library | Caught Read Handed

This was a short first week for the #ReadingMyLibrary Challenge – only four days! BUT I was able to read all of Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk and about 100 pages of The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows. Beautiful You made me feel really weird and uncomfortable and I’m not sure what I thought of it overall. Still processing. Orphan Queen is pretty cool so far. It took me a little bit to actually start it though; I read the first three pages several times before I processed what was happening. I think it was a side-effect of finishing Beautiful You. I’m also listening to Jackaby as an audiobook and I really like it. Nicola Barber is the narrator and she’s amazing with voices.

According to Amazon, I saved $33.40 by checking these books out from the library instead of purchasing them. Woo!

Each week during the Challenge, we’ve chosen a topic to discuss during our weekly update. This week’s topic is:

Tell us a little about your library (include a picture if you can!).

I work at a small library in a small town near central Mississippi. The population of the town is a little under 3,500 though not nearly that many people are registered at the library. We are part of the Central Mississippi Regional Library System, which comprises 20 branches in four counties. We’re pretty small, but we have a lot of amazing patrons, from kids to adults. We’ve got all your basic services, like faxing/copying/scanning, inter-library loan (though I’ve been here for 10 months and haven’t done one yet), computers, free wi-fi, newspapers/magazines, movies, and, of course, books. Some pictures? Like I said earlier, we are pretty small, so most of my pictures are from the same place because you can see almost everything from there.

: This is from the circ desk looking out at the library.

: We have two stuffed animals in the library, each done by the circulation person before me who recently retired.

: You can see pretty much the whole library from here, except the computer area behind me to the right.

: A small study area.

: The children’s section.

: Half of my YA shelves. Told you we were small.

I should’ve taken some more pictures of the computer areas and such, but I forgot. Ooops. But as you can see, the library is rather tiny. But I like it. 🙂 It’s a wonderful place to work and I have an awesome branch manager.

Alright, so there’s my week one update for the #ReadingMyLibrary Challenge. Now it’s your turn! What did you read this week? Link up below!

As a librarian, you see so many books come across your desk (either that you’ve ordered yourself or that your patrons are requesting) that you just don’t have time to read. Which sucks, honestly. Yes, you’ve ordered those books for your patrons, but let’s be honest: you’ve ordered them for yourself too. I order around 10-15 YA (and MG) books per month – remember when I said I’m at a tiny library? – all of which I want to read but end up just putting out into the library. As a library patron, I’m sure you have a LONG list of books you want to read, don’t you?

Well, Amy at Read What I Like and I have a solution for you! We’ve created the Reading My Library Challenge – a month long event in which we will try to read as many of those library books we’ve seen come in but haven’t had a chance to read yet! Sound fun? Join us!

Right now, we’re still in the planning stage, but we need help – from any other bloggers who work in libraries! This is what we know so far:

The Challenge will take place throughout the whole month of April (April 12-18, 2015 is National Library Week)
Anyone can participate as long as you have somewhere to share what you’re reading
You don’t have to exclusively read library books, as long as you are reading some library books
We’re going to have an EPIC Library Scavenger Hunt that will span all areas of a library and get you appreciating everything your library has to offer
We’ll have TWO giveaways – one for the Scavenger Hunt and one for participating in the challenge
We want you to have fun and save money – libraries are FREEEEE!

What we need right now is help ironing out all the details so we’re asking any bloggers who are also librarians to PLEASE sign up below (link will take you to a Google Form that will ask for your name and email). You can also feel free to send any questions or emails to caughtreadhanded [at] gmail [dot] com!

And of course, if you aren’t a librarian, but this challenge sounds like something you might like, keep your eyes open for a sign up post sometime next month! Leave any suggestions in the comments below or feel free to email me too!

If you want to talk about the challenge before April or would rather tweet suggestions, please use the hashtag #ReadingMyLibrary so we can all see what you have to say!

[Learn more about National Library Week]