Another week of SO MANY PROGRAMS!

The first Monday of every month is the Pizza and Paperbacks meeting at our North Branch.  This month we were discussing The Alchemyst by Michael Scott, a book I hadn't read before selecting it and which I couldn't even slog all the way through.  That's one of the beautiful things about such an informal book club, they're encouraged to hate the book if they hate the book.  They know if they don't finish it for whatever reason they can still come, and they know maybe the next book will be more their style.   A couple of them liked it, but only one said he liked it enough that he would read the next book in the series.

I run this book club VERY casually.  I don't come in with questions prepared, I just start by saying "so, what did you all think?"  and we go wherever the conversation takes us.  Most of them didn't care for this book, and discussing why definitely encourages them to think about things like pacing and writing style.  One things we've noticed as a group is that if an author uses too many exclamation points we tend not to like the book.  Yesterday one of the ladies mentioned that she didn't like the character name "Sophie", and she feels like it's overused in YA books.  So we stopped to investigate why an author might use that name, and looked up what the name means.  Looking up "Sophie" and "Joshua", another main character's name, led us to believe that the names HAD been chosen on purpose.  You don't need to beat them over the head with the idea of symbolism--that one quick moment taught them another place to look for it.

There was a program scheduled for today--Swing Dancing for Young Adults (ages 18-29), but it's been cancelled.  The instructor burned the heck out of his leg somehow.  It's good news for me, because if we were having the program I'd be working 8:30AM-8PM today.  Instead I get to go babysit the cutest baby in the history of babies.

After a long week, we all need some pizza

It has been a tough week for me, professionally.   I'll skip the details, but you know how a workplace that's mostly women can be super stereotypical sometimes?  Essentially that.

This morning I wasn't looking forward to going to work, even though I had a pretty pleasant day lined up.  I went in a couple of hours late (the teenbrarian always has comp time) and spent the afternoon doing a pretty harsh weed at our smallest branch.  At 4 it was time for my Pizza and Paperbacks book club.

I do this program at both of our branches now, but it started when I was the FT youth librarian at the South branch, where I was today.  It is an idea stolen from an existing youth program---a book club where teens  get a NEW copy of a book TO KEEP so long as they keep showing up on the third Friday of the month to discuss it.  I got a grant to cover the expense of the books and pizza for each meeting for the first few years, this year it's funded by the FotL.  I wasn't sure how it would go over at first, but it turned out that the teens in that area really want exactly this sort of program.  A great group of teens started coming pretty regularly and I have a core group of about 15 or so.  They are a rowdy and diverse group, and we often run over the hour I'd planned by half an hour or more.  A couple of boys in the group liked it so much that they kept coming for the first few months of their first year of college. 

The key thing here is to make it as unlike school as possible.   I go in the room with nothing more than some scrap paper to write down books, websites, and other things that they mention being into.  No list of discussion questions or anything like that.  I start with, "so, what did you think?" and we go from there.  At the first meeting, someone asked if I was going to be picking books from "some list of books teenagers are supposed to read".  My answer was something along the lines of "no way, I'm totally just making you read the books I like!" and that's how it's gone.  We quickly made it through my favorites, and their favorites, and a few books that we went into blindly that none of us had read yet but I'd heard were good.  They almost always all actually read the book, and they aren't afraid to tell me if they hate it.  The best months are always the ones where some LOVED it and some HATED it.  We're all in agreement about one book though: Twilight SUCKED.

Today though,  I just wasn't feeling it.  I was tired and looking forward to the weekend and not in the mood for teenagers.  And then they started to arrive, and the rest of the week lifted off of me and I remembered that no matter what is going on behind the scenes at the library, THIS is what matters.  They loved the book this month, they wanted to tell me about their exams and their excitement about having a half day today, they were excited I got BREADSTICKS with the pizza.  I'm entering year four of this book club, and many of the people who came to the first meeting are still coming.

And now I'm home, ready to unwind from the week with a cup of tea and my cat.  I'm going into it from a place of happiness and satisfaction though, instead of one of exhaustion and grump.

*****
This is an expensive program, to be sure, but for the first three years I was lucky enough to get a grant from Walmart which pretty much completely covered it.  If you haven't tried to get a grant from them before, I suggest you do!  The process has gotten much easier, it is now completely online.  This year they turned me down, but I think it's probably just because I'd already gotten it 3 years in a row.  I will try again next year!

Off the top of my head, for those who may be interested, here are some of the books we have read over the past several years:

Divergent (that was the one we discussed today!)
The Hunger Games
The Monstrumologist
Speak
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian
Paper Towns
An Abundance of Katherines
Will Grayson Will Grayson
Looking for Alaska
Shine
The Glassmaker's Daughter (we managed an author visit for this one!)
Stuck in Neutral (with phone visit with Terry Trueman!)
Graceling
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
The Merchant of Death
The Mysterious Benedict Society
This Dark Endeavor
Ender's Game
City of Bones
Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
Coraline (the graphic novel)
Hate List
If I Stay