about the same amount of time as a longer book. I tried to focus on reading classics of literature for my main reading challenge and I really didn't get very far. I'm glad I tried and I did find some new favorites, but the ones that weren't favorites were a real slog to get through and it really slowed me down. I still managed to keep up the trend of finishing a lot of series and I got better about reading the books I own, so that's something. Without further ado, my top 5 reads of 2015 and 10 honorable mentions (listed in alphabetical order) Daring Greatly  by Brene Brown (2012) I've heard about Brene Brown for years, but finally reading one of her books just crystalized in my heart a lot of things that I alrea

This was the first year I did reading challenges , and I think I picked them well. Other than reading books I owned, I did great (and I got much closer to my failed goal than I expected). Setting a goal for finishing series, really pushed me in that respect and also taught me that it's okay to let a series go, even if I liked the first one. Unless I can't wait to find out what happens next, it's probably not worth my time. Reading books with titles starting with all the letters of the alphabet was a fun way to look at my to-read list in Goodreads and jump around and pick some things that had been sitting there awhile. I was also super psyched to hit my Goodreads goal of reading 100 books for the year. I've dreamed up some interesting challenges for myself for 2015, so I'll lay those out in another post, but to wrap up 2014, I'll list my favorites as I usually do - Top 5 ranked with a little explanation of why they were so fabulous and 10 honorable mentions lis

In recounting my favorite books read this year, it might be a little obvious that I'm working in a public library again. More recent works, more super popular works, and if you look at my Goodreads account, you'll see that I read way more books this year (audiobooks and my long commute make for happy listening) at 89, but that was still short of my goal for the year of 100. Despite expecting a baby next year, I'm still planning to try for 100 again. My Favorites: Zealot  by Reza Aslan (2013) : Comparing the historical Jesus of Nazareth to the biblical Jesus Christ is a pretty audacious task, but Aslan, an experienced religious scholar manages to be respectful while still questioning almost everything about the facts of Jesus's life. Part of the way he gets away with this is by beginning his book with a long discussion about the relationship between truth and fact. Maybe not for everyone, but anyone interested in the life of Jesus of Nazareth should give it a tr

Since I started my new job I really haven't had much time to post here, which is funny, because I've been doing so much learning and growing and thinking about librarianship as I fit into my new role that I could write almost endlessly, but that's also probably why I haven't had any time to get my thoughts in order. Anyway, to keep the old blog going, I thought I'd do one of these old-school survey things that I found over at A Patchwork of Books (and it looks like she got the idea from The Perpetual Page Turner , who looks like someone I should also be following, but really, am I even able to pay that much attention to the people I already follow?) . Author you've read the most books from:  sheer number is probably Ann M. Martin, since I read most of the over 100 Babysitter's Club books back in the day. I am well aware that you can skip Chapter 2. Best sequel ever: I tend to think of books in a series as all stuck together, so it's r

At this point this is the winner by far for Granny Reads. Haviland's novel covers all the major tropes of a historical bodice ripper. Our heroine's name is Desire, and she was tragically orphaned during the latest plague. Despite her gentle upbringing, Desire finds herself at the mercy of a brothel owner who orders her to either become a whore or earn her keep as a thief. Obviously our virtuous heroine can't become a whore, so she tries to steal from a man who turns out to be a highwayman with a mysterious past, whom we eventually discover is the wrongly disinherited son of a late country gentleman. It all sounds so ridiculous, and yet the relationship between Desire and Morgan feels so real. As far as any old school conventions of the genre, Desire is nearly raped about a billion times in this book, typifying the (hopefully) outdated notion that attempted rape should be seen as a compliment and confirmation of your good looks. There's also a homely spinster who is,

Over the winter, I read Redshirts  by John Scalzi, which was a really fun meta spoof on sci-fi TV shows, where the ensigns on board the ship theorize that the reason they have such a high mortality rate is because they're Redshirts on Start Trek -like show. The story was entertaining, but I only liked it, while my husband loved it. On the other hand, the story's three codas, which initially struck me as strange, eventually became my favorite part of the book. Normally this would just be a comment in a Goodreads review, but I thought the structure of the three codas - the first is told in first person, the second is told in second, the third in third - is a good excuse to have a conversation about point of view in fiction. Also, these codas were an excuse for a mostly comic novel to have a soul, and I love humor with a bit of heart.  If you want to read on, there will be broad spoilers since I'll be talking about where characters are at the end of the story. However, mos

This technically is not on my shelf of Granny Reads, but it was suggested to me by a coworker who also happens to be a grandmother and the story really fits the whole theme of Granny Reads, so I'm including it here. I can see why Morning Glory  was recommended so highly to me. I mostly started writing this series to highlight the way romance has changed over the last few decades, but this one was pretty timeless. There are certainly old-fashioned values at play here, but that's because the story is set in the early 1940s in a small town in Georgia. In a marriage of convenience, "crazy" widow Elly Dinsmore advertises for a husband to help her take care of her farm as the birth of her third child approaches, and only penniless ex-con Will Parker is desperate enough to take her up on her offer. While there's a fairly traditional division of labor on Elly and Will's farm, the reasons for this never feel dated. Elly knows house chores inside and out, plus she&#

Continuing my reading journey through a grandmother's collection primarily of romance novels, I'm writing about the first book I picked out of this pile. Married at Midnight  is another collection of stories, this time historical, all bearing the same title and about couples rushing to marry before a midnight deadline, most of them finding love only after they've become husband and wife. I like this one a little more than the Christmas collection I reviewed last, maybe because I can handle old-fashioned values in an old-fashioned setting better than in a modern one. Also, while the heroines in this collection still might not be very active participants in their relationships, they're all fairly brave at some point in their story. Jo Beverly's heroine searches out the father of her unborn child on a battlefield in Belgium so that she can marry him and ensure that the child won't be born a bastard. Samatha James tells of a heroine's attempt to end her fath

Generally I do a really terrible job of reading books right after they come out, so I doubt that aside from Gone Girl  there are many books published in 2012 that I actually read in 2012. Instead this is a list of my favorite books read for the first time in 2012. Signing Their Rights Away  (2011) by Denise Kiernan - I was blown away by how fun, informative, and flat-out readable this collection of short biographies of the signers of the Constitution was. The chapter titles are clever, the stories pull out fun facts, yet still manage to tell the important history of the early years of this country, and the cover folds out to be a life-size replica of the Constitution. This is just a quality project all-around. Thirteen Reasons Why  (2007) by Jay Asher - I finally got to this recent YA classic about a girl who kills herself and then leaves tapes behind explaining her reasons why. You'll pick it up because it's about the important issues of suicide and bullying, but you'll

When my husband and I moved into our current home, our landlord left behind several of his late wife's books, which were mostly romance novels. I love romance novels, but am too cheap/lazy to go out of my way to acquire them, so I was pretty excited about this unexpected bounty. Unfortunately, thanks in large part to the roughly 50 year age gap between us, the books aren't exactly what I'd pick out for myself. A lot of the titles seem to fall in that weird gray area between old school romance, where the heroes "seduced" (aka raped) the heroines in order to convince them who they should marry, and modern day romance where rape is extremely frowned upon. Still, I find that transition fascinating and so I'm enjoying reading these books for historical, if not entertainment, purposes, and I thought it might be fun to share what I found. Since we just celebrated Christmas, I thought it would be appropriate to share Silhouette Christmas Stories 1990, a collectio

I happened to finish several books this week, and they were all worth mentioning. The New York Regional Mormon Single's Halloween Dance  by Elna Baker , is a memoir of a 20-something Mormon in New York City. The two big themes to her story are that she used to be fat and she's still a virgin even in her late twenties. This isn't a perfect memoir, but anyone who's struggled with trying to live by the rules you grew up with even after you leave the place you grew up will appreciate Elna's dilemmas. Plus, she's pretty funny. Runaway Bride Returns!  by Christie Ridgeway is a Silhouette Special Edition about a firefighter and a librarian who marry in Vegas, only to have the librarian run out on him the next morning. I picked this one up for the librarian heroine, and while I enjoyed it, there wasn't anything extra special about it. Everything I Need To Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels  by Sarah Wendell - If you haven't gone to Smart Bitches

I've been reading a lot of teen fiction lately, so the fact that I'm actually reading some adult fiction this week is kind of weird. I was a little intimidated to start Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding . It's so big and with it's simple text cover, it looks so boring compared to all the fun stuff I've been reading lately. But so far I've really enjoyed it & I think there could be a lot of crossover to teen audiences, at least with what I've read so far. The main character is a college baseball player who's obsessed with a book called The Art of Fielding . But the book is more about Henry Skrimshander's life than baseball. It just happens that baseball is a big part of his life. What I'm trying to say is this isn't just a book for baseball fans, but for meaty general fiction fans. I'm not very far, but I can already tell there's a good story here. The other book I've been devoting some time to is Miss Peregrine's

200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare With her website $5 Dinners , Erin Chase has cornered the market on a affordable family cooking. In her first cookbook, she seeks to put some of her most popular recipes into print. Unfortunately I was not in much of a cooking mood while I had this book checked out, so I only got to try a few recipes, but they were all tasty, cheap, and easy to make. I'll admit I'm a little scared by all the extreme couponing going on right now, and Chase's website is heavy with it. Other than some explanations about couponing in the beginning sections, though, there's not much more said about it in the rest of the cookbook, thankfully. I love getting a good deal as much as the next person, but coupons and sales are such fleeting things that I don't want to read a budget cookbook where the only way you can make the meals cheaply is to hit the right sale/coupon window. All

About a month ago I decided to become an Independent Pampered Chef Consultant, and while that's separate from my library career, I can't help but notice ways that being a librarian can help me share quality kitchen tools with people. For one, I've already talked at length here about my recently discovered love of teaching. Luckily for me, Pampered Chef is more about teaching than selling. The products are so good they sell themselves, so my role as a consultant is to more to guide people to the products that will best meet their needs and facilitate discussions about how to make cooking fast and fun (the only way you can get me in the kitchen). But this really isn't meant to be an entry about how great Pampered Chef is. It's really a way to introduce a series of cookbook reviews I'm going to be starting here. I have no pretensions to being a great chef, but now that I'm going to be getting paid to go into people's homes and demonstrate kitchen produ

I came across yet another study showing that reading fiction is good for developing empathy , and I love it. First of all, I find it really humorous that the study they talk about was based on readers of Harry Potter and Twilight identifying themselves as wizards and vampires. Maybe not the best way to make your case to the people who need to hear it made, but I can see how you can easily extrapolate the results. If readers can identify with supernatural creatures just by reading a story about them, then it should be easy to identify with all sorts of real social outcasts and minorities by reading fiction. Mostly I love it because I can feel how true this conclusion is in my own life. I've been a voracious fiction reader for as long as I've been able to read. While I occasionally enjoy narrative non-fiction and have found other non-fiction useful to me at various times throughout my life, I'm primarily a fiction reader. And the experiences I've read about in those b