Thursday Book Questions on a Friday, Pt. 2

As promised, I will continue to poke my head in here to answer Jenna St. Hilaire's Thursday Book Questions. I'll also use these lines in the header to offer a brief update on life as a librarian/theology grad student.

This week has been very busy--I taught three information literacy classes this week, one of which was for an English lit class, which was fun. They were doing secondary research on some aspect of a short story they read, so I showed them how to go about doing that.

On the theology front, I'm currently taking a class called The Early Church, in which we are reading primary texts from the first thousand years of the Church. This week, we're reading Athanasius's Against the Arians. In fact, I'm spending this Friday evening at the reference desk trying to get through as much of it as I can (it's a pretty long text).

And finally, I am preparing for a presentation I'll be giving next week at a librarians' conference in Savannah, GA, called the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy. It will be my first time to Georgia, so I am super excited about that. I'll be presenting with my research partna' Teresa Grettano, and our presentation is called:  "I Found it on Facebook": Social Media and the ACRL Information Literacy Standards. We'll be taking the information literacy standards for college-level students and showing how user behaviors on social media sites like Facebook actually lay the groundwork for information literacy skills. This thesis is a bit radical (ha), but something I am incredibly committed to. Teresa and I have been working on this research since last year, and will continue to do so for at least another year, maybe more. Next week will be my first conference presentation though, so I'm a little nervous, but mostly excited for the opportunity.

All of that being said... I love my job. :)

And now, on to the Thursday Book Questions. For last week's questions and answers, click here.


6. Do you have an e-reader?
No I do not. I am not opposed to owning one someday though. I am waiting for the gadgetry to evolve a bit more, so I can have more flexibility with what I use said gadget for, including reading e-books.

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
Prefer? I mean, in a perfect world I would read one book at a time... and that would be my only occupation every day. But being the busy-bee that I am, I almost have no choice but to read more than one book at a time, otherwise I would never get to all the titles I'd like.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
Ha, I don't blog often or regularly enough to have a valid answer to this question. Even if I did though, the answer would probably be "No," since I have always read as often as I can, given a very busy schedule. Blogging hasn't radically altered that situation much for me.

9. Least favorite book you read this year (so far?)
Hmmm... This is tough, partially because I can't remember everything I tackled in Spring. I was not a huge fan of the book Theology of Wonder, which I offered my impressions about in July. It was good, but not great--for me at least.

10. Favorite book you’ve read this year?
Definitely a difficult question considering, again, I can't remember all the books I read in Spring. I do know I read the Artemis Fowl books, which I absolutely adore. I think it was the story that surprised me most this year, in terms of just *how* much I wound up loving it. If you haven't read these books, and you're into YA stories of the fantastic type (but good ones), I highly recommend that you do.

Thursday Book Questions, Pt. 1 (via Jenna St. Hilaire)

So, clearly, my semi-regular blogging of the early summer vanished in the late summer/early fall rush. For those who are still listening, this blog is not defunct--just in a bit of a slumber. I promise that I do have quite a lot to blog about, so all sorts of library/theology/research-related content will be posted soon enough.

In the meantime, though, Jenna over at A Light Inside has started a delightful series of posts that invite her readers to participate. For this, methinks, my blog will awake briefly from its ongoing slumber.

And so, without further ado, here is Part 1 of Thursday Book Questions. To see more Thursday Book Questions submissions, visit that link and scroll to the comments.


1. Favorite childhood book?
Picture book: either Heckedy Peg or Tiki Tiki Tembo
Novel: The Giver

2. What are you reading right now?
For school: Tertullian's Against Praxeas
For pleasure: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (rereading)

3. What books do you have on request at the library?
None at this time

4. Bad book habit?
Starting books and taking quite a while to finish them (unless they are for school).

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
A lot of books for school and research:
Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age
Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology
Thinking About God in an Age of Technology
Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race
A Broadening Conversation: Classic Readings in Theological Librarianship
Engaging Technology in Theological Education: All That We Can't Leave Behind
Theological Librarians and the Internet: Implications for Practice
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (via ILL)