Katie Reads Books

Fantasy Annotation Guilty Pleasures , by Laurell K. Hamilton Author : Laurell K. Hamilton Title : Guilty Pleasures Genre : Urban Fantasy Publication: Date: 1993 Number of Pages : 266 pages/10 hours in audiobook version Geographical Setting : St. Louis Missouri Time Period : Contemporary/1990s Series (If applicable) : Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Plot Summary : Anita Blake, the protagonist, is a German and Mexican vampire hunter and animator (necromancer of a sort) dubbed “The Executioner.” She is very fond of her Browning gun and not so fond of vampires and lycanthropes. Guilty Pleasures is the debut of twenty-something book long series. Early in the story, Anita encounters Jean-Claude, a somewhat morally grey character who manipulates her into getting involved with the “big bad” of the book, a very old vampire named Nikolaos, who appears to be a twelve year old girl. Someone has been killing vampires in St. Louis and the powerful ones, like Jean-Claude and Nikolaos want to know why. An...

Week Eleven Prompt Reading an ebook is a different experience from reading a traditional print book. Before this, I wasn’t really sure how to put my finger on why it was different, but after looking into it, it became clear that it wasn’t just me and it wasn’t an entirely subjective feeling of it “just” being different. A huge difference that I’ve personally noticed, and apparently others have as well, is that I can remember where a certain sentence or paragraph is in a print book. I can think, "That definitely happened early on, in the book's first part. I think it was midway down the page on the right side.” Apparently, a lot of people do that, and if someone asked me to use an ebook to do the same thing, there is absolutely no way I could do that. Rizer notes, in a Book Riot article, that researchers have found that people do remember where things are the way that I stated (Rizer, 2021, para. 10). She also says that “Those who read digitally float through a novel without cl...

 Book Club Experience I chose to go to a classics book club that someone was hosting at another branch of my library. At first, I didn’t think I’d be able to make it because my work schedule is a little erratic. I actually know a few of the people who run it, so I didn’t feel as bad about dropping in. They were reading The Iliad that month, which is something I read well over a decade ago. If I’m being really honest, I have to say that I skimmed it for a class during my freshman year at college. I read the Spark Notes so I wouldn’t be totally lost. Fortunately for me, the discussion of the book wasn’t too stressful. I was a bit worried they’d call on me like in an English class. There were five people in total, including the person running it. Thankfully, it was a very informal style program and the library in question wasn’t sponsoring it, just allowing the use of their meeting room. We were instructed beforehand to bring something brunch related because it took place on a Saturd...

 BookTok: How can librarians use it?     TikTok has had a major influence on the publishing industry. It dictates what books blow up, and which ones don't. Though it has helped a lot of BIPOC authors skyrocket to fame, its algorithm is still racist, heavily favoring white authors like Sarah J. Maas, Colleen Hoover, and Jennifer Armentrout. The nature of TikTok's FYP (For You Page) means that people end up with hyper-curated feeds.      This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Extremely specific feeds help people find books that are honed to their exact interests, but this means that people outside certain demographics don't receive suggestions from outside their group as often (especially white women). The easiest results that come up when a person searches the app, using the term "BookTok" mostly are going to show white women reccomending white authors, when the app is actually very diverse (Ukiomogbe, 2022, para. 6). It's just that these other...