Summer Reading

Today is the first day of my library's Summer Reading Program.  Going onto the website to sign up for it, I discovered that this year it has a whole new site and is way more user friendly.  Badges can be earned for every 5 books you read and there are also activity badges.  Some are earned by reading books in certain categories, some are earned for doing actual activities. For example under "Explore Your World" some of the things are "Visit a Museum" or "Take a walk around the block" and under "Explore Your Creativity" there are entries for "Try a new recipe.  What did you try?" or "Dance in your living room".  There is also a badge for "Explore your library" and some of the activities include "visit a different library location than you normally go to" or "check out a museum pass".

I'm pretty excited about these additions to the summer reading program because, as much as I love to do nothing more than read, I think doing these other activities will help people connect with others and the world at large.  One of the activities under one of the badges is "visit the farmer's market".  I actually happen to have some gift certificates to use at ours that someone gave me recently and I'm excited to go and use them.  One of the activities under the library badge is "begin learning a new language"--that seems like a great thing to do.  My 2 years of high school spanish is extremely rusty but I've also always wanted to learn Gaelic, Russian, and Latin.  Where I would use this knowledge, I have no idea but it could be fun.

I almost finished a book last night, but I held out and finished it this afternoon instead because there's something nerdy satisfying about finishing a book on the first day of Summer Reading!

Anyway, if your library has a Summer Reading Program, I encourage you to join it!