Heeello everyone,

What's one book for you that was an unbelievable letdown? I'm talking soul-crushing, frustrating, want-to-throw-the-book-across-the-room vibe.

Also, absolutely no judgement here!

Also also, spoilers (just in case)

I'll go first ~ The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

I love mystery and I love maps (I even make maps for fun) and this book combined the two, with magic, and it had such a promising start as well. Until....for 80% of it, there was nothing but all exposition and treating the main character as if she were ten years old. And the 'love interest' was a d*** 😒. And there was no plot to speak of. I've never felt so drained after reading a book and so so so very disappointed.

Public services are lovely beautiful things. There are many public services I take advantage of but one of them that I think the majority of us can appreciate is libraries! We have so many librarians on here (a reminder, infinite forehead kisses to you all) and just people who enjoy going to and being at the library for the books, programs, and resources!!!

I've mentioned VERY briefly before about how Amazon and other capitalistic centered for profit companies have a goal to eliminate most public services but right now Amazon is targeting libraries!!! BOOOO!!! Amazon is taking their physical book store plan a step further to start planning our AMAZON LIBRARIES.

Guys I think we are all smart enough to know it's so that politicians with enough influence and palm greasing from Amazon can say "We no longer require this public service it's not even good! They never have the books and you have to even wait for ebooks!" And then they can GET RID of libraries and use what are actually SUPER small portions of our taxes and instead of funding thousand of libraries there will now be one or MAYBE two "Amazon libraries" in states with low literacy and we will be flooded by large marquees that say AMAZON GROCERY, AMAZON ELEMENTARY, AMAZON LIBRARY, AMAZON MALL, AMAZON CAR DEALER, AMAZON SHIPPING AND POSTAGE, ALL of them requiring a monthly membership that would far outweigh any taxes you pay AND THEN you will still have to pay those same taxes! Because they will now be a former library funnel of revenue that Amazon will argue they need as support from the government and THEY WILL GET IT.

We will still pay the same taxes for all of our public services we will just also have to pay a membership to Amazon on top of it.

I am URGING, BEGGING, PLEADING, all of you who can, PLEASE go and get a library card. Go get your local city, county, state, university, what have you! In the US you are often entitled to a card for where you WORK as well as where you LIVE. People from outside the US please share tips, tricks, advice, or just anecdotes about your library and how you sign up for the library and how to get additional memberships.

Here is a link to an Instagram video where a librarian explains how AMAZON and AUDIBLE are making ebooks, and audiobooks incredibly scarce for libraries!!! https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPWpZVKkcHH/?igsh=MXF6ZjZ0YmozZmM0bQ==