Non Listed - My Summer Reading

 The dust has cleared, the inventory has been completed.  The bedside alarm has been set permanently to snooze (at least for the next two months anyway). A beach was walked and the garden has sprouted, it's time to dive into my non listed list of summer reading!

As an elementary librarian I read a lot of books - there are the books I'm reading weekly as part of a lesson, the books I'm reading for teachers as I compile resource materials, and the books, old and new that are part of my library that I'm exploring or reacquainting myself with. But this is just the beginning, the tip of a literacy glacier with only surface reading exposed to the naked eye.  I find that despite my best efforts during the school year I just can't read every book I've recorded on my want-to-read lists, let alone on my mental lists - there's the new award winner, the book recently reviewed in the School Library Journal, or the popular book from my collection that checks out as soon as it checks back in. Even as I stand in line with the copy that caught my eye at the bookstore, outlet mall, and grocery store I know my time is limited.  A decision had to be made - then suddenly I figured it out.  I didn't need a summer reading list - I just needed to take a good look around.

Building my non list

Every summer it's the same, after the first couple of weeks of toe dipping into summer - I start to get serious and the search begins.  The search for each and every book that has accumulated during the school year,  waiting, covers beckoning, biding their time, knowing it was just a matter of time.

 They're Everywhere.

I find them in the work bags I brought home for summer, the back seat of my car, the pocket in the recliner, resting on the baker's rack behind the dining room table, on top of the piano, the box under the guest bed, the cranny behind the computer, stacked on the kitchen counter, and nestled in the magazine rack, tucked into the spaces below my nightstand and precariously perched on the corner of my dresser - I seek them all and pile them together into multiple towers that simultaneously make me want to laugh a bit maniacally as well as step back in surprise.  My summer reading list has just come together.  The trick is to read the stacks down faster than the accumulation of more must reads. I relish this challenge and summer is the perfect time for this!

Let the summer reading begin!