I am most thankful for the fact that it is my job to read and write about books. I am thankful that I have a career which revolves around helping others to find their next good read, and that I am able to train librarians to help their patrons with their leisure reading needs. Getting pad for all of this is a dream come true.
I am thankful for my ladies in the book club. We will have been together 10 years come this January. They are a lively bunch of "mature women." (their favorite phrase to describe themselves) I look forward to our meetings as much as they do. We learn from each other, and have shared many great books over the years. Click here to see what we have read and talked about over that time.
I am thankful that my children love to read. I realize that the fact that my husband and I are readers helps this. But I know plenty of librarians who love to read, whose children are reluctant readers. I am thankful that my kids look forward to a rainy day with no school so they can finish their Percy Jackson novel
. I am thankful for my colleagues at the BPL, Dominican University, NoveList, ALA Editions and the ARRT Steering Committee who share my love of reading and my passion for training progressive and responsive librarians.
Finally, I am thankful for all of you who read this blog and use it to help yourselves or your patrons.
Now, please share your reading realted thankful list with me.
You can always follow and or comment on past Monday Discussions here.
Is it wrong to state that I am grateful for ingratitude?
ReplyDeletePerhaps I should explain.
I'm thankful for three volumes that sit on my shelves at home. Two are volumes of poetry and one is a novel. At least, that's what they pretend to be. That's what they had to be to get published. That's what they had to be in order to reach me. To reach anyone. In reality, they are books of philosophy. Their authors are all dead and they all died young. I obtained them when I, too, was very young. I've read them almost to the point of memorization yet I constantly go back to them because of what they represent to me: a kind of blueprint for life and how it should be perceived and how it should be lived. I read them at a time when I didn't have a family or a career or a future. I didn't have any of the typical things people list this time of year. I don't think I even fully had my health. My favorite of the three I pulled from a recycling bin.
It was raining at the time.
The original owner was obviously not grateful for the book and I am so very thankful for that ingratitude. Sometimes I come across little notes that I'd written - notes to myself! These notes show that I really wanted to help myself because, you know, I really am grateful for myself. Wasn't it I who had saved myself? Didn't I pull myself from the trash? Didn't I pull myself from the rain? Didn't dead young men tell me all they knew when nobody had any answers at all? Well, I'm so very thankful. I'm so thankful for my poetry.
I'm so thankful for my trash.