Filed under: Books, Random Observations | Tags: Books, diploma, hours, librarian, library, love, time, volunteer, work
Volunteering is something that many teenagers my age are acquainted with. In order to get a nice shiny seal on your diploma, you need to complete a certain amount of hours volunteering in places that the school deem fit. I think that the intended purpose of this is to teach you about self dedication and giving back to the community but the only thing that I’ve learned thus far is that I prefer painting flowers to butterflies on the cheeks of small children. Over the course of the school year I try to pick up a few hours here and there but a majority of my hours come from my gig a the library. Every summer since I started high school I’ve been clocking hours at my local library, playing the footman of the librarians.
On Tuesday I began my term and got to kick off the season by shelving the non-fiction book. Yeah! If you’re into the whole Dewey decimal system. (By the way it really isn’t fun if you haven’t caught my drift yet) According to this system each book is assigned a number depending on what genre it falls into. These numbers can be found on the spine of the book, but not always, and are printed in size 9 font. Dewey must have had fun creating his system because some of the genres were in the weirdest relativity. For example the books about love and umm… love making were right next to the books about coroners and death. I have to say though in spite of myself I actually had some fun. It was interesting to see what kinds of books people were checking out from the otherwise quiet section. Something that I found rather amusing was that a book called “How to Prevent Strokes” smelled like cigarette smoke. *sigh* The joys of irony.
I <3 Books (and libraries)
Filed under: Books, Le voyage | Tags: airport, bed, book, cough, deprived, fall, flu, heathrow, home, london, shelf, sick, sleep, sneeze, space, swine, traveling, unpacking
I am so glad to be back home even though I am incredibly unaccustomed to the humidity. The flight was pretty uneventful though we were waiting in Heathrow London Airport for 4 hours. Because of the outbreak of swine flu in England, I was a bit more paranoid about germs than usual and when ever the opportunity to wash my hands presented itself I took it. Every time I heard someone cough or sneeze I subconsciously felt myself inch away from that person. I haven’t felt sick yet so I’m going to take that as a good sign so far 
There is probably nothing better than sleeping in your own bed after a long time away from home. When we got home after a 4 hour drive down from D.C. it was 2:30 in the morning and I felt like the walking dead, moving my feet but not really thinking. I crawled into bed shortly after walking (or should I say staggering?) through the door, having not retrieved the the luggage from the car or brushed my teeth. A sense of peaceful euphoria came over me as I pulled my covers up to my chin and let the waves of sleep wash over me.
Now all that’s left to do is to unpack my bags and put everything away. Unpacking for me is no fun because it is just cleaning in disguise but with a twist. Instead of just placing pieces of disorder back into their respective place like regular cleaning, you have to find entirely new places to put things. Take for example, my shrinking bookcase. I brought back some books that I liked from Prague but when I tried to put them away I found that I barely had any space for them. This does not bode well for my collection of books that are physically attractive yet otherwise uninteresting.
I have to say that there really is nothing worse than getting sick over the summer, especially if you are on vacation. Last week when my youngest sister succumbed to a case of the sniffles and a sore throat I knew that it was only a matter of time before the bug got me. It’s nothing that I can’t live with but I would mush rather be healthy. The worse symptom is the overwhelming sense of fatigue which kind of puts a kink in my busy see-it-all schedule. When Mom to us to the mall with our cousins and aunt I kept having to sit down for longer and longer periods… Now listen to me complain ^^’ Being tired did give me some time to catch up on my reading. In an attempt to expand my reading horizons I picked up a zombie horror novel at the library’s sale cart. I love the sale cart by the way; it’s a great way to test the water with a genre or series without having to dig deep into your pocket like you do a the book store. You also don’t have to worry about getting buyer’s regret if you pick up a book that is not exactly to your taste, which has happened to me a few times when I’ve bought books at Barnes and Noble. In this case I was glad that the said zombie book, City of the Dead by Brian Keene it you are curious, was less than a dollar. From beginning to end the book is a freaking gore. The author described in minute detail during several occasions how a zombie’s head explodes and throws brain matter on to the wall. And let’s not forget the gruesome deaths that faced most of the human characters in the book like, for example, the man who was pecked to death by zombie birds or the doctor who was eaten alive by zombies. All in all it wasn’t my cup of tea (Or in this case my type of organ) It’s not as if I was bothered (too much) by these depictions of massacre, but the ending was weak. For me an ending can make or break a book. Even if a book has been border-lining bad for most of the story, a good, strong ending will have me recommending it to my friends. It works the other way around too. I know this makes me sound impressible but that’s just the way it is. This book decided the last three pages of the book “Hey I’m running out of pages I guess I have to end now” There was no lead up what so ever. The author in the space of a few pages went from the ultimate battle between good and evil to the silent, peaceful deaths of the remaining characters. As a reader there just wasn’t enough time to process the emotions caused by the battle before the book was over. Since I don’t really have a background in zombie books, I can’t dismiss the book as good or bad but if it counts for anything I didn’t like it.
Oh my god let me tell you about an addictive read. Innocent looking book had been sitting on the top shelve of my bookcase for (and this is only a rough estimate mind you…) AGES! So last week I was in the pickle that a reader will occasionally find themselves in; at the end of a really good book. I had just finished reading a book called Almost Perfect and was pretty amazed at intricacy of the plot line and beautiful voice that she put into the story. My Dad had recommended it to me a while back and I just never got around to reading it until one day I was struck with great ennui and simply read it out of boredom. Didn’t I get lucky ^-^ I was really impressed at what my Dad had picked out (No offense or anything Dad 
) so I wondered if any of the other books that he had been bringing home were any good. Enter Stephen King. This book was epic. *pauses to let it sink in* Not only was the plot line as addictive as hell but there are (and I am not joking) more than a thousand pages in this freaking book. I’m a pretty fast read and can usually finish a 300 page book in about a day if the plot is good. This bad boy took me over a week to read. I was reading under the desk in many of my classes that’s how bad it was. My poor biology teacher was practicallysitting on my hands so that I wouldn’t read in class. The story itself starts in 1990 prior to a superflu pandemic that grips the world. You are introduced to a bunch of people from all over the continental U.S. and a great number of them end up dying. (Not to give the plot up or anything ^^)I have to say that my favorite character was Larry. His personality was so… vulnerable. On his mind he portrayed himself as such a bad person who only thought of his own needs but in reality he put other people in front of himself quiet often. It’s needless to say that Stephen King will definately be showing up as a book club book in the near future.
