Was that supposed to be the book I read? - Beautiful Creatures

 

My mom and I went to the movies last night to see Beautiful Creatures.  I never expect a book and movie to be identical.  Occasionally, they surprise me and don't cut too many major parts (like The Lord of the Rings and most of The Harry Potter movies), sometimes, a movie surpasses even the book (rarely), sometimes the movie adaptation becomes a separate classic in its own right (Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird), but as is usually the case, this movie adaptation left me wondering what they were thinking in places.  That's not to say that the movie was bad.  I actually liked the movie, and I liked the actor and actress that they chose for the main characters.  They weren't completely what I expected, but they did a good job and they seemed to have chemistry on the screen.  What bothered me was that they took a fairly good book and took out too many key scenes and characters.  I'm sure this was done in the interest of time (and money), but the movie had so many differences towards the end, that I actually wondered what was going to happen (and I've read the book)!  Beyond that, my mom was confused at the end, which shows that they left out something essential to the story.  In addition, some of the characters needed more development.  I would have liked to have seen more about Macon, Amma, Ridley, and Link.  Furthermore, the flashbacks (essential to the entire curse) were barely a part of the story.  Perhaps if I hadn't read the book so recently (or at all), I would have thought the movie was great.  It may be that the story was just too fresh on my mind.  If you've seen the movie, read the book, or any combination of the two, let me know what you think.

I'm a Winner!

Since I found that my budget just won't stretch far enough to get all the new and interesting things that I'd like to get for the library, I've started entering as many contests as I can find, requesting advanced copies of books, and researching grants.  Up to this point, I haven't had a lot of luck.  I did win three books in the Holiday Break Reading Challenge though.  Therefore, I was more than excited to find out that out of over 300 entries, I won a prize pack from Jessica Brody, the author of 52 Reasons to Hate My Father.  The prize pack includes autographed copies of all of Jessica Brody's other books (5 total, including an advanced copy of her newest book), plus bookmarks, sunglasses, and a t-shirt.  I'm most excited about the books and bookmarks, but I'm thinking that I might could do a library contest to give away the other items. 

Click below for information about the items I'm getting:
http://www.jessicabrody.com/2013/02/order-52-reasons-to-hate-my-father-win-all-my-other-books

Technology in the Library

I attended the technology conference in Austin last week.  I enjoyed learning about all the new things that are becoming available in education.  Although it is difficult to implement some technology when our budgets seem to shrink each year.  Yes, we are constantly asked to do more with less, but our students are the ones who are truly paying the price each year.  The business world has the funds to keep up with our fast paced technological world, which leaves our students hurrying to catch up as they emerge into the real world. 

But, there I go, getting on my soap box and losing sight of what I wanted to focus on!  At the technology conference, I was able to spend my time in various library-technology sessions.  As we all know, things are moving towards ebooks, but we're not there yet.  I spoke to several vendors who have are promoting ebooks for libraries.  However, overwhelmingly, what I found with these vendors is that they don't have many books that students will actually want to read.  Their selection of books is extremely disappointing.  They focus heavily on nonfiction and easy reader books.  In my experience, students prefer to check out fiction unless they are doing a project.  Sure, I can go to Amazon and download just about any ebook that I want.  However, that isn't feasible for a library because of access and copyright issues.  I can also subscribe to Overdrive and get a large selection of ebooks, but it is extremely expensive, which is not practical for a small school library.  I am getting ebooks for the library, but until they improve their selections, I don't see the library going primarily to ebooks for a long time.

I also want to introduce our library's new mobile website.  It has all the links you need to access our catalog, databases, ebooks, etc, on your mobile device.  I am working on creating bookmarks with a QR code that can take you directly to the mobile site. 
Check it out here and bookmark it on your phone, or scan the QR code below!

Reaching My Goal!

I wanted to reflect for a minute on reaching my goal of 60 books for the 2012 Reading Challenge.  I must say that I really enjoyed about 90% of the books I read this year (maybe more).  Of course, my dad says I've never read a book that I didn't love.  I think that's only partially true.  I never recommend books to him that I didn't love, so he never sees the ones I didn't like!  Of course, I usually love a book while I'm reading it if I can immerse myself into the world that's created and really get to know the characters along the way.  Often though, after I've stepped away from that world and thought about it a little, I see a lot of flaws with it that didn't bother me at the time.  I like to escape in a book, and I can suspend disbelief pretty easily.  But, I'm getting off on a tangent.  I hit 60 books a little while ago (I'm currently at 65 now).  I just wonder if that is my average for a year, or if I pushed myself to read more because of the challenge.  I am curious to find out next year.  I think I'm going to up my goal to 70-75 next year and see how it turns out.  I am also curious to see if meeting my goal was partially due to the fact that I was taking library science classes this past year that also required me to read YA novels for class.  Probably around 10 of the books on my challenge list were required reading.  At this point, I have a little over a week until the year ends, and I'm hoping to add a couple of more books to my count before January 1.  I should finish up one today even! 

A New Start

I'm trying something new with this new blog tab.  I'm not sure if this is going to be set up the way I want it to be or not, so this is pretty much just a test post.  I love blogging about the books that I've read, but I thought it might also be a good idea to blog about other library, and not so library-related things.  I wanted a page to talk about technology, things I'm doing in the library now and things I want to do in the library in the future, and everything in between.

This has been such a great year for me so far, and it is flying by.  It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is just around the corner.  I have had so much time to do things in the library that I always wanted to do with my classes, but never had the time or energy.  It was not easy to get my Master's degree.  It was expensive, time consuming, and frustrating at times, but it was also more than worth it.  I am so glad that my family was so supportive through the process.