Finding treasures at the library

I know I’ve been MIA lately but school has been keeping me super busy and I started a second part-time job as a library page.  I’ve advocated public libraries as a great resource for finding great reading materials especially in these difficult financial times.  What I’ve sort of forgotten about was that there are also a great selection of non-fiction titles that we might not always think to go look for.  Shelving books at the library has brought some neat subject areas to my attention.

One featured collection at the library I work at is a disaster preparedness display.  This display caught my eye because I’ll admit I have a guilty pleasure watching Doomsday Preppers.

There were some neat looking books like:

The Urban Farm Handbook

The Prepper’s Pocket Guide

The cooking section is an amazingly busy section if my shelving experience is any indication and some of these books look so yummy!

I recognized Chloe from Cupcake Wars and definitely want to check this out.

Chloe’s Kitchen by Chloe Coscarelli

The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

Another thing I get a chance to do while working is process hold requests and I came across this great book that I put my own hold request on.  I’ve been trying to prepare more things from scratch so my kids eat less processed foods.  I cannot wait for it to come back and get to me!

Another display had a book about couponing that I’m kicking myself for not writing down the title because now I can’t find it in the catalog to request and its gone but I did find this one in our catalog that I want to check out.  I’m always looking for ways to save money since our income is so limited right now.

The Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half by Stephanie Nelson

The Homemade Pantry

I used to be a huge comic fan of the X-Men series. This was years and years ago and I finally gave up because it was just getting ridiculous with all of these apocalypse mini-series, people dying and coming back a dozen times (ahem-Jean Grey).  But I’ve been shelving so many graphic novels about the X-Men that I have to admit it has peaked my interest to see what my favorite characters are up to.  A co-worker told me Gambit is now one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse?! And I think he said the Emma Frost now has a thing going with Cyclops?

I was surprised to see Dazzler had another dedicated book to her (or maybe a reissue?) but dang don’t remember her having those kind of boobs before.  Definitely noticing much more scantily clad female characters than when I was reading the series.

I have a 5 year old and a 2 year old and shelving in the children’s books is a great chance to find some new titles.

I absolutely loved this one.  We’re Amy Krouse Rosenthal fans in our house but have never heard of this one before and it was so cute.  My 5 yr old kept asking to read it.

Bedtime for Mommy by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

My 2 yr old has definitely entered the terrible twos and is driving me bonkers so I was so excited to find this book.

Calm-Down Time by Elizabeth Verdick

I could keep going on about the cool looking books I’ve come across (and some surprising ones! There is an amazingly large section about sex and about poker playing as a livelihood) but I just want to encourage you to go check out your local library.  You might be surprised what catches your eye.