On Deck

I stayed up way too late last night to finish The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale. Good stuff. Can't wait for more!

Today, sadly, I'm going to be reading chapters 1, 4, and 11 of Reference and Information Services: An Introduction, Third Edition, by Bopp and Smith. So far, it does not succeed in evoking the image of a dewy young woman in a '50s style business suit in her pearls and chignon, clutching her clipboard and smiling her Marlo Thomas-That Girl smile up at her first library the way Evaluation does. Also, though the type isn't small, the density is intimidating. Still, I'm sure it'll be fine; it's only 60 pages or so.

After this, though, I need to decide what I'm going to read next for my own self. I appear to be on an unavoidable Young Adult Fantasy kick. So I'm choosing between more YA fantasy (The Rebel Angels, by Libba Bray (not to be confused with the Robertson Davies book of the same title, about Canadian academics studying Rabelais, which was also a very good book)), which I'm very excited to read; the YA non-fantasy Long May She Reign, by Ellen Emerson White, which I'm interested in theoretically but not really drawn to; and The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, which I'm really only even trying to read because I'm feeling guilty that I've only ever read Huck Finn--and even that guilt is just because Lynne's systematically devouring Twain's biography and biographical information.

Oh, but I've already started Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, which is really good. I'm not usually a huge fan of modern-day back-to-the-earth experiments--they seem snooty to me. And it's true that Kingsolver doesn't deal very thoroughly (yet) with people who don't have the land or time to do what she does with food (I won't say money; it's not as much about money). But she's a compelling writer and she really lives these things--the life came before the theory, if that makes sense, which I think I respect a lot more. I'll probably be devoting more time to this book when I've read a bit more.

Oh, and I went to storytime at the local library yesterday. The librarian is just finishing up the program I'm in and invited me to observe. It was crazy and chaotic and fun, and I have to say, I think it's the first time since I came anywhere near library school that I had a moment where I felt perfectly clear. Evaluation class is another universe from where I want to be, but storytime really made me think: this is what I want, and this is where I want to be. I want to do this, exactly this, all the time. It was really refreshing, and made a lot of this feel worth it.

But good grief, now I need a job!