The Rivals

The Rivals

This was not the cover of the copy that I read. This was, and I did not enjoy it. I thought it was strange how quickly they re-branded Daisy Whitney’s “Mockingbird” series. The original cover actually compelled me to read it. The simple, mysterious bird in the sea of coyly smiling teenagers and torsos. The “new” cover for The Mockingbirds falls prey to that trap.

But this isn’t a blog about aesthetics or marketing.

This is a blog about words.

The Rivals continues in some sense where The Mockingbirds left off. A new school year means a new season for the Mockingbirds. A cheating ring overlaps with an adderall pharming ring at Themis. Tension is tighter than ever between Alex and the indifferent school administration. Whitney is excellent at creating realistically infuriating characters. No book has fired me up more than The Mockingbirds as Whitney tackled the topic of date rape. She attempts the same high-stakes attitude with The Rivals, but the story misses the mark. Adderall pharming and cheating rings don’t quite reach the same level as date rape. Whitney does not try equate date rape and adderall pharming/cheating rings together, but without the high stakes…I lost the reason to care. Also, Whitney was juggling a love triangle and the emergence of a competing justice system at Themis. Plot juggling is not at its finest.

With all that said, I will be disappointed if Whitney does not write a third book in the Mockingbird series. Whitney used the direct plot of this book (the adderall pharming ring) as a vehicle to get to the real plot (the competing justice system) and now I need to know how everything fleshes out. I haven’t heard any rumblings about a third book on the internet though, so I am a bit worried.

Thumbs: 1 out of 2.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Wild

A storm is bearing down on the East Coast and there is an eerie calm-before-the-storm sensation outside. People are stocking up on essentials, but at the same time, everyone is hanging-out, just waiting. Waiting for the uncertain. I am about to go into work, but before I go, I wanted to remark that I finished Cheryl Strayed’s Wild.

With the nature of my job (and lack of self-control), I get sucked into reading crazes easily. I understood the general gist of this book: girl’s mom dies, girl backpacks to find clarity. But, I found much more in Strayed’s story than that. I found her well-documented descriptions of the realities of hiking and her detailed descriptions of the landscape of the Pacific Crest Trail. Most importantly though, I was enveloped in her sense of peace.

At the start of the story, Strayed bottomed-out. Her mother was dead, her siblings were scattered, she was recently divorced, and had a minor affair with drugs. Not exactly the description of a world-class hiker? But in a way it is. People hike for personal, internal reasons. As Strayed hiked along the trail, she encountered many different kinds of hikers. The Eagle Scout. The Honeymooners. The Adventurer. She didn’t consider herself among them, until near the end of her hike from southern California up to Oregon. Nothing made her any different from her fellow hikers. They were one. They each encountered their own struggles on the trail, but still, they survived. They conquered. They endured.

 

An aside, I loved the brief mention of Mt. Whitney in southern California. This past summer I had the chance to visit the Rockwell Museum of Western Art in Corning, New York where this painting was on display:

Mt. Whitney

Mt. Whitney. Albert Bierstadt.

The image doesn’t do the actual painting justice. I hope to see this site in reality someday.

Strayed included this quote:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.”

– Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

I have an idea for mine. What do you plan to do with yours?

Thumbs: 2 out of 2.

Two awesome things happened at work yesterday

Staff

Parking is limited at the library. The “staff parking” consists of four spots for at least 15 people at any given time. Street parking is a nightmare. Luckily my shifts overlap with the “dead” time in the parking lot so parking hasn’t been a big problem. During orientation with the HR Manager today, she gave me this – “Just in case” I ever have to park near Town Hall. Anxiety quelled!

Then I met the reference librarian, Barbara Gordon.

Barbara Gordon the librarian.

I almost fainted.

And in that moment, I swear we were nerds.

National Novel Writing Month 6.0

Harpy

This is entirely Kim the Librarian’s fault. She introduced me to National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, in 2007 and I haven’t looked back since.

What the heck is NaNoWriMo? Is that a disease? Is it contagious? Well, a little. NaNoWriMo is an annual writing project that occurs in November. For 30 days people from all over the world write in pursuit of drafting a 50,000-word novel. Some are halo-ed “winners” for reaching the word count, and some are cast in the abyss of Internet fanfiction.

I am a perpetual citizen of the abyss.

But not this year! This year I have a semi-solid outline for my adventure, comedy story “The Adventures of Harpy and Wonder Beard.” I am actually restraining myself from writing prior to the November 1st start date. Incredible! For whatever reason this story feels different from my previous attempts. The story and characters feel natural.

I dig it.

And to plug: NaNoWriMo has an initiative for writing in libraries – Come Write In. A career goal of mine is to spearhead this program in a library someday.

Come Write In

Incremently Productive Thursday

No, I did not read 20+ books in the last week and write reviews for them. I published them on a previous incarnation of this blog and I did not want them to go to waste. The process was long and tedious, but I am happy with the choice to post them. The process also allowed me to reflect on how things have changed in the last year. Like…

I needed that moment to step back and see how things changed. The world and this field change every day, but sometimes you don’t notice.

FAQs for the State Library of Pennsylvania

One time, I had an internship in the Pennsylvania Governor’s Office of Policy & Planning , but I sought out projects from the State Library.This produced a lot of stress from trying to balance the different work loads.

15 weeks later, I had an FAQs document on the State Library website.

Always follow your heart.

Top 25 Largest Libraries in North America

Excerpt from The Librarian’s Book of Lists, in terms of volumes.

  1. Library of Congress
  2. Harvard University
  3. Boston Public Library
  4. Yale University
  5. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  6. University of Toronto
  7. University of California, Berkeley
  8. Columbia University
  9. University of Texas at Austin
  10. Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County
  11. University of Michigan
  12. New York Public Library
  13. Indiana University
  14. University of Chicago
  15. Stanford University
  16. University of California, Los Angeles
  17. Toronto Public Library
  18. Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information
  19. Cornell University
  20. University of Wisconsin, Madison
  21. County of Los Angeles Public Library
  22. University of Washington
  23. Detroit Public Library
  24. Princeton University
  25. University of Alberta

So…who wants to go on a road trip?