Tuesday Blurbs: Reading, Literacy, and Sneaking Into the Library

Intrigued by the title? I hope so! I’ll take today’s topics in reverse order …

When I wrote my introduction for Booklights, Susan Stephenson of the Book Chook added a comment saying she was looking forward to my thoughts on “exploiting the library.”  Well, today is her lucky day (and yours, too!).  Today I’m sharing ideas about ways to explore the library after hours … from the comfort of your sofa … with coffee in hand!

I’m starting to think I should have signed up for NaNoWriMo … today at the Buy Books for the Holidays website, I’ve got a profile about Reading is Fundamental. Every Tuesday for the next six weeks, I’ll be profiling a literacy nonprofit. For the formal profiles, I selected organizations with national or international reach who serve children, adults, and families. A quick search at Donors Choose.org shows us that there are thousands of literacy-based projects in need of help.

So if you have a particular community project you are passionate about, PLEASE visit Buy Books for the Holidays and leave a comment on my post. I will be adding these projects to the weekly list and Amy is adding them to the Charities page on the website! Thanks to Jodie B for the recommendations to add Color Online and Susan’s project to fill gaps in her community library, as well as author Becca Fitzpatrick’s efforts to help stock a community library in a Roanoke housing project.

I did a twitter drive-by on my way over … I loved @fuseeight and has her usual indominable musings about the stars “and heavenly firmament” aligning for the birthdates of Sesame Street, @neilhimself, and @hollyblack all share the same birthday? I’m betting that Betsy has the honor of the first tweet with “firmament” in it.

On a lark, I decided to go back through the old Literacy and Reading News roundups last night … only to discover that November 10, 2008 was the first of the new partner editions with Jen Robinson. Here’s to another great year! Thanks, Jen.

Last Thursday, author Christine Louise Hohlbaum (whom I’ve known for five years) came “home”  to promote her new book The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World. During her talk at the New Dominion Bookshop, she talked about the ten themes that are the foundation for the book, and busted a few myths. Did you know there is no such thing as multi-tasking? Its task switching … just done very quickly. So “texting while driving” is actually texting OR driving. Scary, huh?

Any-hoo, the theme that resonated with me is that in trying to juggle more than one thing (read: 10 tabs open in browser), you’re I am creating the illusion of efficiency because you’re I am constantly switching back and forth. As I begin the catapult into the holidays and the usual “what have I done, where am I going” that comes with the end of the year, I’m going to find ways to slow things down around here.  I’ll be around … but only in one place at a time.