booksinmythorax - Tumblr blog

[booksinmythorax]

Ms. Inez is still at Abbott and is part of Ava’s book club!!! Huge day for annoying gay people (me)

[booksinmythorax]

"Don't use Libby because it costs libraries too much, pirate instead" is such a weird, anti-patron, anti-author take that somehow manages to also be anti-library, in my professional librarian-ass opinion.

It's well documented that pirating books negatively affects authors directly* in a way that pirating movies or TV shows doesn't affect actors or writers, so I will likely always be anti-book piracy unless there's absolutely, positively no other option (i.e. the book simply doesn't exist outside of online archives at all, or in a particular language).

Also, yeah, Libby and Hoopla licenses are really expensive, but libraries buy them SO THAT PATRONS CAN USE THEM. If you're gonna be pissed at anybody about this shitty state of affairs, be pissed at publishing companies and continue to use Libby or Hoopla at your library so we can continue to justify having it to our funding bodies.

One of the best ways to support your library having services you like is to USE THOSE SERVICES. Yes, even if they are expensive.

*Yes, this is a blog post, but it's a blog post filled with links to news articles. If you can click one link, you can click another.

[booksinmythorax]

It makes my heart full, seeing all the booktok trends and such going around these last few years. I was really worried that reading books would be lost on the newer generations of kids but I’m glad we can show them reading is cool :)

[booksinmythorax]

Hey New York people!

The city’s libraries have already had to cut Sunday service and limit hours. The new budget being put forward is even worse for libraries and may require the loss of another day of service.

Please contact City Council and the Mayor asking for budget restoration

[booksinmythorax]

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

[booksinmythorax]

public libraries are so sick. there are five books I want to read and they're all relatively new so they're only available in hardback which is so expensive but it just cost me $0 to place holds on them. five books for zero dollars. it requires nothing but clicking a button and then going to the library to pick them up when they're ready. zero dollars. that's crazy

[booksinmythorax]

thinking about the poll about canon vs non-canon ships that didn't define terms, and the current fandom focus on things "going canon," so i made up a scale.

this is NOT a question about whether canon matters to what you ship (or matters at all), just how to define the phrase "canon ship."

many ships start low on the scale and slow burn their way up, so vote for the point when you would have called them "canon." i agonized over the order (especially #4-6) for a day and a half, but i went with the order in which i think joe random with a nielsen ratings box and no tumblr account would notice/call something a romantic relationship.

[booksinmythorax]

ok which one of y'all said "fie, notes upon ye"

[booksinmythorax]

This is, perhaps, the funniest of the graphs

How ya doing down there on your own, The Odyssey by Homer?

[booksinmythorax]

Honestly thought I'd never hear the word "usborne" again. My mom used to live and breathe that company, and while I certainly don't regret a fair chunk, I do find it amusing as I look back now. I legitimately thought it had fallen off faster than Juice+.

In reference to a post where i mention my kid has the usborne “see inside germs” book.

So if people don’t know, usborne is a weird publishing company that has done indispensable books for British children for generations; they’re in every library, school and nursery, and have shelves devoted to them in every bookstore. They are how many people learned to read, and are the originators of many hyper focuses. They’re famed for doing educational lift the flap books for all ages, like “see inside your body”, as well as as the ubiquitous touch-and-feel series, “that’s not my….” In which a mouse comments improbably on various creatures not being their creature. “That’s not my dragon,” the mouse says, inviting you to stroke a dragon with a patch of fur on it, “its tummy is too soft. That’s not my dragon,” on the next page, where the dragon’s ears are lined with textured paper, “its ears are too bumpy.” This seems like such an inefficient way to find one’s missing dragon, a fact that simmers underneath you through endless repetition. Why does the mouse own so many things (pirates, ducks, polar bears) and why is it interrogating other people’s pirates etc by feeling their legs.

At any rate, turn a parents’ house upside down and these books fall out.

Which is why it’s completely hilarious that they are also an MLM.

Well. Kind of. In the old school sense. It’s less about signing up a pyramid scheme and more about getting a random citizen to buy a crate of perfectly popular books and try to sell them on from their home. It’s very traditional for Mums On Maternity Leave to do this. Pre-social media and online ordering, they’d hook up other mums at toddler group. Today, they post awkwardly on social media. The idea is that buying from another parent is cheaper than the bookstore, and they get to keep the markup. They get intense about things, and I believe they attend conferences. Nobody makes a huge amount of money and it’s unclear how undercutting local bookstores is helpful; it’s also basically the same RRP as Amazon I think.

And the books are perfectly respectable and sell perfectly well in bookstores.

So. Like. This marketing scheme is completely weird. Why?? Why does it still exist? People buy the books normally! You don’t need to promote them aggressively! You don’t need elaborate independent local middlemen schemes! You can just buy them! I have never understood this. I just file it under one of those weird mat leave hustles.

But don’t worry OP. They’re still going. They’ll never stop. The thing is that your mom got bored and online sales probably ate whatever residual profit margins were left and it’s probably very liberating for everyone to grow out of the “that’s not my cow” stage, but Usborne books are going strong.

[booksinmythorax]

So you're an adult who wants to start reading for fun, but you don't know where to start

I'm a librarian, and I hear at least once a week from people who sheepishly tell me that they'd love to start reading for fun (for the first time or after a long break). Here's my best advice broken down into bullet points, but start here: there is no shame in being a beginner.

-Think about what you do enjoy and start from there. So you're not a book person. Do you like movies? Television? Podcasts? Music? Tabletop games? Video games? What other media do you like and what does it have in common? Make a little list and Venn diagram that shit.

Maybe you're into stories about fucked-up families (Sharp Objects, Succession) or found families (lots of realplay TTRPG podcasts, Leverage, Avatar: The Last Airbender) or fucked-up found families (various Batman media, Steven Universe, The Good Place). Maybe you mainly watch or listen to stuff for the romance (Taylor Swift music, The Best Man, Heartstopper) or the sci-fi horror (The Magnus Archives, M3gan, Nope) or the romantic sci-fi horror (Welcome to Night Vale). And hey, maybe you're not a fictional media person at all. What do you like? What do you want to know about? World history? True crime? Home improvement? Birdwatching? Gardening? Various animals and their behavior? Human psychology? Cooking? If it's a thing, there are books about it. Start there.

Think about why you started to dislike reading. Did an adult snatch a book you thought looked cool out of your hands and say "Don't read that, it's below your reading level/above your reading level/a comic, not a real book"? Did school give you an endless parade of miserable, bleak books and tell you they were universal stories about the human condition? Or did it maybe only give you stories with saccharine, unearned happy endings, or only show you stories about straight cis wealthy abled white kids, or keep you from reading entire books at all in favor of endlessly dissecting tiny passages out of context? (For some vindication, check out "How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading" by John Holt.) Did you have an older sibling or a friend who was better at reading? Did adults put you in competition with that other kid and make you feel like shit about it? Were you in a situation where you were good at reading in one language, or even more than one, but required to read in another that you were still learning? Did this make you feel like you were "behind schedule" or like you shouldn't read at all? Or was reading just harder for you than it seemed for other people? Did reading give you headaches? Did the letters or numbers seem to float around on the page? Was it hard for you to focus for long enough to get through a whole book? Did you need to learn to read differently than the kids around you could? Did adults punish you for this instead of helping you? (Look, I'm not a doctor, but if any of these apply to you, consider going to an optometrist, a psychologist, and/or a psychiatrist to talk about these things if they're persistent and interfere with your life.) Or maybe you're burned out on reading. Maybe you did an advanced degree in literature or writing or history or some other reading-heavy discipline and you're just tired. Maybe your professors or classmates got snobby about what constituted "literary" works and their good opinion didn't line up with what you actually enjoy. You get to be sad and angry about these things, if they happened to you. They're also clues to how to move forward if you'd like to read more, or enjoy reading more.

Give yourself permission to read whatever you want, in whatever way you want. Wanna start with young adult books? Middle grade books? Awesome. Many of them have stories that are sophisticated and complex. Starting with re-reading the first books you enjoyed reading could help jog your memory about why you initially found it fun. Hell, even picture books are a good start. Have you read a picture book lately? Those things are getting cooler every day. Comics and graphic novels? Those count as reading. Many of them are published for adults, though again, the ones published for a middle-grade or young adult audience are often complex and moving. If you're an anime fan, give manga a shot. The source material for many anime go deeper into the characters and stories, especially now that anime seasons are often truncated to 12 episodes for entire series. (The right-to-left thing is easier to get used to than you think, too.) Romance novels and mystery thrillers and science fiction and fantasy? Those count as reading. Many of the things you might have liked about the books you read as a child or a teenager are present in adult "genre" fiction, and many of the things you might despise about adult "literary" fiction (god, I hate that word, but that's another post) may be absent from those titles. E-books and audiobooks definitely count as reading, and they're often more accessible than paper books for some people. Anybody who tries to genre- or format-shame you is a dick and not worth talking to.

Go to your local library. All right, shameless self-promotion here, I'll admit it. But I promise you, if you walk into a library and say "I'm an adult, I stopped reading a while ago, and I'd like to start back up again but I need suggestions," you will make someone's day. I get asked for my opinion about books approximately once a month. I get asked how to use the printer approximately eighty-five times a day. I love helping with the printer and I'm saying that unironically, but my colleagues and I absolutely adore "readers' advisory" questions. If you come with the answers to the above questions about your preferred genres, formats, and reasons you'd like to read, it'll help the process, but most of us are trained to ask follow-up questions to get you the best possible book match. Do not apologize. You are not bothering us. It is literally part of our job. We want people to know that reading is fun, and you are a people.

[booksinmythorax]

The thing with statistics - via

[booksinmythorax]

My dear friends: When a librarian or teacher says "Audiobooks count as reading", we do not literally mean that audiobooks are the same as decoding visual meaning via symbols representing sounds. We mean, among other things:

Audiobooks can expose listeners to new vocabulary and forms of syntax.

Audiobooks can present listeners with long-form fictional narratives with engaging characters, interesting literary devices, and poetic turns of phrase.

Audiobooks can teach listeners new information in a long-form manner that goes into depth or wide breadth on a particular subject or subjects.

Audiobooks can help listeners' verbal comprehension skills.

Audiobooks can do all these things without presenting the same difficulties to blind, low vision, partially sighted, visually impaired, or dyslexic listeners; listeners with ADHD; listeners who experience physical difficulty with holding a book or e-reader; or listeners who are disabled in a host of other ways that a physical book or e-reader might present.

The written word is not specially imbued with magical noble worth above the spoken word, and if you think it is, you may have some ableism and/or racism to deconstruct.

[booksinmythorax]

I think the hot new trends for this summer should be reading comprehension and critical thinking skills

[booksinmythorax]

Cocaine was a stimulant used by a priestly caste of the middle period United States called businessmen in order to commune with The Market. [1]

[booksinmythorax]

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

[booksinmythorax]

So Fox News ran a story about how they think libraries are turning into drug-infested sex dens and I am shocked, shocked that I was never offered any drugs during my 15+ years working in libraries.