Being a librarian, it might seem ironic that I have very little time for leisure reading. When I do find the time, I usually read on a kindle or from books checked out from my local public library. I either jot down quotes I like or highlight them on my Kindle. Here are some favorite recent quotes from books I’ve read that stood out to me.
“Creating pull is about mastering the skills required to drive our own learning; it’s about how to recognize and manage our resistance, how to engage in feedback conversations with confidence and curiosity, and even when the feedback seems wrong, how to find insight that might help us grow.”
-Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well“Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. I often say that Wholeheartedness is like the North Star: We never really arrive, but we certainly know if we’re headed in the right direction.”
-Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead“Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.”
-Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane“Watching white moon face
The stars never feel anger
Blah, blah, blah, the end”
-Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
So, while I check out a lot of my personal reading from the public library near where I live, the JHU libraries have a lot of cool books, videos, and other media. Taking “Fight Club” as an example, we have the printed book you can check out, the online book you can read from on or off-campus, and also the film version. One of the few books that I liked equally in both book and cinema formats.
But that’s not all, the library also has streaming documentary videos that are extremely high quality, such as Chuck Palahniuk: fight club, choke and invisible monsters. These few examples don’t include books and articles about the book, like this and this. I guess all this is to say that the library has many great resources both in print and online, whether you’re reading for scholarly or personal reasons. What have you read recently that you absolutely loved?
Currently reading Reading Accomplished. One of my favorite quotes so far, “If our hopes and expectations for our students stretch far- to the highest levels of accomplishment – then a responsibility includes preparing them to read with rigor, independence, precision, and insight in the long run.”
I absolutely loved Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, from our McNaughton Collection, near the guard’s desk on M Level. Great sci fi, near future apocalypse.