Wrist improving, now have the crud

Yep, it's February. I have come down with "the crud", that lovely combo of cold/flu/snot-fest that seems to happen around this time every year. I have been washing my hands constantly, using sanitzer when necessary, and generally trying to keep my distance from patrons/co-workers that I suspect are ill. But, yeah. Nothing worked. Came home last night with a sore throat, which rapidly progressed to feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. I'm tired, snotty, achy, and my ears pop every time I swallow.

Sigh.

On the plus side, this means I'm staying home today (one of my incredibly rare sick days taken), and I have plenty of books to read. I have a wonderful hubby who has already promised to make me chicken soup for lunch, and to procure orange juice for me as well. Plus I know I'll get lots of TLC, which is truthfully the best medicine on the planet.

Promise I'll try to get back to the posts soon - with hopefully a healed wrist and healed head!

So frustrating!

OK, I have been reading. Really! I've read 10 books already - well on my way to 100 for 2012. So why haven't you seen more posts from me?

In a nutshell, my wrist.

Yep, I finally did something to hurt myself at work. The "what" is still a bit of a mystery, although I have my suspicions, most of them surrounding a marathon session of moving/shelving books about 2 weeks ago. I also might have rolled over on it while sleeping and strained something that way, or maybe it just aggrevated the existing injury. And since I can't be sure I did it at work, there's no sense in looking at any sort of time off for it, either. Sigh.

Best guess is that I have tendonitis in my wrist. Feels like I pulled a muscle, but according to the medical reading I've been doing, you don't have any muscles in your wrist - just tendons. And when one of those tendons is inflamed or stressed or whatever... well, it just sucks. There's really no much you can do for it unless you actually rip the darn thing in half. Basically, NSAIDs and a wrist brace - and patience - are your best bets.

So I'm trying to type this with the brace on, since using the computer, mostly the mouse, really hurts. But trying to type with this thing on is almost impossible, since I have to hold my arm at a weird angle. Plus it's making me use muscles in my upper arm that I haven't used in forever! Thus, posts from me are going to be sparse for a while. Bear with me, and just keep your fingers crossed that it won't take long for my wrist to heal!

Yes, I'm still alive

Sorry for the radio silence. It's been a crazy week or two at work. We've had three people resign at our Main branch in as many weeks, two for personal reasons and the other one because of a new full-time job. As you can imagine, that has put more of a burden on those of us that have been "helping out" - they need a lot more help!

I promise I have been reading, and that there will be more blogs and book reviews soon. Hopefully this week. Keep your fingers crossed!

The Drought is Over!

I have managed to read a paltry two books so far this year. At this rate, my goal of reading 100 books this year was looking more like "Mission Impossible". I had made myself a promise to stick with one book at a time, hoping that in doing so, I would be able to finish a work faster and maybe still have a small glimmer of hope of reaching such a lofty goal.

Well, it's a holiday weekend for us at the library, and I was looking for something new to read. I opened the latest box from my "dealer" and pulled out three possibilities. I thought I would just read a little of each one to help me decide which one would be "the one" - and ended up reading quite a bit of all three. In fact, all three are really holding my interest, so I'm plowing right along with them.

Hallelujah! The reading drought is over!

I have to be honest: I was really starting to worry that I was losing my interest in the printed word (and I mean any printed word, be it actual print or e-book or whatever). I had found in the last month or so that I just wasn't reading all the much. I've been coming home from work and sitting in front of the boob tube, content to just veg out before tottering off to bed at my usual time of 9-ish or so. I was trying to read a bit before turning out the light to head off to dreamland, but was finding it increasingly difficult to make it through a single chapter. Very scary for a library lady, especially one who has a blog of book reviews and such! But it looks like things are getting back to normal, for which I am eternally grateful.

O Happy Day!

Wet Wednesday

Yes, it sounds like a naughty contest, doesn't it? Sadly, it's today's weather forecast here in North Carolina: 100% chance of rain. As in, a complete and total washout. I will be working, but I won't be working, if you know what I mean. I don't know why but it would seem that people just do not want to come out in bad weather, be it rain, snow, cold, etc.

Sigh.

Anyway, I was bemoaning my extremely slow progress yesterday regarding my reading goal of 2012. I thought about it some last night, and I'm still baffled - why is it taking me so long to get through a book these days? It's not like I've picked up duds. I really have liked the titles I've read lately. But I'm only to get through about a chapter per day, and yes, at that rate, I'll be lucky to read 50 books this year. I suppose I could choose much, much shorter works, which would hopefully help my speed, but that seems a bit like cheating.

How are you doing with your reading goals so far? Anyone else having the reading "blahs" like me? How do you get through them?

One down, 99 to go

I have finally finished my first book of my 2012 reading challenge. Good grief. At this rate, I will never make 100 books this year.

I might not even make 50!

Brick-&-Mortar vs Online retailers

I just read a very interesting article in the December 12th edition of Publishers Weekly. It was mostly in response to Amazon's "check price app" that was offered before the holidays; for walking into a brick-and-mortar bookstore, the all-mighty e-tailer was offering up to $15 in discounts to those customers that scanned that booksellers item/price. Some thought it was a smart move on Amazon's part, as they have no physical stores, but others cried "Foul!" - and loudly. They saw it as Amazon trying to beat out the physical stores, both the big chains and the independents, through some sneaky-snake deals.

Regardless of how you see look at it, though, it brought up a good point, and that's what the article really focused on: how people choose the books they choose. I have to admit that I've done this myself, although not exactly in the context they mean. We have a local brick-and-mortar bookstore in town, and yes, I have walked through the store looking at displays, picking up interesting titles, enjoying the atmosphere - and walking out completely empty-handed. I never intended to buy anything when I walked in; I was doing research, both for my job and for my personal reading interests. As much as I love physical print books, I am loathe to pay the prices this particular bookstore wants to charge, even after you pay a yearly "member" fee that supposedly gets you discounts. Plus working in a library setting, I just do not buy books all that often, as I can get most anything I want to read through work. It's not that I don't want to support good authors. I just do not have the funds nor the storage space to buy every book I read. To give you an idea of what I mean, I read 92 books in 2011, and the three years previous I read 86 books - each year! That's a lot of books, people!

Anyway, I digress.

The PW article basically said that many readers do this, what they call "showrooming" and "previewing" in brick-and-mortar stores, and yes, most of those readers admit to going home and buying the book from an online source. This held true for both print and e-versions. So what are the brick-and-mortar stores to do? How can they compete? Well, a different article farther into the issue says that many independents are offering sidelines, and lots of them, to make a profit. Which begs the question: is it still a "book" store if 25-30% of what a store sells (or more) are not books?

It's a new world out there, folks, and it would seem that the ongoing print/physical book vs. online/e-book war is going to continue without end. However, on a final, somewhat hopeful note, there was an interesting graph in the first article measuring out percentages of book buyers who "previewed" books in a store, then bought that same book online in either format, in the past month. Yes, e-books are on the rise, but 21% of the people questioned said they "will never read books in digital format", while a whopping 40% said they read an equal amount of print and digital formats. This totally has me happy as a clam, because I am a dyed-in-the-wool print girl at heart. And it also confirms what I've seen at the library: patrons who are thrilled that we are offering digital versions of titles but who still love the feel of a good book in their hands, proving that their is room for both formats in the publishing world.

Food for thought on a Saturday morning!