Simon: You are my beautiful sister. River: I threw up on your bed. Simon: Yep. Definitely my sister.

'War Stories'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


Frankenbuddha - Sep 21, 2007 4:21:21 am PDT #3902 of 28212
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"

I'm like "But for just a little more, I could have TWO bedrooms, and one could be my LIBRARY!"

You have no idea what a thrill this is until you actually have one. I lived in studios for 10+ years, and now I've got more room than I know how to deal with. Buying something will probably mean scaling back space, and that scares me. Thankfully, I'm trying to be very aware of filling up what I have now, because it will be untenanble the next time I move, most likely (still hoping to find that cursed house that is going for a song - after some of the neighbors and landlords I've dealt with, ghosts would be almost calming).


Fred Pete - Sep 21, 2007 5:09:47 am PDT #3903 of 28212
Ann, that's a ferret.

Trianglistas, is Books Do Furnish a Room still in Durham?


flea - Sep 21, 2007 5:15:47 am PDT #3904 of 28212
information libertarian

It is. I've never been in, though.


Megan E. - Sep 21, 2007 5:30:15 am PDT #3905 of 28212

Jilli, don't give into the Twilight and its sequels hype! I read Twilight and really disliked how the author changed the vampire mythology. It was just...wrong.


Susan W. - Sep 21, 2007 6:39:00 am PDT #3906 of 28212
Good Trouble and Righteous Fights

I'm also very excited because in my 48 hours in Seattle, I saw not one but TWO awesome looking libraries (the main one downtown, and the Ballard one), whereas DC has the suckiest library system EVAH.

Well, IMHO the Seattle system spends too much money on buildings and not enough on books--the King Co. system, which covers everywhere in the county BUT Seattle, tends to have more copies of new releases, for example. (And yes, fellow Seattleites, I'm aware of how the Seattle system's funding set-up ties their hands and it's not like they can just shift construction/renovation money into collection development.) Still, it is a good library system on the whole--well-organized, friendly staff, lots of branch locations, etc.


Scrappy - Sep 21, 2007 6:45:44 am PDT #3907 of 28212
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

We are getting rid of books, as we will have two less bookcases in our new place. We have ten of these [link] plus built-in bookshelves, and we are losing the built-ins so we have to prune. I am actually finding quite a few books which we don't need to keep. For example, "Middlsex" We both read it, neither of us wants to read it again, no reason for it to languish on our shelves when it could be out there making some other reader happy. I look at getting rid of books as giving a gift to that mysterious other reader, which makes it a lot easier.


askye - Sep 21, 2007 6:47:58 am PDT #3908 of 28212
Thrive to spite them

I need the hive mind!

Mom works as the media specialist for her school, which is for special needs students. They are really working on encouraging reading with the students and are always looking for new books and the encouraging has really worked, one parent told Mom that her son loves books, even though he can't read he always is looking at the pictures and wants to be read to which is a big change from the beginning of last year.

But there are challenges, these are kids who may be preteen or teenagers but read on a very low level and some kids have a much higher comprehesion level when books are read to them than when they read, if that makes sense.

She wants to add books to their collection that are easy to read but aren't "babyish" . Does anyone have any recommendations?

Also, she's trying to figure out if a book exists, she thinks she's seen it before. It's a picture book with dark pages and animals eyes and might have a description of the eyes, and you turn the page and it shows the animal.


Jars - Sep 21, 2007 6:56:13 am PDT #3909 of 28212

Roald Dahl books, maybe? Although I assume they probably already have quite a selection.


askye - Sep 21, 2007 7:04:16 am PDT #3910 of 28212
Thrive to spite them

That might work for some of them, but a lot of the students can only read at preschool or kindergarten level (4 or 5 year old) and some of them can read at 1st or 2nd grade level.

So she's looking for more picture books. The school wants kids to have books that are more "age appropriate" instead of somethign that's seen as being "babyish" like Barney.

The problem is the books that a lot of the kids can read are stuff like Barney or Seseame Street, but since the kids are teenagers the school is trying to move them away from that.


Hil R. - Sep 21, 2007 7:07:51 am PDT #3911 of 28212
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l

The Wolves in the Walls? That book that Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak did a few years ago, based on the opera, whose name I can't recall right now? I've seen a really nice illustrated version of Casey at the Bat.