Monday, December 22, 2014

{Update} Summer Reading + Summer Movies

So I know summer is long gone, and you thought I had checked off every book and movie from the list I made here a long, long time ago. They were supposed to be books that I read during the summer, but it seemed new and more interesting books were cropping up all over the place, and before long summer was over, and I still had about four books left unread.

For the most part though this was not entirely my fault. My public library has been rather deceiving as to what they have and don't have in stock and what is currently available to me.

Long story short this is my list of things that I've actually read vs what I haven't:

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
The Blue Mirror by Kathe Koja
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Post Secret by Frank Warren
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Under the Dome by Stephen King
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Looking for Alaska by John Green
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

The online library database told me they had all the books in the above list (as the responsible person that I was checked all this before ever adding a book to the list). When I went to the library every two weeks, I would simply have a note on my phone of all the authors and titles and simply look them up myself among the shelves (I mean the Dewey Decimal system isn't that hard to decode). Eventually I began noticing that I continually couldn't find certain books week after week after week, but I simply chalked this up to the fact that they were popular, and I was simply going to have to place the books on hold to actually get my hands on them.


Time went by, and the same four books couldn't be found no matter how hard I looked. For lack of a better plan I would just check out other random books I happened to stumble upon until the summer ended and it occured to me that well shit, I still had four books left on my list. 

I then put off the mystery until a week ago because I procrastinate when things get tough. Then as I sat on my computer one day and looked through the database once more I realized that my library system had the books, but the library branch I use, does not.

This then led me to the not so grand world of interlibrary loan request forms which were still not much help at all. I could only request one book at a time (which wasn't so great considering I needed four), not to mention I would have to pay for the postage to ship these four books individually across town. I then had the option of simply driving to another one of the county libraries to check out the books myself, but considering I can barely squeeze in the time to make it to my own library 10 minutes away, there was no way I could make time to go to one 25-30 minutes across town. I also tried my own school library, which is probably one of the worst libraries ever chalk filled with cliche romances and the only good books are on hold by seven other individuals. 

So alas I am ditching the four unread books above and replacing them with books that I own/my friends own because the library is misleading. Learn from your mistakes I suppose.

Without further ado my new and improved Summer (er Winter) Reading List:

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
The Blue Mirror by Kathe Koja
The Jury by Steve Martini
Yes Please by Amy Poehler
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Looking for Alaska by John Green
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
My Point and I Do Have One by Ellen DeGeneres

So I know, this summer reading/movie thing has been dragged out waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long, but I'm an occasionally irresponasible teenager. You get what you can get.

I also still have two movie/book review posts that need to be published as well, I was just waiting to get this post up before I continued. I hoped to publish the other two to allow myself time to read the other four books. So FINALLY, I will get this whole thing wrapped up after nearly five months (oops is really all I can say at this point).

Alas, have a fabulous day. 

4 comments:

  1. And that's the exact reason I buy all my books these days: library branches and their loan requests. Some six or seven years ago the library if my town decided to become a branch of the library system on the other side of the river (this system belongs to the county on the other side of the river). The result: all the good books were always on the other side of the river.
    By the way, I'd still highly recommend Under the Dome. It's quite an inexpensive book. I bought mine brand-new when the tv series was just getting popular for about €15. It'll probably be cheaper now, with a movie-edition (or should I say tv-series-edition in this case?).
    Divergent will probably be on sale when the next movie comes out. I wasn't a big fan, but the rest of the world seems to love it to bits :P

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    1. I've been keeping my eye out for a good deal on Under the Dome because I'm still dying to read it! I love the tv series, and the book was probably one of the books that I was most excited to read (sigh). After this incident, I'm probably going to start buying more books although I'm not sure how my wallet will feel about that haha.

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  2. There are so many books on that list I want to read (The Great Gatsby, Under the Dome, If I Stay etc)...atleast you have libraries with good books there unlike Delhi,India :P
    Since I can't find or buy every book I usually download e-books from the internet..they're free and easy to find..:D

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    1. I'm a fan of reading random free e-books that I happen to stumble upon as well! In general though, I love real books over e-books, but it all depends. Thanks for commenting! :D

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