Updates

Summer is winding down, and so am I. This summer has been eventful, and while I had a blast I am looking forward to a quiet fall.

Here are a few things about the past few weeks. 

1. My birthday was the last week of August. My family celebrated on the previous Sunday with burgers and apple crisp. On Wednesday, my friends and I checked out the new Grand River Marketplace then went to my house to play Cards Against Humanity until 4 am. 

2. I have read a lot of books. Over a hundred already (which beat my goal) and it's only September!

3. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback at work, and I am being sent to several conferences and workshops over the next two months. 

4. I am organizing my life. Changes are coming, and I feel energized. 

Haunting Your Mind

"Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit."

Neil Gaiman, Introduction to M is for Magic

From the Stacks

No matter how many books I read, the to-read pile continues to grow.

I shouldn't be allowed in the stacks—physical or virtual.

I Read Banned Books

I got this idea from Wondra of Wondra's World. Today is the last day of the 30th Banned Books Week. According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIC), ban attempts have been made on at least 46 classics novels on the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.

Here are the books I have read:


1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9. 1984, by George Orwell
11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
38. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
57. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
66. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

I have read 18 of the 46 listed; quite a few of the other titles are on my to-read list.

I don't want to imagine a world without the classics.

So Little Time

I have been preoccupied with my training. It has been a long time since I have been encouraged to learn. The beauty of my job is I will never stop learning. Libraries offer so much free data and information to the public; they're such a valuable resource. As Frank Zappa said, "So many books, so little time".

It is nice to be challenged.