Friday, October 14, 2011

it's all over the place.

The Middle of Everywhere, by Monique Polak.  This was a good book, and I'd use it for 7th and 8th grade, but about halfway through there are a few things that make me think I can't randomly promote this to kids I don't know.  A great book, though.

How to Survive Middle School, by Donna Gephart.  This book is a really fast read, but I'm a quarter of the way through and nothing really exciting is happening.  Probably it's a good book for some kids, but this kind of introspective, non-action stuff is hard to promote.

Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, by Holly Tucker.  This was a good book, but a little hard to get through for me because there were so many people and we know I have a problem with that, compounded by the fact that I left this on my bedside table.  615.39

Legends: New Short Novels, edited by Robert Silverberg.  I found this volume while doing my weeding project (I left it on the shelf unweeded).  I only read one of the stories, "The Sea and Little Fishes" by Terry Pratchett.  After a little digging, it looks like Pratchett also has a short story in Legends 3.  Can anyone lay hands on that?  The story in this book is a Granny Weatherwax story line addition.
Note: The cover and inside flap make it look like "Legends: New Short Novels" is the title, but the frontis piece says "Legends: Short Novels by the Maters of Modern Fantasy" and our catalog records says more simply "Legends: Stories by the Masters of Modern Fantasy."

Here's to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army, by Carla Kelly.  I felt I had to weed this from the Fiction Collection a few months ago, but it looked really good so I took it home.  I really enjoyed these stories, and I don't usually like short stories.  It is a sad fact that short story anthologies do not circulate at this library, unless we're talking a 3-novella book of romance or bonnet-busters.

A Brief History of the Future: From Radio Days to Internet Years in a Lifetime, by John Naughton.  I was hoping this would by my 620s, but it's not working for me.  There's an awful lot of hard technology that's difficult to follow, especially since (I didn't realize when I checked it out) it's from 1999.  The sections on the internet read like a how-to from the time, but now are totally incorrect.  I think it's worth keeping in the collection for historical purposes: in 15 years, no one under 30 will remember that dial-up noise.

Isle of Passion, by Laura Restrepo.  Weeded.  Looked interesting.  Wasn't.

1 comment:

Ted Viveiros said...

Keep up with the blog. Let's just hope it is from Washington state. Wherever it is, keep up the good work.