Right, it's December, and I can officially admit to feeling festive and doing festive things. Like burning the first inch of my advent candle (if I was being picky and/or Christian I could point out that today is *not* the first day of advent (that was Sunday), but my candle goes from 1 - 24 so that's that), picking out Christmas presents on Amazon, and reading Christmas blogs. It's our first Christmas 'at home', and our first married one too, so we're doing a bit more in the way of decoration this year:

15:09

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You know what's really guaranteed NOT to improve your day? When your friend's toddler points at you (a woman) and happily yells 'MAN!' His mother hastily alleged that he always gets that wrong at the moment, but he then pointed at a male student and went 'MAN!' so I'm not convinced.

16:25

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Book 66 and 67: Where Have All The Boys Gone by Jenny Colgan and Back Story by Robert B Parker
These books almost don't count, because I've read Back Story before (notable because Spenser meets Jesse Stone, I guess), and I might as well have read WHATBG before, because it's by Jenny Colgan. But I had to have something to do while cowering under a blanket on the sofa on Sunday, to cold to move and brain-dead after a Saturday of dissertation.

Tags: 50 Book Challenge

11:46

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Having finally found mybookyourbook, I'm not sure it's as lovely an idea as I first thought it might be. As the site points out, getting twelve books through them (or rather, through the members' various shared bookshelves) will cost about £18. Plus there's a joining fee. Getting twelve (or twelve hundred) books from the library is FREE and it's FREE to join. Also, perhaps this is just my addled brain, but it all seems a tad complicated, what with the posting and the emailing and the self-addressing. I usually try to avoid going to the post office if at all possible, as the man who works there is a brusque Canadian who treats all transactions beyond buying a first class stamp as outrageously demanding and frivolous, and he scares me.

Sometimes I do worry about the survival of lending libraries, though. I have been totally stunned by the number of people who've said to me in conversation about the new Jubilee library and such: 'well, I don't really like borrowing books from libraries, because of all the germs'. I mean, WTF? Even a fellow trainee librarian said this to me once! And a visiting speaker, high up in library management, claimed that since 'everyone' could now afford to buy books, libraries had to reconsider their function.

I know that borrowing *is* going down, but maybe that's sometimes because library management have put the cart before the horse and changed their priorities away from lending without really consulting their users. If it's made more difficult to borrow, then of course people won't do it.

I do agree that libraries should modernise and be user-friendly and blah blah, but I don't think the answer lies in aping Borders. Having thematic ever-changing displays and stacks of new books can work where you have multiple copies (and thus a specific book can also be found if you're looking for it on the shelf in the normal way), but if you have ONE copy and it's in QuickPicks, the user who's looked in the catalogue and/or gone to the alphabetical shelves is going to be disappointed. Of course, you can ask the staff, but that's hardly consistent with lovely posh self-issue and its implication of quick and easy service.

Wow, that turned into a rant without me even noticing. Sorry.

Tags: libraries reading sharing

10:36

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