reservations please

one of the great perils of working at the library is there are temptations all around. and my 'on reserve' list is proof of that. interesting titles that pass by the check out desk. cover art that comes through the book drop. casual conversations at the Circulation Desk. all lead me to add more and more.

I am certainly not a book expert like most of my co-workers. but they are patient with me. and I am slowly learning. titles. authors. series. and my to-read list grows.

my most recent lists include a lot of young adult fiction. sorely mislabeled. or perhaps the youth of today is more learned that I was at 15. undoubtedly. and the other day, when prompted by a teen reader to add a few titles to her list, I did some googling of my own. npr has a very nice site that lists the top 100 teen-reads. some I've read. some not for a very long time (and so nice to see them keeping stride with animae and vampire laden text). some quirky. some serious.

so I thought I would make it a bit of a mission. to read these top 100 picks. not sure how long that will take. if I will like them all. but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. at any age.

'children don't read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. they have no use for psychology ... they still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff. when a book is boring, they yawn openly. they don't expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions.'