My week in books

Here’s my week summed up in book photos:

1) Scholastic book fair at work. It’s amazing to know that young people are so passionate about reading; it was incredibly busy in the library. Borrowing books is one thing, but buying paperbacks involves commitment, so this was fantastic to see. Friday was so busy, in fact, that I needed to recruit a team of upper sixth prefects to help out, so that I could manage running the library as usual, and the additional book fair, which was only there for the whole week.

2) February author birthdays library display: an opportunity for me to promote a diverse range of authors and their books. This is a new display topic that I’ve started running this year to help promote books that haven’t been borrowed for a while. For February, authors include Charles Dickens, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Judy Blume and John Steinbeck.

3) Book shopping this week: I’m a big Bruce Lee fan, and with Chinese New Year coming up on 17th Feb, it’s a good time to read his latest biography. When I was an archaeology student at Queen’s University Belfast, I studied Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do and became hooked on both Bruce Lee’s martial art, and the man himself. I loved his philosophical approach to life, as well as his modern approach in teaching anybody who wanted to learn his modified style of Wing Chun Gung Fu, at a time when racial segregation was still commonplace. His teachings still resonate today, fifty years after his death.

4) This week was the one year bookiversary of Love you to Death, my collection of ghost stories for Valentine’s Day. Last year was a gamble to see how my spooky romance stories would be received by readers, but the gamble paid off; it has been my most popular seller of the past year. Always what an author wants to have happen: phew!