Performing triage
Oct. 7th, 2007 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbPerforming triage on my bookshelves. Out go thrillers I will never (ever) read again; in goes room for the college book collection that is expanding more rapidly than I ever could have imagined.
I'm donating all the Never Agains to my old secondary school. But I'm beginning to feel a bit dubious. Should I really send them some Karin Slaughter and Janet Evanovich (don't ask)? What about Jeanne C. Stein's The Becoming? Does a Catholic girls' school library and vampire!sex really mix?
Reading broadens the mind. Much like travel, but less expensive. So on the whole I incline to yes. My only regret is that the only YAs I still own are immensely re-readable, so I won't be parting with any actually 'age-appropriate' reading.
(You know how appallingly under-stocked that library was when I was there? The encyclopedias were many decades old, I don't remember ever seeing any non-fic younger than twenty years old, and the fiction was... Well. Limited is the word that comes to mind. And it only opened every other lunchtime. These things combined to make it of excessively limited utility. I feel goddamn obligated to attempt to rectify that, to the utmost of my limited power.)
So. Here's a question. (Answers solicited.) Or even a meme, if you like.
1. What one [1] novel do you think ought to be part of every school library (ages 12-18)? Pick three, if you can't narrow it down any farther.
2. What one [1] novel were you most startled to find in your school library?
3. What one [1] novel (if any) do you think should never form part of a curriculum/school library?
For me, the answers are something along the lines of:
1: Tamora Pierce's Alanna, Barbara Hambly's A Free Man of Color, and Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men;
2: I believe, though this was long enough ago that I might be mistaken, that it was Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear. Barring that, I never thought to find The Hunt for Red October on the shelf there. For one thing, it was actually unboring.
3.There is a series of icky books by John Ringo...
I'm donating all the Never Agains to my old secondary school. But I'm beginning to feel a bit dubious. Should I really send them some Karin Slaughter and Janet Evanovich (don't ask)? What about Jeanne C. Stein's The Becoming? Does a Catholic girls' school library and vampire!sex really mix?
Reading broadens the mind. Much like travel, but less expensive. So on the whole I incline to yes. My only regret is that the only YAs I still own are immensely re-readable, so I won't be parting with any actually 'age-appropriate' reading.
(You know how appallingly under-stocked that library was when I was there? The encyclopedias were many decades old, I don't remember ever seeing any non-fic younger than twenty years old, and the fiction was... Well. Limited is the word that comes to mind. And it only opened every other lunchtime. These things combined to make it of excessively limited utility. I feel goddamn obligated to attempt to rectify that, to the utmost of my limited power.)
So. Here's a question. (Answers solicited.) Or even a meme, if you like.
1. What one [1] novel do you think ought to be part of every school library (ages 12-18)? Pick three, if you can't narrow it down any farther.
2. What one [1] novel were you most startled to find in your school library?
3. What one [1] novel (if any) do you think should never form part of a curriculum/school library?
For me, the answers are something along the lines of:
1: Tamora Pierce's Alanna, Barbara Hambly's A Free Man of Color, and Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men;
2: I believe, though this was long enough ago that I might be mistaken, that it was Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear. Barring that, I never thought to find The Hunt for Red October on the shelf there. For one thing, it was actually unboring.
3.There is a series of icky books by John Ringo...
