After months and months (and months) of reading non-stop, our committee from the Texas Library Association has published its list of recommended novels from 2025. We did it! It has been a wild ride. (According to Goodreads, reading 38,869 pages last year means I’ve read enough pages to reach the Read more…
Since becoming a librarian, I’ve learned that the Texas Library Association has a large number of reading advisory lists. I knew about the Bluebonnet Award (for elementary books, similar to our Mark Twain Award back in Missouri), but didn’t know that we had adult lists for fiction and non-fiction, Texas Read more…
I have found that since I finished my library science degree, I a) check out books from libraries a great deal more (especially thanks to Libby), b) read faster than I used to, and c) read a great deal more than I used to. While you may think it’s because Read more…
One of the things I’ve learned from moving around a great deal is that the best way to meet new people is to get involved with a group. I’ve volunteered for the alumni associations for both my university and my sorority, and immediately signed up to volunteer at my son’s Read more…
I was pleasantly surprised to be contacted by ELLE to read books for the June and July panels this year. However, the excitement was short-lived — the July column is a web-only feature, and I’m sensing that they are phasing this column out. I enjoyed the June memoirs, and agreed Read more…
The non-fiction selections I read for October for ELLE magazine’s readers’ panel were quite challenging; the theme this month was triumph over early trauma. I found all three difficult to read, and I only would recommend one of them. Here’s what we read: EpilogueThis is the only book I’d recommend out Read more…
I had a pleasant surprise this spring when I was contacted to join a fiction panel for ELLE magazine’s readers’ panel; I had only done non-fiction reviews up to this point. The books that we read were quite varied, covering stories about early 20th-century anthropologists in Africa, a musician touring Europe, Read more…
As part of the jury for the ELLE magazine Readers’ Prize, all reviewers get to vote on the top book of the year, either for fiction or non-fiction. Since I’ve been reading non-fiction titles for them, I voted on six memoirs that had been picked as “best of the month” throughout Read more…
I was able to fit in one more reading panel for ELLE magazine before the baby came; I sent my reviews during the last week before my due date. To my surprise, they said the results were quite close. I had to send in a weighted preference to help them rank Read more…
Now that I’m six months pregnant, I’m trying to read as much as I can before the baby comes. These reviews were submitted before the holidays, and I’m looking forward to fitting in at least one more jury before my due date in April. While this was my second pick Read more…