A rough week

Sorry for the lack of updates this last week but it’s been a hard week. I’m not sure this is the place to get too personal with all of your lovely Internet people who I don’t know very well but I’ll just say it’s a breakup and I’m sad, but I’ll be OK. He’s a great guy and someday, we both hope to be friends again. But as for now, I will have more time for work, friends, and books, so that should be good. But forgive me if I avoid reading and reviewing any YA romances. I’ll be sticking to the zombie books and relying pretty heavily on this.

And this:

As a brief post, I’ll just say that this week, I managed to read two and a half books. Two of which are recommended: Where ThingsCome Back and Butter. They are pretty different, but both are fairly serious and are hard reads. Where Things Come Back manages to combine stories of long lost woodpeckers (not a euphemism, people!), the Book of Enoch, Ethiopia, missing kids, and the angel Gabriel. I know, it sounds like it’s crazy, but the writing is solid and the emotional and simple ending was perfect. It won the Printz award last year and I think it probably deserved it.

Butter is the story of an obese teen who puts up a website declaring he’s going to eat himself to death on New Years’ Eve. It is not for the faint of heart, but it does have a believable message about bullying, obesity, and the power of new starts. It made me think a lot about what has been called the ‘last acceptable prejudice.’ I challenge you to think about how you feel about fat people (I’m using the word “fat” because that’s how I understand how people in the fat acceptance movement refer to themselves) and read about fat acceptance and the health at every size movement. And read Two Whole Cakes – which I think I’ve talked about on before – it’s awesome.

Magisterium is the “half” book. I didn’t finish it. Maybe it’s because I had started it pre-breakup and then was insanely distracted by sadness, or just that I really had no idea what the heck was going on. And I didn’t care. So perhaps I am not giving the book a fair shake, but I’m suggesting it may not be worth your time to find out if I was being unfair.

Finally, lately, I’ve been struggling to come up with some more topics to talk about other than book reviews, so I figured I could ask all of your lovely Internet folks. Is there anything library-related you’re curious about and want me to address? Something you’ve always wanted to know about library culture or the way library works but haven’t asked? Ask me and I will try to answer!