That's what happened to University at Buffalo faculty member Philip Kiernan, who heard a rumor from a UB alumnus in 2010 that the UB Libraries housed the rare coins. Three years later, Kiernan, an assistant professor of classics, channeled his inner Indiana Jones and journeyed to the depths of the UB archives to find them.

The collection, he was shocked to learn, was real: 40 silver Greek coins, three gold Greek coins and a dozen gold Roman coins -- one from each era of the first 12 Roman emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian. They range in date from the fifth century B.C. to the late first century A.D.

Not your usual find.

"I must have been the first person to touch them in almost 40 years," says Kiernan, who brought in two experts to verify the coins' authenticity last semester and is now developing a graduate course to examine the items' history.

It's the first time the coins will be extensively studied, and Kiernan and his class will publish their findings.

Within the collection is a "remarkably rare" coin of Roman emperor Otho, who reigned for a mere three months. The Greek coins were struck by some of the most powerful city-states and rulers of the ancient world, such as Athens, Corinth and Alexander the Great.

The coins were donated in 1935 to the UB Libraries Special Collections by Thomas B. Lockwood as part of a larger collection of rare books. However, it wasn't until Kiernan examined them out of curiosity that the currency's rarity and value were realized.

Kiernan focuses much of his research on ancient currency and antiquities, and the experts he brought in to examine the coins were numismatists -- people who collect or study currency.

The coins are one of the many treasures stored in the UB Libraries, which also hold original works by James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and William Shakespeare.

"Libraries are becoming museums," says Michael Basinski, curator of the UB Libraries Special Collections. "Everything is going digital, but we remain tied to the physical objects."

Lockwood's collection includes more than 3,000 books, medallions and additional coins from early America and England. Other notable items include a medallion of Napoleon Bonaparte and 36 British gold coins, including one of Queen Elizabeth I.

Lockwood, an avid reader and collector of rare and special books, purchased the items to supplement his personal collection. Accruing relics and art was common practice among affluent men in the early 20th century.

"For book collectors, owning such extraordinary objects connects them to the history that's recorded in their books," says Kiernan. "They could read about the Emperor Augustus and then examine a coin with his image."

Most of the coins are in excellent condition, despite remaining in their original 80-plus-year-old casing. A few of the silver coins require conservation treatment. The collection's casing also will be improved.

The UB Libraries will open the collection of coins to members of the campus and local communities pursuing relevant research.

Author: Marcene Robinson | Source: University at Buffalo [March 11, 2015]

Residents say the extremists smashed the locks that had protected the biggest repository of learning in the northern Iraq town, and loaded around 2,000 books — including children’s stories, poetry, philosophy and tomes on sports, health, culture and science — into six pickup trucks. They left only Islamic texts.

The rest?

“These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah. So they will be burned,” a bearded militant in traditional Afghani two-piece clothing told residents, according to one man living nearby who spoke to The Associated Press. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation, said the Islamic State group official made his impromptu address as others stuffed books into empty flour bags.

Since the Islamic State group seized a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria, they have sought to purge society of everything that doesn’t conform to their violent interpretation of Islam. They already have destroyed many archaeological relics, deeming them pagan, and even Islamic sites considered idolatrous. Increasingly books are in the firing line.

Mosul, the biggest city in the Islamic State group’s self-declared caliphate, boasts a relatively educated, diverse population that seeks to preserve its heritage sites and libraries. In the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, residents near the Central Library hid some of its centuries-old manuscripts in their own homes to prevent their theft or destruction by looters.

But this time, the Islamic State group has made the penalty for such actions death. Presumed destroyed are the Central Library’s collection of Iraqi newspapers dating to the early 20th century, maps and books from the Ottoman Empire and book collections contributed by around 100 of Mosul’s establishment families.

Days after the Central Library’s ransacking, militants broke into University of Mosul’s library. They made a bonfire out of hundreds of books on science and culture, destroying them in front of students.

A University of Mosul history professor, who spoke on condition he not be named because of his fear of the Islamic State group, said the extremists started wrecking the collections of other public libraries last month. He reported particularly heavy damage to the archives of a Sunni Muslim library, the library of the 265-year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers and the Mosul Museum Library with works dating back to 5000 BC.

Citing reports by the locals who live near these libraries, the professor added that the militants used to come during the night and carry the materials in refrigerated trucks with Syria-registered license plates. The fate of these old materials is still unknown, though the professor suggested some could be sold on the black market. In September, Iraqi and Syrian officials told the AP that the militants profited from the sale of ancient artifacts.

The professor said Islamic State group militants appeared determined to “change the face of this city … by erasing its iconic buildings and history.”

Since routing government forces and seizing Mosul last summer, the Islamic State group has destroyed dozens of historic sites, including the centuries-old Islamic mosque shrines of the prophets Seth, Jirjis and Jonah.

An Iraqi lawmaker, Hakim al-Zamili, said the Islamic State group “considers culture, civilization and science as their fierce enemies.”

Al-Zamili, who leads the parliament’s Security and Defence Committee, compared the Islamic State group to raiding medieval Mongols, who in 1258 ransacked Baghdad. Libraries’ ancient collections of works on history, medicine and astronomy were dumped into the Tigris River, purportedly turning the waters black from running ink.

“The only difference is that the Mongols threw the books in the Tigris River, while now Daesh is burning them,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. “Different method, but same mentality.”

Authors: Sinan Salaheddin & Sameer N. Yacoub | Source: Associated Press [January 31, 2015]

National Library Week is coming up in the U.S. April 11-17, and April is School Libraries Month (2010 is the 25th anniversary). This got me wondering about the state of libraries around the globe.

What's your earliest memory of a library? What was it like for you? Were you more likely to hang out in the gym or the library when you were in school?

How's the health of the library system in your community? How do you support your local library? How often do you check out books from the library vs. buying books? Tell us what your favorite library is like and include some photos if you can.

I came across the Support Your Local Library challenge today on Home Girl's blog and took it as a good sign that over 370 people were signed up for the challenge. And it's not too late to sign up!

Award-winning author Laurie Halse Anderson believes that “school libraries are the foundation of our culture, not luxuries.” Below is a short video of her speaking to some high school students in New York. Do you agree with her? Do you think libraries are in danger because of the internet?

Can you name this famous library?

Speak to any of these questions on your Weekly Geeks blog post. Be sure to sign Mr. Linky with the direct link to your post, and visit your fellow WGers, as well as your local library, this week!

Edited to add: Don't forget the 24 hour Readathon is next Saturday, April 10th. Read all about it here.

I was immediately intrigued by Marilyn Johnson's new book This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. After all, I want to go to library school and when I was in high school I used to make comic books where I was the superhero. So the idea shown on the cover, a librarian with a cape off to save the world, was attractive to me. Once I started reading I was surprised to find out that Johnson isn't a librarian herself, but rather a librarian stalker like me. Except that I plan on becoming a librarian and as far as I could tell she did not. I think the book was even better (at least for me) written from the perspective of a non-librarian because it made it more interesting for an outsider. In this book Johnson talks about the changing world of libraries, the problems with digital records and the plus sides to them, the stereotype of the librarian, and what librarians do outside their jobs. And I'll admit this right away, the book made me even more positive that library school is what I want to do in two years.

The book is divided into 12 essays, really, about different aspects of libraries and librarians. One of my favorites was How to Change the World, which talked about librarians that work in other countries and with students from around the world, specifically underprivileged countries to help their nations advance in society through technology. As a blogger I really enjoyed The Blog People, which is all about librarian bloggers (several I'd never heard of even though I follow a lot of librarian blogs). She also touches on the danger of blogging for librarians, particularly young librarians. Even though many librarians know the Internet is the future of libraries and want to further that research, there is still resistance from other librarians. Follow That Tattooed Librarian was also an entertaining look at the stereotype of librarians as old, crotchety ladies when there are plenty of librarians that don't fit that stereotype one bit (Hello! Time Traveler's Wife anyone?).

I read this book at the same time as Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age, and while Scrolling Forward as insightful and certainly made me feel like I knew more about digitization, Johnson was just so much better at making things exciting! Her descriptions alone deserve an A++; "This is the greatest and most fraught romance of modern society, the marriage between the IT staff and those who depend on them" (39). That is just great. This didn't feel like a how to guide on librarianship, it felt like a documentary in which the most exciting possibilities of the career were explored. I've seen a lot of reviews that complain about her extended discussion of the game Second Life. Apparently this game is pretty popular within some groups of librarians and Johnson was obviously a little obsessed with the game when she was writing this, but I just didn't care. Everything else was just so awesome, so perfect, that John could have ranted on about Second Life for another 25 pages and I would have listened to her. Because she completely captured my sentiments about libraries by the end of the book; "We'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortor libraries. But another library, the ninetieth in the system, is growing explosively in cyberspace" (187).

This book deserves an A.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Awhile back I was at a party where I talked with a friend who is also interested in libraries and more specifically archives. When he found out I was interested he recommended that I read Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age

by David Levy, which I promptly purchased the next week. This slim (202 pages to be exact) book is full of information about the place of the document in today's world. Even though the book was published in 2001, it is still right on target with the way we see documents in a digital world. And it takes a surprisingly personal approach towards them and made me see documents in a way I hadn't really considered or just maybe couldn't verbalize before; "For if documents are surrogates for us, they are extensions of ourselves, parts of ourselves. The best and the worst of ourselves can be found in them"(38).

The book starts out with the receipt. Receipts are very ordinary, and a lot of times I tell the cashier I don't want a receipt anymore because I know it will just sit in my wallet for three months and then I will throw it away. But receipts, as Levy shows us, are actually full of information. They tell us where a person went, the day they went there, possibly what they purchased, how much the item cost on that day, how much tax was or if the item was taxed, and anymore a lot of receipts will tell you who it was that rang you up. Receipts are also, as I said, easily discardable and the reason for this is because paper can be mass produced now. This, however, has not always been the case and the fact that we can so easily print and toss receipts says a lot about the society we live in today. This is just one of many examples Levy makes in the book, although it is one of the ones I enjoyed the most. Another section I really enjoyed was the chapter entitled Libraries and the Anxiety of Order, which is all about the basic human need to organize and how libraries are a reflection of this anxiety. He also gets into the creation of the Dewey Decimal System which I think any book lover would enjoy.

There is a lot of information to take in in this book and even though it is short, I read it over a long period of time. It is, honestly, a scholarly book. But I felt like the book maybe wasn't quite sure what it wanted to be. At times it catered to the average Joe, pointing out mundane things we see every day and then turning them and making us see them differently. But then at other times it make an intense discussion about how computers work which, frankly, used some vocabulary that could have been discarded as easily as that receipt at the beginning of the book. And he spent way too much time talking about the etymology of words. I'm sorry, but a pair of parentheses on every page describing the origin of a word is really not that helpful to me, maybe one or two of the really interesting ones I can live with but it was just all too much.

So basically, I would say read this book if you are interested but skim the parts you think are boring. If you are only going to read one library book I would suggest reading Marylin Johnson's This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All which is much more readable than this one. There is a lot to discover here, and that is why this book earned a B.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

The Italian agreement

VIA «Google Books will scan the Italian libraries»

14 People were more organised than me this week* and actually managed to post a response to these questions which were posted by Terri in readiness for National Library Week in the US (April 11-17)

What's your earliest memory of a library? What was it like for you? Were you more likely to hang out in the gym or the library when you were in school?

How's the health of the library system in your community? How do you support your local library? How often do you check out books from the library vs. buying books? Tell us what your favorite library is like and include some photos if you can.

• When he was a kid Darren from Bart's Bookshelf used to escape to the children's section of his library while his mum fed her Mills & Boon addiction. These days Darren finds the library a bit too full of hard edges and harsh lighting (I must say the picture he posted of his local library building's exterior is not terribly inviting, why do we never seem as much on libraries as we do on sports stadiums?).
• Suey from It's All About Books made me laugh with her post saying that even though she had a perfectly good library in her city when she was little what she remembers is going to her Grandma's house and thinking the visiting bookmobile was the coolest thing ever. I would have thought books that come to you were cool too when I was a kid (heck I would think it was cool now). Maybe Suey should read Ian Sansom's The Case of the Missing Books which is all about chap who is appointed the new librarian for a small town in Ireland but first he has to learn to drive the library and then he has to find all the books that locals have ...borrowed.
• Zee at Notes from the North just made me jealous with her beautiful picture of her high school library. Go on go take a look - you'll be jealous too.
• I'm a bit worried about Chris from Book-a-rama - she seems to have gotten her library confused with a local confectionery store and is planning on eating the books ;)
• And finally Freddie from Freddie reads talks about the routine she used to indulge in when little, and which she has passed on to her kids, when you visit the library you stop and inhale the library smell. A fine tradition indeed.

These are just a few of the great posts that you can find linked to from this week's post. When you've finished checking them all out get ready for a brand new Weekly Geeks question tomorrow

*Actually I'm sure there were many more people more organised than me this week but only 14 bragged about it ;)

It's Banned Books Week!

I don't know about you guys, but it seems like an awful lot of my favorite books or authors have been banned or challenged at some point. I always have two reactions when I hear about the removal of a book from a school or public library — On one hand, I'm always saddened and annoyed by the desire to keep information from kids, but on the other — I'm kinda glad, because it means that a whole bunch of people are now going to pass the name of that book or author around, and it's going to go on lists like these, and be bought and read and given away by people like us and... Yay for publicity... But mostly, I'm sad and angry and wish that instead of saying — NO ONE CAN TOUCH THIS BOOK, people would instead say — I don't want MY family reading this book, but you people can do whatever...
But alas.
ANYWAY — To celebrate the fact that the US doesn't actually ban books, even if some local and school libraries do remove them, and to celebrate the fact that we can read, we can read whatever we want and that the internet allows anyone to find pretty much any book at anytime, I'd like to give away a book today.:)

I will give away either an ARC of Perfect by Ellen Hopkins (who herself has been banned... True story really happened) OR a book of your choice that has been banned or challenged, or even — called too 'dark' and 'lurid' and 'dangerous'. Gotta give a chance to all those newer books out there, who just plain haven't had much chance to get their feet wet...
The ARC will only be shipping to the US, but anyone can enter. If The Book Depository ships to you, enter away!:)
To enter — Leave me a comment telling me what your favorite banned or challenged book (or books) are. AND I'm gonna be a meany and tell you that you cannot use Harry Potter. (If you absolutely have to include the awesomeness that is Harry Potter, you must also include another title.)

Also, please leave me a way to contact you, or make SURE that your email is also linked to the profile you commented with. You can't win if I can't find you...

If you have a favorite book that you know could be pretty controversial, but aren't sure it's been officially challenged or not, that works too.:)

The giveaway will run from now, until Oct 1, as per the linky/hop rules. Comment away and enjoyed reading those banned books!:)

ALSO — Be sure to check out I Read Banned Books and I Am a Reader, Not a Writer, the lovely ladies who coordinated this hop. You can check out their blogs for the full list of blogs participating! Also, stop by the rest of the week! I'm really hoping to have lots of reviews and posts talking about banned books, why I love them and some very definite recommended reading lists.:)

Last Friday was my last day at the State Historical Society. I logged about 100 hours over the course of the summer, and I learned a lot. I started my internship there because I was considering becoming an archivist. After spending a whole summer there I decided that archives are probably not the vein of library science I want to pursue. There are a couple of reasons why.

The first reason is that it seemed like the archivists at the State Historical Society didn't have a whole lot of interaction with the public. They handled queries but most of our queries came in through phone or email. I think at first I was attracted to the field of archives because it wasn't with a lot of people interaction, but after spending the summer there I realized that I actually like people (I know, I was amazed too).

Another reason is that archivists have to spend ridiculous amounts of time on stupid projects that are not interesting at all. I know all librarians have to deal with boring stuff but the project I was working on this summer was humongous. Three of us were working on it and one of the archivists came in one the weekends to work and when I left they informed me they were about half done. Some of the stuff we got in had no historical significance at all. Like Christmas cards. They might be important to the person who gave them to us, although I doubt it because otherwise he probably wouldn't have given them to us. Basically, the archives kind of seem like a landfill.

Overall, I enjoyed my time at the State Historical Society and I am so glad I tried out archives because now I know what the job is actually like. This was my first internship and I'm only halfway through school so I still have time to try out a lot of other jobs. My time was not wasted at all, I learned a lot about the process and just about libraries and archives in general, and I came away with a personal decision that it wasn't for me. I say my first internship was a success.

In case you don't know me, I like to make up medical sounding names for my book obsessions. For example: P.A.B.D.. I'd now like to introduce Shiny Book Syndrome. This is usually accompanied by a book hording problem yet to be named.

So what is Shiny Book Syndrome? It is when a person only wants to read their newest book and leave piles of poor unread books on their shelves to collect dust.

What can you do to alleviate the symptoms?

My first suggestion would be to make a list of all the books you own. I use GoogleDocs. I start by creating a form and then can organize the spreadsheet to see what I have and if I've read it yet or not. (For more info on how to do this, go here).

After you know what you have, I'd suggest jumping in on some reading challenges to motivate you to read the books you already own. Here are some challenges designed just for that!

• Bottoms Up Reading Challenge hosted by Ellz Readz
  • read books from the bottom of your TBR pile
• A-Buck-A-Book Challenge hosted by DelGal’s Book Reviews
  • save a $1 for every book your read
• Buy One Book and Read It Challenge hosted by My Friend Amy
  • this seems backwards… me telling you to buy a book… the catch is you HAVE to read the book you buy

    

• Finish That Series Challenge in 2010 hosted by Royal Reviews
  • “This is an opportunity for you to finish all of those series that have been sitting on your book shelf looking at you.”
• Read It Again Challenge hosted by Twiga’s Books
  • re-reading old books can help with not purchasing new ones

    

• Read Your Own Books Challenge for 2010 hosted by MizB’s Reading Challenges
  • simple enough… read the books you own! (no rereads allowed)
• Reading From My Shelves Project in 2010 hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea
  • min of 20 books and you are asked to pass the books along when you’re done
• 2010 Support Your Local Library Challenge hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog
  • participants are encouraged to read from their libraries
• TBR Challenge for 2010 hosted by MizB’s Reading Challenges
  • “Pick 12 books – one for each month of the year – that you’ve been wanting to read (that have been on your “To Be Read” list) for 6 months or longer, but haven’t gotten around to.)”
  • also offered in a “lite” version : TBR Lite for 2010

I am soincredibly excited to have Stephanie on my blog today! She is amazing. I read Ballads of Suburbia earlier this year and was completely blown away by the book and the stories within the story. Stephanie wrote such a raw and emotional book that I was consumed by it for days and now I talk about it all the time. (Wanna read my review? :) ) So, when I got the idea for Just Contemporary, I knew that I wanted to ask Stephanie to be a part of it and I made embarrassing noises she emailed me yes!:)

Here are some links to places where you can see more of Stephanie — Her website, her blog, Rookie an online magazine she writes for (and is crazy excited about, with good reason to be), and Twitter. And now — The Interview:

I've heard you mention before that Ballads of Suburbia is a deeply personal book, one that a lot of you went into writing. What was it like, to write a book like that? A book that used so much of you? Did that make it easier or harder to write that I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone?

It was definitely a lot harder to write than IWBYJR, though that book dealt with some pretty hefty things, too, so there were some scenes that were difficult, but all of Ballads was hard. I mean I guess writing the setting was easier because unlike with IWBYJR, I wasn't making it up, I was writing about the place I lived during the time I lived there, so it was all in my memory, but that was the only easy part about that book. Early on, I worried a lot that I didn't want to make it too autobiographical. Fortunately as soon as I stopped thinking about it and started really creating the characters, especially through their ballads, I was relieved to find that they were all fictional... Well, Kara has a lot in common with me, but her story is different. Then it was time for revisions and the main feedback I got from my editor on it was something like "get closer to Kara's emotions, get into her head and really let us feel what she's feeling." At first I was all mad, thinking, I did that! Kara's head was basically my head when I was a teenager. But then I reread it and realized I'd actually held back a lot during my first few drafts, not intentionally but because I didn't want to go back there. The things I dealt with as a teenager, primarily the depression and the self-injury affected me into my early twenties. I'd felt like I'd healed, but probably only about five years before I was working on Ballads, so I had those emotions locked up pretty carefully and I knew it would be scary to revisit them. I reread old journals and things I wrote about cutting to get into Kara's mindset. I actually got so scary close to her that I was exhausted both mentally and physically when I finished the revision. When I was a teenager I'd had an ulcer form from all the stress and that ulcer had healed in my mid-twenties, but started acting up again after I finished Ballads. It really was the hardest thing I've ever done, but as a result, it is also the thing I am most proud of.

Does I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone draw from your personal experiences the way that Ballads did?

Both books in a way are me looking at my own life and saying "What could have happened if... " With Ballads it was, "What could have happened if I did heroin more than once" because in real life I did it one time and it scared the shit out of me, so I sobered up completely for the rest of high school. With IWBYJR it was, "What would have happened if I actually could have learned to play the music I loved so much." If Kara from Ballads was the girl I was was, then Emily from IWBYJR is the girl I wanted to be. However, I actually have more in common with Louisa. Without giving the book away, I'll say that Louisa is carrying an awful secret that has to do with a guy she dated in high school, while I dated a guy who didn't do quite as bad things as this guy, he did some pretty bad things to me and while I didn't do what she did to the guy, I still came away from the situation, well to put it bluntly, really fucked up and I ran away in a manner of speaking for awhile, but not as long as Louisa did. Once again, with her I projected, "What would have happened if I never came to terms with that guy did to me... " I know that a lot of readers really don't like or relate to Louisa, but I actually feel for her because that could have been me. For the most part though, IWBYJR came from my love of punk rock, especially girl bands like Sleater-Kinney whose song "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" I named the book after. I dreamed of a world where they would take over the mainstream rock airwaves.

Did you have a goal while writing either of these books? A specific message or meaning you hoped people would take away from the experience? Or were they just stories that needed telling?

They were just stories that needed telling. I honestly wrote both books because they were the books I needed as a teenager. I was a punk kid and I wanted there to be this big girl rock revolution, and would have loved reading about it, so I wrote it. On a more serious note, my friends and I were dealing with some pretty heavy stuff like the characters in Ballads, but in the mid-90s there weren't really YA books that dealt with that or if they did, they were all preachy and after-school special like. I just wanted to see someone like who survived so that I could draw strength from that. I wrote that story to give voice to teenage me and all the other teenagers like me who weren't seeing their stories out there.

Do you look back on either of these novels and see things you would like to change? Things you wish you would have done differently?

There is one minor character in IWBYJR that I wanted to kill off, but my agent told me not to. I still sort of wish I had. I can't really say more without spoilers. There are probably sentences or words here or there that I might change just because everyone grows as a writer (hopefully) so I might see a phrase as awkward or overwritten now that I didn't back then, but if I intentionally looked for that stuff it would make me crazy, so I don't. I am very proud of those books. I told the stories I wanted to tell. The only thing I wish is that I'd fought harder for them to be marketed more as YA. Sometimes they were in the adult sections of book stories and libraries and I want more teens to be able to find them.

I know the 'Bartender Book' is considered to be more Women's Fiction than YA, but is there crossover appeal? Are the people (specifically the teens) who enjoyed your previous novels likely to want to read the Bartender Book?

I must say that the Bartender Book isn't the actual title, I'm just being all secretive about that because I'm afraid of jinxing it, but yeah it is set a lot in a bar, so that and the fact that the main characters are 18 and 38 makes it "women's fiction" rather than YA, but like IWBYJR it is a mother/daughter story. The mother is in the story a lot more than Louisa was in IWBYJR because the chapters alternate, but the mother is actually a lot more like a teenager than the daughter. I actually tried to inject a bit more humor into it because I had to after writing a book like Ballads or that ulcer would come back for good, but it's not a "light" book by any means
It deals with a lot of the same issues as my other books though, like finding a home or place to fit in, coping with grief and life not turning out like how you thought it would be. I'm pitching it as "an edgier version of The Gilmore Girls." So if you liked that show and/or if you like my other books, I think you'll like this one. At least I hope so!

Any hints or ideas you can give us for what is in the works next?

The Bartender Book is only just going on submission, so I'm not deep into anything else yet. I have three ideas... No, two, I think I've successfully limited it down to two. They are both YA, so a YA project is definitely next. They are both the edgy, real-life type of stories that readers have come to expect from me, but both would have a paranormal/magical realism twist to them because I have always admired Francesca Lia Block and wanted to add some small element of strangeness to the very real contemporary issues that my characters are dealing with. Though I love reading paranormal and sci-fi books, I'm kind of afraid to dip more than my feet into those waters, but I feel like I should at least deep my feet in and challenge myself if that makes sense.

Other than the writing itself, what is the hardest part of being a writer.

Honestly there are a lot of hard parts. Waiting is hard. Things happen at a snail's pace in publishing. Rejection is super hard and so is reading really nasty reviews. I am not a thick-skinned person and that is why I would say hardest of all is the self-doubt and the worrying. Even though I have two books published, I worry that I am not good enough to get published again. I worry that I will never be successful enough as a writer to properly make ends meet and should get a more reliable job. I worry that I will run out of ideas or start to suck. I worry that deep down I really do suck, but have been managing to squeak by somehow. In short, there is a lot of self-doubt and worrying that goes along with writing for me. But I do my damnedest to push past it because I love telling stories, I don't know what I would do if I couldn't write.

Anything else you'd like to add or share with us?

I just want to thank you for having me and supporting contemporary fiction!

You are so welcome Stephanie and thank you so very much for being a part of this event! You are amazing and I for one am very grateful that you keep writing! Can't wait to read your next book!

And now — The giveaway! Because Stephanie is all kinds of awesome, she has donated a signed copy of either of her books, winners choice! How awesome is that?! Both are amazing and I'm so excited that you will have a chance to win!

To enter, fill out the Rafflecopter below! It's open US/CN only will end Dec 10 and there are chances for extra entries!! I promise, you don't want to miss this one! Here is the link to Rookie , the online magazine. Going there will get you extra giveaway entries!

If you were here last weekend then you know I bought a nook. Since Sunday I have almost finished two books (finished one and almost finished another) on the nook and I can say already that I have really enjoyed the experience of reading on it. I'm planning on posting an actual review towards the end of June, so if you're thinking about buying any e-reader be sure to check out my review later this month!

I am going to keep this post pretty short, mostly because my head hurts and I've had a bit of a rocky weekend. This week I posted a review of Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age, which is a really interesting book if you are interested in libraries or archives. I also posted a review of The Carrie Diaries, which is a fun summer read, particularly if you are a Sex and the City fan. I did my first Booking Through Thursday post about signed books and I talked about my third week at my internship. Last Saturday I had a guest post about The Graphic Novel, which got a great response so next Saturday check back for guest poster Ron to fill us in on his must read graphic novels!

As for reading this summer, I've done pretty well on the weekends on the beginning and end of the weeks, but since I work Tuesday-Thursday I'm usually pretty tuckered out at night and then I want to spend time with my family and the boyfriend. I am still getting quite a bit of reading done this summer. Originally I thought I would read more heavy books during the summer since I wouldn't be reading them during school, but I've found that the only stuff I've really gotten into have been memoirs, essays, and junk food (particularly Meg Cabot and romance novels). At first I was kind of bummed with myself for not reading more challenging books, but hell, it's summer. And frankly I don't give a damn.

This is my last week as a teenager! I'm going to be 20 on Sunday. In case you are interested I am going to The Lion King for my birthday at the Des Moines Civic Center. I have never been to The Lion King before so I am very excited. I'm also going to celebrate my birthday by participating in Maw Books Blog's Bloggiesta, which runs from January 8-10. A Bloggiesta is basically just a chance to improve your blog. I worked a lot on my layout this past week, but I'm going to be using the bloggiesta time to make some post templates and work on a few other things for my blog. I'm going to try and work on my blog for a total of 24 hours over the weekend. My challenge to myself is to work on my blog for ten hours straight from Saturday to Sunday. You obviously won't see a lot of the work that I do on my blog, but I'll make a post at the end of the weekend to share what I've done.

This week I posted the books I got for Christmas and my plans for this blog in the coming year. I also posted reviews of The Clumsiest People in Europe, The Time Traveler's Wife, and A Great and Terrible Beauty. I also joined one more challenge: The Essay Reading Challenge.

I'm working on where I'm going to live next year and I will probably be signing a lease for my first apartment soon. Yesterday was a busy day for me because it was a day of making plans. I'm planning a couple of trips, applying for a couple of internships, and I'm looking into the first apartment situation. I'm most likely going to be living by myself, which won't be very different from how things are now. All of this apartment talk has got me thinking about decorating though! Decorating is probably my second passion after books. I spent this entire past summer thinking about how I was going to decorate my dorm room for this year, and anyone who has seen my dorm room will tell you that it is pretty sweet. I thought I would share a few things I found about decorating with books, a challenge for any avid reader. I found a link on Better Homes and Gardens about Decorating With Books. Some of the ideas aren't that practical, but they are pretty. I might use some of these ideas next year. I'm also lusting after At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries. It's a little expensive but I think it's something I would use for many, many years. Perhaps a birthday present to myself?

Happy reading!

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