Welcome to 2015!

WHOA!  I totally stopped posting over Holiday Break, but that's what breaks are for...to pause, relax, and rejuvenate.

To be honest, it's been kind of hard to get back in the swing of things.  I think I might have had too much fun over break.  I didn't do much: had lots of Christmas fun, played with the three beautifullest babies in the world, hung out with my awesome husband, spent time with great friends, wore lots of Christmas sweaters...Yes, an outstanding, yet SIMPLE, time to be sure.

However, I was having too much fun and didn't get to do all the reading I envisioned doing.  In fact, I barely started a new book.  My imaginings of having lots of time off from class to read ended up being the reality of spending lots of time with my babes during the day, watching lots of Avengers-related stuff with my husband at night, and then being too sleepy to read.  What a bad librarian!!!

 I did start Stephen King's latest book, Revival.  My son wanted to get me a book for Christmas, and he wanted it to be shiny.  While wandering around the bookstore, my husband saw Revival, showed it to  my son, and he approved.

 You can't tell here, but the physical copy has a shimmering sheen that met with my son's "shiny" approval.

It's off to a great start, with the main character facing moral dilemmas, drug addiction, and losing his mother and only sister in tragic ways...and that's all in the first 160 pages!  My goal was to have it finished by this week, but alas, that hasn't happened.  I hope to finish it soon, even though I have to read two novels by the start of class next Thursday.  I better get to readin'!!!

Here's to a great 2nd semester in the Uni High Library, a strong finish to my time in the GSLIS program, and hopefully I'll get some sleep along the way. 

Author Spotlight: October 2014

Maybe it was too easy to choose Stephen King for my first Author Spotlight Display, since it's October...but I did it anyway.  Our King books are pretty popular, and they often go out to the UIUC masses, but not a lot of our students check them out.  I hope this display will change that. 

I got the Author Spotlight idea from Pinterest, but I jazzed mine up a bit.  I added some signage with Vital Statistics, info on His Work, a Did You Know? sheet, and a sheet on how to listen to King's NPR Fresh Air interviews. 

You might be wondering how I could possibly decide which King books to display.  He's got so many!  Well, it was easy: I just pulled all of the ones off our shelves.  We have a few King titles that were originally paperback, but they have been rebound in less flattering Reader's Digest-like binding.  To solve this problem, I simply put the three of them together in between a couple of book ends.  I think they look alright that way! 

I am super glad we own one of my favorite Stephen King books, and the first one I read, Insomnia.  That along with his classic clown terror IT were nice book ends to one of his short story collections, Full Dark, No Stars (which I still need to read).

Our collection contains King's Green Mile in the original novella form, so I also put those together in between a couple of book ends.  Again, I think it has a lovely effect...I just hope students aren't afraid to break up the collection. 

It's a good start for the Author Spotlight Display.  I still have to work out a few kinks: I hope to do this once/month, but I don't how long it will stay up.  I want other displays to go here, too, so maybe I'll put this up for a couple of weeks each month.  That being said...WHO WILL BE MY NEXT AUTHOR OF NOTE???