Family Literacy Symposium

On Saturday, the library hosted its 4th annual literacy symposium. It's a free conference for adults in the community to get themselves and their family excited and involved in reading. It's stuff like this that reminds me why I love my job. I love being involved in something that promotes the love of reading, great authors, and the sharing and spreading of thoughts and ideas.

This year's guest author was Leif Enger from Peace Like a River fame and he was great if a little scattered. It made me so happy just being in the room listening to Leif talk about why reading is so great. I want to do a little happy dance just thinking about it.

I was also excited/nervous because I actually got to present in one of the break out sessions again this year. My presentation, along with my supervisor, and the director of the library was on the best adult books of 2010. I feel like the session went well, we needed lots more time and my summaries made less and less sense as I had to adapt for the lack of time, but otherwise I felt like it went pretty well.

Some of the books I discussed have already been mentioned on this blog, but below you will find a list of all the ones I talked about and a here is a link to our official bibliography for the session.

Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons
Romancing Miss Bronte by Juliet Gael
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
Juliet by Anne Fortier
The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Brava, Valentine by Adriana Trigiani
Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde
Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn
The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace

I haven't heard any official word yet on how well the symposium went, but from what I observed it went smoothly and was well received by the people who attended.