Musing Monday #8

 

This is a weekly meme hosted by shouldbereading, which is where you can post your musings of the week. This can be describing a reading habit, what books you've bought, what books you want, what you're reading or any rant you can think of book related.

This week I wanted to share this genius book I found while shelf tidying when I was on relief at a different library branch. I saw the title and it made me laugh so much that I pulled it off the shelf and took a picture and sent it to everyone at my branch. I just love the tagline - "Forget the cud, they want blood...". Pure genius and definitely had me giggling!

I reached 100 followers on both GFC and Bloglovin, I can't quite believe it to be honest! I am really happy with how the blog is going and truly amazed at how it's going. I've hosted my first giveaway and it's really great so far. I'm sad I only did 1 prize now though, I'm hoping to host another around Christmas time but have three winners then. 

I'm currently reading Dare You To by Katie McGarry. I received Crash Into You, by the same author, as an eARC and as it's a companion novel I wanted to read the other books first. I had mixed feelings about Pushing the Limits, but so far this one is going well. I have a problem with how overly packed on the authors religious views are; she has made every character, and I mean every character religious; which is just unrealistic and makes me feel like I am kind of being preached at. Hopefully this book will go better than Pushing the Limits, I like Beth a lot more as a lead character. And at least she has a normal name!

On The Blog:

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry: The Review

In The Blood by Sara Hantz: The Review

My Weekly Book Haul

My WWW Post

The Switch by Dawn Pendleton & Andrea Heltsley: The Review

Top Ten Tuesday: Sequels I Can't Wait To Get My Hands On

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Leave a link to your own MM! 

Musing Monday #7

 

This is a weekly meme hosted by shouldbereading, which is where you can post your musings of the week. This can be describing a reading habit, what books you've bought, what books you want, what you're reading or any rant you can think of book related.



This week I'm having a little muse about my blog. When I started it earlier this year I honestly had no idea what to expect. I just wanted to be able to share my love of books with others. So far I have been surprised by just how much I love it, even when the time I spend blogging could be used for reading! I have found that other bloggers are some of the most amazingly supportive people I could hope to meet. I am loving blogging so far and it is something I will definitely keep doing.

To celebrate not only my ridiculous happiness at my blog, but also the replacement of my laptop that died on me *sad face*, I am hosting my first giveaway. I had no idea where to start but I am excited, so feel free to take part.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
I am quite excited as people have actually taken part, I really wasn't sure if anyone would care. But if that was the case, I guess I could have treated myself to two books. I'm quite excited to see who wins, wish I hadn't set it for a month but I just wasn't sure if anyone would take part. It's also given me a way to share my love of Tabitha Suzuma and her wonderful book, Forbidden.

On The Blog

Last week I reviewed:

The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Allegiant by Veronica Roth (spoiler filled)

Allegiant by Veronica Roth (spoiler free)

Also on the blog:

WWW Wednesday

Best of the Bunch: October 2013

First Giveaway

My Book Haul

Feature & Follow Friday

Currently Reading:

The Switch

by 

Dawn Pendleton & Andrea Heltsley

Honor and Faith haven't switched places since they were kids. When Honor begs her twin sister to go on a date with her boyfriend, Cameron, Faith reluctantly agrees. The problem is that she lets things go too far.Now Honor and Cameron have broken up and he won't stop calling Faith, claiming he felt something more for her. The scary thing is, Faith felt it too. The problem, however, is the one rule that sisters and best friends abide by: don't date their exes.
Honor has her own problems. Breaking it off with Cameron was the right thing to do, but now his best friend, Parker, won't leave her alone. The more time they spend together, the more Honor starts to heal. Suddenly, Honor sees Parker as more than just a friend who cares - and she wants more.
Neither sister wants to complicate things further and cross those boundaries, but they can't stop their emotions for the guys in their lives. Turns out, the switch is the one things that has changed them forever.

Not too sure about this one, haven't started it yet but not sure if it's quite for me. I received it for review though and am intrigued to see what I make of it. 

Leave a link to your own musing so I can come check it out. 

Musing Monday #6

 

This is a weekly meme hosted by shouldbereading, which is where you can post your musings of the week. This can be describing a reading habit, what books you've bought, what books you want, what you're reading or any rant you can think of book related.

So today I would have loved to give you a long interesting post, but alas this week is not my week! My laptop charger died last night, may he rest in peace, or pieces as the case may be. So I am having to quickly type this up whilst trying to eat lunch at work on a public PC. Not good. I feel kind of lost without the use of my laptop, as I can't blog without it and that is actually rather devastating. Luckily, I have an amazing sister who is coming down to meet me for lunch after work tomorrow and bringing a spare plug lead that should hopefully work! 

So if you comment or follow the blog and I don't get back to you, this is why. I will get back to you all as soon as I get my laptop up and running again, fingers crossed it's tomorrow!

So that will be my musing for today. Has anyone had this happen to them?

Leave a link to your own MM and will get back to you as soon as I can!

Musing Mondays #5

 

This is a weekly meme hosted by shouldbereading, which is where you can post your musings of the week. This can be describing a reading habit, what books you've bought, what books you want, what you're reading or any rant you can think of book related.



This week I am thinking about displays, more specifically library displays. My library is kind of limited to the use of a printer, some scissors and a laminator so you have to try and get as creative as possible with that. It would be quite nice to have a large selection of materials to work with, but it's never going to happen. So I am curious about the kinds of book displays your library do. Or what your favourite one is that you have seen so far? I have seen so many amazing and creative ones on the Internet, I wish our library could pull them off.

In our Teen section I recently have done a display for the books, it incorporates books and their TV or movie adaptions. It works quite well I think but for some reason our question mark on one of them was taken. Don't ask me why, I have no clue why you would want or need a large laminated question mark!

Blog Design

I have finally got around to changing my background. I didn't mind my old one but I thought it was too bright and plain and wasn't really me. I'm more satisfied with the one I have got but am still not happy. I will keep it for now but I know I need to start designing my own if I am going to be 100% satisfied. I just want one that's not really plain and brings across more of my personality I guess.

Last Week On The Blog

I read and reviewed:

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff 

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman

Also on the blog:

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was 'Forced' To Read

W.. W... W... Wednesday

Fridays Book Haul

Feature and Follow Friday

 Getting To Know Me

And as always I will take the time to thank the lovely people who have followed me. Thank you:

My Books n Things, Thoughts and Pens, Musings on Fantasia, Fantasy Is More Fun, Moonlight Reader, The Reading Chic, Caught Reading Redheaded, Marilyns Mystery Blog, Whatever You Can Still Betray, Magic of Words, Jackie's Book World, Read by the Undead, Shayna Varadeaux Books, Confessions of a Book Addict, Rather Be Reading YA, Fanciful Fiction, Beyond the Bookshelf, Annette's Book Spot, Chapter Break, Shooting Stars Reviews, Studio Reads, Flip That Page, Daily Mayo, Love, Literature, Art and Reason, Natflix and Books & Notes on Novels.

Leave a link to your own MM and I will check it out.

Musing Mondays #4

 

This is a weekly meme hosted by shouldbereading, which is where you can post your musings of the week. This can be describing a reading habit, what books you've bought, what books you want, what you're reading or any rant you can think of book related.


I'm rather sick right now with one of those colds that make you look, feel and act like one of the walking dead. I'm pretty much like this right now:

 This means that I am home under my blankets with a book in my hand whenever I don't have to go to work. So today I shall share a reading habit, that I'm sure a lot of you have as well. I love to find the time to lay back and relax in a bath with a good book. Although it's made so much less relaxing by the fact I try to keep my books in pristine condition for as long as physically possible. So it's me laying back, my arms up in the air so the book is far away from water and my hands like a vice on it. And don't even get me started on how ridiculous I look when I read my Kindle in the bath, arms outstretched so the Kindle isn't over the water! I feel like I'm coming off a little crazy right now!

Last week on the blog:

I reviewed:

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

The Sight by David Clement-Davies

Alienated by Melissa Landers

And I posted my W... W... W..., my weekly book haul and my first ever Follow & Feature post.

I am currently reading Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma. I wanted to redo the review I did for this, as it was one of the first I wrote for the blog and I did not say everything I wished to say about this. So I am redoing it but in doing so I made myself want to read it again. So for the first time in what feels like forever, I actually stopped reading a book in order to read something else. The review will be up tomorrow most likely, it will definitely be 5 stars so check back!

Tales From The Library

This week I have decided not to tell another crazy library story; I'm worried I may put you off going in one ever again. I will instead tell you one of the few things I don't like about my job. That is people who can't use computers coming in to use the computers. I do not wish to add up the hours of my life wasted on this. 

I get people coming up to me constantly and informing me that the computers are broken. When you enquire further they say that it's just not working. My usual response is to ask if they have switched it on, they say they have and that it is most definitely broken. I then walk all the way to the I.T suite, press the on button and as if by some strange Harry Potter magic I have fixed the broken computer. I wish to start a general computer use rule, if you don't know what a power button is you are obviously too stupid to use them. Why these people don't sign up to any of our free computer courses, I will never know.

I need to say a massive thank you to the amazing people who took the time to follow my blog. I have just realised how many people that is but I like to thank people so here goes nothing: Challenging Reads, Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Brigitte Woah The Bookaholic, Feed Your Fiction Addiction, So Many Books So Little Time, Greg's Book Haven, A Great Read, My Nook Books N More, Buried Under Romance, Meredith & Jennifer's Musings, Feminist Fairy Tale Reviews, Mad Hatter Reads, The Ultimate Bookworm, Moy Drook Reads, Between My Lines, Such A Novel Idea, Paradise of Pages, Ramblings Of A Book Junkie, The World For The Reading, Abbbz And Bookz, Natflix and Books, YA: Escape From Reality, Lite-rate-ture, Studio Reads, Dees Reads & Tressa's Wishful Endings. Thank you all!

Leave a link to your own MM and I will check them out!

Musing Mondays #3

 

This is a weekly meme hosted by shouldbereading, which is where you can post your musings of the week. This can be describing a reading habit, what books you've bought, what books you want, what you're reading or any rant you can think of book related.

My Monday musing is about the wonderful world of book blogging. I only started doing this about a month ago and when I started I didn't really know what to expect. I love books and the idea of being able to talk about them at length online to others who love them just as much; well, that just sounded amazing to me. But talking about my thoughts and feelings on a book is the easy bit. It's everything else that I seemed to struggle with.

Blog design, that will honestly be the death of me. I go to all these amazing blogs and see there amazing backgrounds, layouts and graphics and I feel like I want my blog to look that good. My problem is that even after watching tutorial videos and reading tips and tricks on it, I am still rubbish at design. I tried PicMonkey and Gimp and still could not manage it. After three days of trying, I admitted defeat. Hopefully it is something I can learn over time and little by little I will improve the look of my blog.

Something I learnt very quickly was how amazingly inclusive and supportive the book blogging community is. I really worried that no one would ever actually see the blog and I must admit the first time I got a view from an actual person I was so excited. I was like "I got a follower, I got a follower" to my boyfriend who, to his credit, acted like it was a big deal too! But by the time I got my first follower, and my super excitement at that, I think he may have thought I had lost my mind. But, to me, it was really a big deal.

I want to say a really big thank you to the amazing people who followed my blog this week. I have only been doing this for over a month and it really makes my day when someone likes my blog enough to follow me. So thank you to the following bloggers, who made my day: Somewhere Only We Know, Bitches n Prose, A Night's Dream of Books, Itching For Books, Flood of Books, Manda-Rae Reads A Lot, Kimberlyfaye Reads, Grace Books Of Love, The Book Bundle, Jenn Rennee Read & Book Cupid.
You guys really made my week, it feels nice to know someone liked my blog enough to follow it!


 
Last week on the blog I reviewed Time Between Us and Time After Time by Tamara Ireland Stone and I also reviewed Pawn by Aimee Carter. I really enjoyed all of these and it felt really nice to be able to read three books in a row that I liked.
 

Library Story #3

It's that time of the week again! Time to share another story with you lovely people. However, I must admit that this one seems a bit too crazy to be true. But it most definitely is. I know that some of you who have nice, quiet libraries are probably thinking that libraries can't get that bad, but they can. My nan and grandad have a small library in their tiny village with only one member of staff and I can say that their library is never like mine. But I work in a library in London, which is a big, crazy city full of crazy, unique individuals and that is why my library, at times, gets... crazy!

So we try to run events often, aimed at different age groups and near Halloween we ran a cupcake decorating event for small children (4-12). During this event, with 15 children and their parents happily decorating away, in stumbles an inebriated elderly(ish) man. He makes a bit of a scene and tries to take some of the cupcakes away from the children in order to eat them. The senior librarian has gone over to tell the gentleman that he will have to leave because he is disturbing the event (and being totally inappropriate). He has had a bit of a grumble, but he eventually walks out.

Two minutes later, he stumbles back in and while the senior librarian is walking over to tell him to leave, he pulls down his trousers and exposes himself to the children. No, I am not exaggerating and no, I am not lying - an actual person did this to a group of poor, shocked kids. Now, the particular senior who was working this day with us does not take any crap from anybody. So he had immediately had one of the librarians call the police and told the man to pull up his trousers and get out. The drunken man has decided it would be a good idea to then turn around and punch the senior in the stomach. Luckily, our senior is 6ft 5-ish and really big and didn't even flinch but I was shocked. That was the first time I had seen a customer hit a member of staff; I had heard stories but never seen it.

The man seemed to be sobered up by his own stupidity then as he apologised and after a couple of minutes of more back and forth, he finally agreed to take a seat over in the corner of the library and wait for the police. A rather eventful day and I felt really bad for my senior but also for the poor kids, I mean, who needs to see that on a Thursday night!

Thanks for stopping by.

Please leave a link to your own MM and I will check it out!

Musing Mondays #2

 

This is a weekly meme hosted by shouldbereading, which is where you can post your musings of the week. 

This week the main muse was: 

What do you do when life gets in the way, and you just don’t have much time to read? Do you complain? Do you accept it? Do you do everything in your power to make time to read? Share your thoughts!

I personally always try to make time for reading. Whether it is on my lunchbreak, in the bath, before bed or whenever. I just hate if I go a day without reading, especially if I am halfway through reading a book that I am loving. Then I can't seem to get enough and all I do is read, read, read until I finish. 

I am 84 books into my goal of 100 this year so I am pretty happy with how much time I am finding to read.

This week I am also musing the fact I forgot to mention that the wonderful Severed Heads, Broken Hearts by Robyn Schneider, that I reviewed last week, is also known by a different name - The Beginning of Everything. Which also means that it also comes with another cover and I must admit I think I love it more than the Severed Heads, Broken Hearts cover!  *Gasp* I know!                                              But also the fact I forgot to mention how I loved how the book kept referencing The Great Gatsby, a book that I read and adored this year. I loved where Ezra is staring out his window and across the park hoping to see Cassidy flash her light on and off to him. I just loved how it matched so perfectly with the many times in the Great Gatsby where Jay stands on his dock and looks out across the water hoping to catch a glimps of Daisy's light.


 

This week I am reading Time Between Us by Tamara Ireland Stone. I am almost done and luckily have the sequel Time After Time waiting for me already. I will be posting a review of Time Between Us soon, so check back in for that.

Crazy Library Story No.2

So this week I have a story about a customer who had his bag 'stolen'. This story, to this day, still makes me laugh as much as it did when it first happened. I was doing extra time at a different library and obviously  with my luck  I had to get the crazy drunk library user.

So I am standing behind the counter when this middle-aged grey haired man comes stumbling towards me and shouts at me that his bag has been stolen and I best 'call the f***ing police'. Now the senior who I am working with that night is obviously not very happy with this man swearing at us and tells him if he wants to report it stolen he must go phone them himself or walk down to the police station. It soon becomes clear that he has been in before, is a regular nuisance there and is usually always inebriated. Which I soon realise as he gets closer to me and I can smell alcohol on him so badly I'm almost gagging.

He reiterates the fact his bag and belongings were stolen from right next to him as he sat there on the computer. But as he is swearing and being aggressive (threatening to hit a father with his two young children) we demand he leaves. He becomes very aggravated and verbally aggressive; calling us more swear words than I even think I know. He finally gives up and stumbles out and as he turns around I see a giant (and I mean giant) bottle of vodka hanging out of his jogging bottom pocket. 

Not two minutes later someone from the computer room comes out carrying loads of paper and some pens and tells us the man had left them behind. We check the CCTV to see what happened to his 'stolen' bag and what we discovered still makes me laugh. He is sitting with all his belongings at a computer when he gets up to go to the toilet. When he stumbles back he heads to a different table, sits down and then gets up and knocks over a computer screen in anger and then he marches/stumbles out to the desk. 

So as it transpires this borrower who was adamant that us 'stupid b***hes' best call the police to report his bag stolen had actually been sooooooooo drunk that in the space of the two minutes he was in the bathroom he had forgotten where he had been sitting.

I grudgingly went after him and gave him back his belongings but I was really loathe to do it.

Hope you enjoyed my little musing and that if you ever get a moody librarian serve you one day that you realise it might just be because they had to deal with someone like the person above.

Next weeks crazy library story is a good one, so check back next Monday !
Post your links to your own musings and I shall come check them out.

Musing Mondays

This is a weekly meme hosted by shouldbereading, which is where you can post your musings of the week. Whether it be about your reading habits, what you're reading right now, a bookish rant of some sort or just a general ramble about anything to do with books. It sounds really fun so I am going to try and take part every Monday if I can!




First of all I want to share with you all the fact that I am currently reading Severed Heads, Broken Hearts by Robyn Schneider, which so far I am loving! I am not too far in to it and when I have finished I will post my full review but so far I am happy with it. It had me laughing from the first couple of pages; which is always amazing to find in a book. Let's hope it stays this good all the way through!!! Check back in a couple of days for the full review!





My main musing for Monday is actually about the wonderful world of libraries. In case you didn't know I actually work in a library as a Library Assisstant (we don't use the term librarian!) and I have noticed how many misconceptions people have on libraries and I would just like to discuss them on here. Most of these have been said to me by people who have little experience with libraries or haven't been in one in years but even so I want to show what libraries are really like.
They are not quiet. Well at least mine isn't (at times I really wish it was).We are our boroughs main library, which means we get over 1,000 visitors a day. So today I would like to share with you some library stories so that you can see what libraries can really be like. A library is a public building and as such we really have no control over who is going to be walking in on any given day. This can lead to you meeting a lot of interesting people, shall we say.

Customer S, as I shall refer to him, is a regular, a regular nut job some might argue. When he comes in you know something interesting but hopefully not too violent is about to happen (he has been known to attack staff). For example the time he demanded print outs of all the train lines in Iceland, every single one. But, alas, he was shocked to discover Iceland has no public rail system, OH NO! But this is not my favourite Mr S story, my all time favourite is about how he is going to kill Clint Eastwood. Yes the Clint Eastwood.
                   So one day he comes to the counter and without so much as a hello (as usual) he demands: "I want to know about Sondra Locke!". So I say okay and start to google her, as I have never heard the name before and am sure he is not looking for a book. But before I can even click on her Wikipedia page he has chimed in with: "I want to know if it's true Clint Eastwood made her have three abortions!" (This is shouted at the top of his lungs so all eyes are on us). I don't really know how to respond to this, other than to say "I'll just have a look." So with some searching I am able to say that yes she had two abortion and a tubal ligation (basically a permanent method of sterilisation) whilst in a relationship with Clint Eastwood. So after a few more "So she had two abortions", "Clint Eastwood made her have two abortions", "She had two abortions!" and my reiterating what I had found out, he suddenly declares (at the top of his lungs and in a library full of people no less) "Thats it then! I'm hiring a hitman to kill Clint Eastwood!!!!" and then immediately stormed out of the building. Cue confused vistors turning to me as if to say "What the hell was that about?" and me trying not to look shocked or highly amused, whilst also fighting the urge to laugh.


Now I actually love borrowers like this, they are entertaining, always have an enquiry for you and keep the day interesting. But from my experience with people, whenever I say I work in a library they usually respond with "Wow, bet that's quiet. You must get to read all day." and I want to respond with "Have you ever been in a library?!?". So I just want to be able to share a few of the funnier, more crazy times that we librarians face! Some honestly will sound too crazy to be true. For example would you believe a human being actually chose to drop their trousers and do a 'number two' in the middle of the floor. But even more crazily, in the middle of the floor just outside the public toilet that they are free to use whenever they want. This actually happened. So maybe now you can understand why sometimes I really wish you could just read all day!

But, I need to tell you, I love my job! I am surrounded by books all day and am constantly meeting other book lovers who want to talk about the books they've just read or their favourite author or just a general discussion on books! What more could I ask for in a job? Please feel free to share any interesting stories about your local libraries as I would love to hear them!!

If you have your own Musing Mondays please post a link in the comments so I can come check them out!