Notes
Tonight I’m very obsessed with the idea of reading The Secret Garden as a child as a gateway to a love of Gothic literature. 📚
Finished reading: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 📚
Keeping this Gothic train rolling. This one is excellent, of course.
📚💬 “When I am afraid, I can see perfectly the sensible, beautiful not-afraid side of the world, I can see chairs and tables and windows staying the same, not affected in the least, and I can see things like the careful woven texture of the carpet, not even moving. But when I am afraid, I no longer exist in any relation to these things.” Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Substitute depressed or anxious for afraid here and it’s exactly how I feel.
Finished reading: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 📚
Another Gothic. Governesses, am I right?
💬📚 Dropping this quote here so that next time I try to hung it down I’ll find it on my own site and not have to go to GoodReads:
“She strode the earth clad in the invisible armor of their virtual companionship.” Lev Grossman, The Magician King
Finished reading: “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe 📚
Making my pivot to Gothic now that it’s October. (I skipped my usual campus novels in September and stuck with romance.)
This one’s a classic, of course. But I like “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death” better.
📚💬 Roderick Usher has sensory integration issues:
“He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive…” - Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
I have only skimmed this EdWeek piece on the science of reading but the person saying reading instruction doesn’t need to be changed because it worked for them 30 years ago might not realize that balanced literacy was a change from that. My 1st grade class did phonics.
🔖🖼️ Pokémon teams up with Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
My kid doesn’t like art museums and only tolerated the Van Gogh museum because the scavenger hunt involved getting a prize at the end. I wish they’d had this going on when we were there!
We’ve reached the moment when we learn if my claim that I wouldn’t go on the academic market because I didn’t want a tenure track job is genuine, or if it’s just a lie I told all of us because I didn’t think there’d be a TT job in my field I didn’t need to move for.
I’ve been watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9 for the first time since I watched it as a kid when it originally aired. I remembered liking Quark and that Dax seemed like a good cosplay option for me. But this time around, I find myself really locked in on and adoring Kira. 🖖🏻📺
Finished reading: We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian 📚
I loved it so much, finished it in under 48 hours. “Newsies for shippers” is an apt description. I love people being sweet on each other and making happiness when they feared it just wasn’t out there for them.
Today’s Literary Activism newsletter from Book Riot shares information about several student groups fighting book bans. 📚
So, this week on Lower Decks, we learned that Vulcans have an understanding of the importance of informed consent when conducting social research. 🖖🏻
📚 I’m reading Sandra Hughes-Hassell’s book, Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning and planning to share my reading notes. I’m trying to decide whether it makes more sense to create a new post for each chapter or just do one for the whole book. Thoughts?
I’ve got big days the next couple of days so what am I doing? Reading past bedtime, of course. (Future Kimberly, please forgive me.)
📚💬 “She didn’t know much about buildings, but it was clear that this one needed an unbelievable amount of work.
But at the end of it? Something she built up, rather than cut down.” Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes
Finished reading: An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera 📚
So good! Manuela is going to marry a wealthy man, for the good of her family. But first, she’s going to spend six weeks in Paris, having Sapphic adventures.
As with all the best romances, this book is about two people who make each other grow as much as it’s about falling in love.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Hotter than steamy, very explicit.
Highly recommend.
There are few feelings as good as canceling a bunch of library holds because your family already owns all the books. 📚
📚 There are still spots available for online attendance at Public Librarianship in Contentious Times, a conference hosted by the University of Michigan School of Information and the Michigan Library Association. School librarians should find this relevant to their work as well and are welcome.