Interesting Facts From School This Week:
Just this week I started my first class in an online continuing education program through the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This semester I’m taking “Public and Community Library Services.” Since my readers tend to care about reading, libraries, and publishing, I decided to add this category to the Sunday Lowdown and give you a few facts I thought were interesting that I found in my reading assignment that week.
- Young adults are more likely to have visited a library in the past 12 months than those ages 65 and older.
- 19% of American adults say they have never visited a public library, including 11% of those who have a college or graduate degrees.
- 7% of those 16 and older say they have connected to a library’s Wi-Fi system when the library building itself was closed.
- Library use is low when people have a low income or a high income.
This Week’s Blog Posts:
As Jackie @ Death By Tsundoku mentioned, it feels like we are at the end of an era with #ReadingValdemar. Three trilogies have used the same characters, decreasing attention on some and focusing more on others, but it’s been the same brief time period and people. Monday, I shared my review of Storm Breaking and felt a bit of relief that the next (and last!) trilogy of 2019 will begin with different characters and a new setting.
On Friday I shared a review of a book many of you had read and loved or already added to your TBR: Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake. Immersive, surprising, and lovely, Lahiri did not disappoint.
Next Week’s Blog Posts:
I quickly decided to DNF My Ever Dear Charlie, which made my TBR for September because it is the newest book I have purchased. It was set aside when I realized that though it’s about this woman with several children who is living without her husband on a bit of land the government will give them if they can tend it for a year, her days are repetitive: what they ate, what the children did, etc. I skipped around and read several pages throughout to verify my suspicions, and they were confirmed.
After setting down My Ever Dear Charlie, I picked up The Love that Prison Made and Unmade by Ebony Roberts. It’s a companion novel (though not marketed that way) to Shaka Senghor’s memoir, Writing My Wrongs, so I’m keen to finish it and see how this couple that met while Senghor was incarcerated will (if they do) survive. Review Tuesday.
On Friday I’ll share a review of The Dirty Girls Club by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, a novel purported to have fat female lead characters. Fingers crossed that it goes well and can be added to my recommendation page.
Book I’m Reading Aloud to My Spouse:
We’re chugging along on David Copperfield, and more is happening with Uriah Heep, the creepy man who would possess Davy’s beloved “sister,” Agnes. I have to wonder if Uriah will catch Scarlet Fever and die; it works in other old timey novels.
Books Added to the TBR Pile:
Thanks to Alicia for her recommendation!
Grab the Lapels 
Good luck in your new class! It sounds really interesting.
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Thank you, kindly!
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Famous Australian author, Miles Franklin, who was in Chicago from 1906-1915 (with the Women’s Trade Union movement) took classes at University of Wisconsin Madison. I’ll have to find out what subjects she took.
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That’s a fantastic connection. I’ve seen you mention Franklin a number of times on your blog. UW-Madison is right on the water, and it’s a lovely town (except lately it keeps flooding).
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That’s an interesting statistic about the difference in library usage between age groups. I would have expected the older groups to be regular users but it’s good in a way because it means another generation is growing up with the habit
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I was surprised, too. A lot of patrons I see checking out books are older (around 50+). Then again, my area is downstairs with nonfiction and computers, and the youth section is upstairs, so it’s likely I just don’t see all the young people getting books.
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ther are a lot of young people using our main library but they tend to be a) studying in the quiet zone or b) using the computers – so not much book browsing going on. Still, at least they are in there…..
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Those are great library facts! I’m surprised by the first one too. Do they say what age they consider young adult? I’m wondering if it includes high school students since they almost can’t avoid visiting the library at least occasionally. (Although I also would have said you couldn’t get through a college or university degree without visiting a library!)
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Young adults at my library is anyone 13-18; however, this reading did not specify what they mean by young adult. Weirdly, I didn’t visit the library much when I was in high school, but I was there all the time in elementary and middle school, especially during the summer when I could convince my mom to pick me up on her lunch break and leave me at the library for the rest of the afternoon until she got out of work.
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I remember going to the public library a lot but hardly ever the school library in high school, except when we had to. I can’t recall ever checking a book out from the school library. However, when we had a spare block we were supposed to spend it in the library so some years I spent more time there than others.
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I think I spent a hot second in my high school library. It was a new building, and they had a few librarians, but I have no idea why the school didn’t have students do a tour of the library to let us know what’s there, or meet the librarians, or SOMETHING. My class assignment for the coming week is to think more about community outreach, and now I’m wondering if it would be a good idea to focus on high school outreach. My manager also mentioned that the new adult demographic (not just books, but the age group in general) are not served as well as young adults and children. I’ve got something thinking to do!
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Yes, there’s not a lot of library programming for that new adult demographic. Most libraries have stuff for kids and usually the elderly and then I feel like there’s kind of a wasteland in the middle. I love libraries but I sort of forgot about them during the period between being in school and having kids.
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OMG I LOVE the library facts you are throwing us, so fascinating!!!! And yay for young adults, that’s the most encouraging news I’ve heard all day 🙂
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I’m so glad you like it! I know that when I worked at the civic theatre, most readers were interested in what play or musical we were doing instead of my blogging goals. 😂
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Pit Bull is on my TBR list too!
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I know this lady got loads of flack when she wrote the book because so many people have been attacked by this breed, so they were upset that she was encouraging people to love an animal that would maul them to death, that she was endangering people. However, I’m not going to make an assumption about dogs, so I’m interested in the book.
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Pit Bulls are great dogs. Their biggest problem is that they will do anything, literally anything for their owners. And of course, horrible humans take advantage and warp this. It’s almost never the dog and almost always an irresponsible owner. I’m 100% pro-pit. I have a pit mix and he’s a goddamn angel, everyone adores him. To him, strangers are just people who don’t know they love him yet.
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I know in Bill Burr’s latest stand-up special he talks about how he had to get rid of his beloved pit bull because he’d had it for 8 years and it was so attached to Burr and his wife that other people seemed like a threat to the dog, and then the couple were going to have a baby.
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Yeah that’s called not properly socializing your dog. People claim those type of things because they don’t like admitting that they’re not the greatest owner. That can literally happen to any breed of dog if they’re not socialized. I frequently warn people away from German Shepherd if they’re not going to put 110% into them. I was raised with them and if you’re don’t do the work, they are easily aggressive with strangers.
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Burr himself is a really aggressive person, and he said he knew the dog was feeding off of it, too.
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They definitely feed off the energy of their owners.
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