A new book to devour...

This week I feel like I have a bunch of little things to say, so you might get a bunch of little posts! I like to break up the text with at least one photo, so hopefully I'll be able to put something up that goes along with the topic. Right now, I'm exhausted from snowtubing all afternoon and once I'm done vegging on the couch with Hubby (and playing Mario on the Wii), I am going to head upstairs and pick up where I left off on a new book. :) I just had to share my thoughts on this one because it's about a freelance bookbinder (!) who can also see ghosts (!) and is trying to solve a mystery involving an illuminated manuscript (!). Seriously, how much better could this book get?? It's called The Book of Illumination: A Novel from the Ghost Files by Mary Ann Winkowski and Maureen Foley. I also just noticed on Amazon (in their section of Frequently Bought Together) that I also own one of the ones frequently bought but I would never have connected the two. Hm. Anyway, I am about halfway through the book and so far I have been nerdily excited over the references to bookbinding, the North Bennett St School, and to art/book and paper conservation schools. I am a little disappointed with how much the authors focus on the protagonist's personal life vs. interacting with ghosts (it seems to be a very minor part of the book thus far) but I'm hoping it will pick up a little towards the end of the book. I need to share this book with my bookbinding chums! (Yes, I used the word chums)

I also just came across a post on my Twitter today from amlibraries about social media cards as the 2.0 Type of Business Card. You can read the blog post here. I find the idea to be an excellent one. I appreciate that libraries and cultural institutions have a presence on social networking sites, but really? Who wants to "connect" with an institution? I would much rather network with a specific person who responds to my questions and comments rather than an overreaching organization. In most cases anyway, one person is assigned to update the institutions social networking accounts and the users/patrons get to know who this person is, responding to them on a more personal level. Let's share the workload with others, eh? Everyone should know how to use FB at this point (and NEEDS to). It's a really great guest post on The 'M' Word: Marketing Ideas for Libraries and Nonprofits, you should check it out. (http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/)

And just to include a picture for you :), here's a photo of a necklace I created as a holiday gift. It was my first attempt at working with wire and really bending it, hammering it, etc. I had to choose an easy design because otherwise I knew it would look a little miserable. The receiver seemed to like it and that's all that matters to me!