I don’t read that many Sci Fi books or movies but on vacation this vessel caught my eye. It looked like something out of a science fiction book, I was fascinated by it. I could not for the life of me, take my eyes off it. It looked like a hodge podge of miscellaneous items put together to make a boat. I know, I get excited about strange things 🙂
I saw this while walking on the beach on vacation in Mexico and I had to stop and watch it. We didn’t see anyone aboard it and I went back a couple times that day and it was still there. It was actually there for the three days, I had to check. I finally approached a man, who was walking up along a resort’s fenced-in area and he informed me that he didn’t speak English but I tried to ask him anyway, what that thing was in the water and what I could understand was, that it had something to do with the seaweed from the ocean.  They do have an issue with the seaweed in the ocean washing up on the beaches there. I’ll have to do more investigating on that. Â
Let’s talk numbers. I like numbers. If I remember back when I was a child, I guess I always have. As an adult, this love of numbers led me into my first college degree, which is accounting. When I received my second college degree, my love of numbers continued, as I was constantly trying to convince my students that math was fun. This feat somedays was more challenging than accounting. Now, as a book reader and a blogger, I noticed that numbers are playing a big role in my life again.
Has anyone else noticed how much numbers play an important part of your reading life? These past few months, I have really noticed this and perhaps it’s because I don’t have a lot of free time anymore. It also might be because some of the numbers I am looking at, are getting larger.
Pattern obtained by superimposing black numbers on multicolored background. This is obtained by multiple colors paint watercolor technique on paper.
Goodreads is one area I am looking at. Have you seen some of the reading goals that some individuals set? I’ve been reading some blog posts and I am amazed that some individuals aim for goals of 300+ books per year! That is almost one book a day! In my mind, I think, how can someone read one book a day? Wow! If I could do that, my TBR shelf might get empty before I die.Â
Then, there are the Goodreads Giveaways. Have you seen the numbers on some of them? I got a notice yesterday about one that had 100 copies available. That sounds like a lot of books and I might have a chance to win one of them BUT there’s already 16,634 individuals that have already entered! Yeah, this one wasn’t looking good now. A couple other giveaways this week that I received notices for, my odds were not in my favor: 2.2%, .55%, .016%, and .31%. It’s great that there are the giveaways but these numbers are huge!
I noticed today that according to Goodreads, I am “behind 2 books” according to my goal for the year. I hadn’t been paying much attention to that bar on the page but now, I most certainly am.
When writing a review, I try to be honest and fair. I don’t add spoilers and I try to write something that I would like to read, if I were a reader. When posting a review, I always wonder if anyone actually read it or cared. I don’t get hung up on this but having the “like” and/or “comment” button is nice and is another number feature of reading. I like following individuals to see what they have read and how they feel about it. By leaving something on a post, I feel as if I have left a bit of myself there for them. That “like” or “comment” is another number.
Books: The books that I want to read is a continuous growing number that I must constantly maintain. The number grows and I try to weed it down every so often. The number of books in my house is growing and I don’t think this is a problem, yet. I have high hopes of dwindling this down.
So, there are some of the number issues that I have been confronted with lately. I’m sure there are others but these are the ones that come to the top of my head right now. How about you? Does anyone else notice lately or does it not bother you how numbers play into your reading?
Took some time out today to do some weed pulling at the library. On our main branch, we have a roof top garden where patrons can go and read, or visit or just hang out. You can even book the rooftop for your wedding, if you want. As volunteers, we pull the weeds that grow around the sedum. This garden space retains its own water.
This is the craft I had the kids do today at our library’s outreach program. I created this one as the sample to show them and I will then, give it to my 6 year-old granddaughter. They are paper bag books. I got the bags ready, the string and the white paper ready and the kids just had to assemble them. This was their second craft after they did the one supplied by the library. I had many kids just want to make the books which made me happy as we’re pushing reading to them. These are super easy to make and so much fun! I can’t wait to see what Stella thinks. I’m seeing a volume 2 in the future.Â
I went to two sales this weekend and made a haul! I found a woman who reads books that I like so we got to talk for a while. She said that she has found that people don’t read much anymore so, she has to buy all her books now whereas she used to trade books with people. Many of her books were nice and a few were worn (loved) but that’s fine because they were all .50 cents. Yes, fifty cents a piece. I didn’t take everything she had, I did have SOME self control as she had some books that I had read already and some books I already had but I found some I wanted to read and some she talked to me about so I bought them. I got quite a variety.
The next sale had kids books for a quarter. I already have quite a few kids books from my own kids and some I bought for my granddaughter but hey, you never have enough. I bought a few that I hadn’t seen before and some classics. I also bought some for the reading program this summer.
I’m getting ready for our summer reading program. This will be my 4th year helping with the summer reading program at the library. My friend and partner are the only original volunteers left. In the summer, for one day each week, we head to one of the local YMCA daycare centers and we meet up with a summer paid library staff person and run a summer reading program there. We bring books, crafts and computer tablets and we spend about 1.5 hours running centers there. One of us runs the book station, one does the crafts and we let the Y staff run the tablets. The kids read books for 20 minutes by themselves or with friends at the station (books are brought from the library and stay with the kids for the whole week). The crafts are brought from the library and the kids work on them and I also provide another craft which I bring from home because there are normally kids who finish quickly :). Along with the city-wide summer reading program, we have the staff keep track of the minutes the kids read each day and mark it down in a notebook. After X number of minutes, the kids get a free book from the library, etc. For kids at these sites, this might be the only time they get to the library all summer so this is an excellent outreach program.
We decided this year that we (the volunteers) would offer the kids a free book if they read over their required reading each week. I’ve been hitting the resell shops and garage sales looking for nice books to hand out to the kids, I have quite a few excellent choices. We are hoping this will spike our reading minutes as last year, they dwindled a bit. I know some kids like free books. I was wondering if we should offer something else besides books, like a small bag of chips instead. Any thoughts? I don’t want to hand out candy and I don’t want to get too something too expensive. I’ve bought some novels, graphic novels, how-to books, National Geo books, and easy books. We just want them to read.
One Chapter 