Weekly Wrap-Up #32

Posted September 12, 2021 by Lisa Mandina in Weekly Wrap Up / 28 Comments

Weekly Wrap-Up #32

Once again I’ll be linking this up with the Sunday Post (hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer).

Well, fortunately after the last couple of weeks I’d had, this one got to start out with an extra long weekend and Monday as a day off. I unfortunately seemed to have picked up stupid vertigo again, so didn’t get as much reading done as I wanted on Monday. My number of posts during the week is way down because I’m trying to take less knowing that later this month, once I get into all the SmartyPants release books I’ll be busy!

Tuesday slowed down at work a teeny tiny bit, but it’s still not what I want to be doing. I did get to do some 9th grade orientations, but I feel like the teachers are disappointed in what I’m doing. I’m going to give myself a break since it is my first year at this school and I have been thrown out of what I thought I’d be doing to get ready. I’ll plan a better orientation for them next year. Sorry to this year’s 9th graders I guess.

Wednesday was kind of a little bit better. For one thing, when I first started at my new job back in August, my principal let me know that our school was on the list for the construction improvements next summer, and one of those areas is the library. So the architects came in for a meeting and we are getting new carpet, and we discussed some other changes. For one thing I’ll need more storage for the laptops over the summer now that I’m in charge of them. My principal wants to put in like a room for recording things, with a green screen, etc. I’m very excited about that because I kind of wanted to do that at my last school. And then I want to move where the fiction is located, because it feels like it is hidden back in a corner. I joked that, “nobody puts my books in a corner.”

Thursday seemed like maybe things were slowing down. They have hired two more people to help with the online students because they don’t want us to do more than 30-35 students a piece along with our first job they hired us for, teachers/librarian. But then I was doing more of the 9th grade orientation for one of the English teachers, and whoa. Two of the classes she had come to the library were horrible. It reminded me that I’ve been in a bit of a lucky world the last 8 years with the kids we had at my last school. I’m back to a normal all kids type of high school. Also, there are some things teachers sent almost two weeks ago wanting us to use our poster printer to print out larger poster size things. We tried to get them done on Thursday as some of the crazy laptop distribution is dying down and I’ve almost got all the students enrolled in online classes. But then there were issues with that, and it was time for me to go home.

Friday things finally slowed down in the library a bit. I have almost all the students, except one now I think, enrolled in online learning. We got all the posters needing printed figured out and printed and laminated. I feel like now I can start concentrating on library stuff. However I’ve definitely realized my collection development will be a lot different with the range of students we have here compared to my last school. It’s a little sad on the one hand, but will also give me a chance to work on a variety of different resources.

Saturday was the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy. I watched the live reading of the names of those we lost that was taking place in NYC at the memorial in the morning. They showed small photos with each name and you could see the ones that were firefighters or policemen in the pictures chosen by their families to be shown. The people who read the names also gave short tributes to their family members. I wonder if there was ever some kind of biography type of book with just a short paragraph or two for each person that lost their lives that day. What always fascinates me about history is hearing about the every day people, what their lives were like. I would read a biography of all those people. Just to know them and to #neverforget

Books finished:

New Books:

My book of the month club pick for September was The Love Hypothesis. It went on a bookshelf with almost every other book I’ve purchased from BOTM. I need to set a challenge next year to actually read these books. Maybe a goal of one a month? lol

I found these two at an antique store/flea market. I have to always add to my BTVS collection. The second book was one I remember reading over and over as a kid, I think maybe my middle school library had it and I checked it out? Anyway, I had no cash, and credit card purchases had to be at least $5, so I bought both.

I hadn’t picked an audiobook for my Audible credit last month. Well as I was thinking ahead to Book Bonanza for next year, I decided one way to read more by authors I wanted to meet but hadn’t read much by was to get their audiobooks. Here are the two I picked to use my August and September credits on:

So I read the first book in the Claire Contreras series, Kaleidoscope Hearts quite a while ago, but I wanted to read another of her books and meet her again at Book Bonanza. It was a bit of a cliffhanger as well, so I do need to go on. I guess I got the third book in that series as a free ebook at some point, but I need to read this one first. The Relationship Pact goes with the series that came out last December that I made sure to read: The Romantic Pact by Meghan Quinn and The Revenge Pact by Ilsa Madden-Mills, but didn’t have time to fit in this one. So I bought the audiobook. That way I can say I’ve read more than just short stories in anthologies by Adriana Locke when I hopefully get to meet her at Book Bonanza.

I’ve been cruising around the #booksfortrade tag on Twitter, really, really hoping to get a physical ARC of the new Buffy book by Kendare Blake that comes out next year. And so I saw this and did a trade with Sammy @wewrite_atdawn

E-galleys for Review:

The first two are for blog tours coming up. The second two are from Sourcebooks new Early Reads program. Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words I’m going to try to get to before it comes out at the beginning of October. Not sure when I’ll get to The Last Beautiful Girl since it came out this past week. The 5th and 6th are the next books in the SmartyPants Romance fall releases and I can’t wait to read them! The last one is for a book tour, and I’m supposed to be getting a physical copy, but I did get the e-galley for sure.

Free e-books:

Only one this week, a SmartyPants Romance novella for a series I haven’t read yet.

So this is a non-book purchase, but in a way it is book related. I found this Bath Daddy guy on TikTok thanks to all the authors I follow and their BookTok videos. Unfortunately I don’t have a good tub for taking baths, so when he started doing shower steamers, I had to grab some! Of course I wish he had more of the scents I like, whether they are good for waking up or not, I love a good vanilla or chocolate scented anything!

What I’m Watching:

Still rewatching Outlander. I needed the comfort of the show I love and know backwards and forwards, and I can also read while it’s on and not be too much invested. Also this past weekend there was a Harry Potter marathon again, I feel like I’ve watched or had those on my tv at least 50% of the weekends over the past 4-5 months. I feel like I really need to do a re-read of the whole series. It has been a long time since I’ve actually read the books. And every once in awhile when I’m watching, I’ll come up with a question and when I go ask my HP expert friends on FB, they always give me an answer, usually having to do with what is in the book.

Giveaways to check out:

  • The Looooong and the Short of It with a Giveaway: August 2021 Wrap-Up Post and What to Expect in September
  • Don’t forget it was my 12th blogoversary last month! And the giveaway runs until the 15th and you can enter that right HERE.
  • Blog Tour Author Interview with Giveaway: Renovated by Nikki Kiley

How was your week? Did you get any good books? Are you binging any tv series you’d recommend?

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28 responses to “Weekly Wrap-Up #32

  1. Glad to hear things are getting better at school. The beginning and end of the year are always tough. What do the teachers expect from you? I don’t get why they would be disappointed. If they want you to include something in your lesson, they should tell you what they want. I loved Paper Hearts . I think those were my first books by Contreras. I liked the Locke book too. I still have to read The Revenge Pact, but I’ve enjoyed the series.

    • Lisa Mandina

      I don’t know if they’re disappointed, they’ve just kind of looked at my funny when I said I just had a basic orientation to do. Oh well. I liked the first on in the Contreras series. This will be my first book by Adriana Locke, probably listening to it next! 🙂

    • Lisa Mandina

      Well, I think that was how they did them originally. Not sure. We’ll find out when I get a chance to read it I guess.

    • Lisa Mandina

      I tried the shower steamer for the first time today. No staining that I see! I can’t wait to read The Love Hypothesis. We’ll see when I can fit it in. Yeah, the pandemic is really making being a school librarian a lot different!

  2. “nobody puts my books in a corner” 🙂 That’s cool that you’re going to get some improvements. And I’m sure your orientation was fine.

    I imagine there is a wide array of students depending on the school! My cousin who’s a teacher has said much the same 🙂

    Comfort shows are always nice to relax. 🙂

  3. It sounds like adjusting to a new school is hard, which is probably to be expected, especially when things are so weird this year. I hope that once you’re in the swing of things, it will all improve! And it’s interesting that this is a very different student body than what you’ve been used to. I’m sure that will take some learning as well, but I know you’re up to the task!

    Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction recently posted: Sunday Post: Book Pre-order Campaigns & Giveaways Galore – 9/12/21
    • Lisa Mandina

      It’s more like just a normal public school, which I had before the last school. Just have to reacquaint myself with them! lol

    • Lisa Mandina

      I have no idea what happened to my copy of that either, that’s why I’m guessing I probably checked it out from a library instead of owning it. Thanks for visiting!

  4. Sounds like last week was somewhat better and maybe a bit less overwhelming. Thank goodness for that. And even getting caught up with the printing. Always a good feeling to not have stuff lingering. The Partridge Family book is such a blast from the past. 🙂 I read Kaleidoscope Hearts by Contreras, too, and then the Torn Hearts novella, but I never continued on with Paper Hearts. I hope it’s a good one!

  5. Exciting times ahead for your library ahead! Whoo hoo. I miss having all the kids at school for library, but over the last couple of months I only have the GrR – 3’s.

    Hope you will feel much better this week. You have some great books to keep you company.

    • Lisa Mandina

      The vertigo is completely gone! For now that is. And I actually did get some more reading in this week. Thanks for visiting!

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