Nonfiction Lover

Hello everyone, my name is Havilah, although I go by Havs or Hava online (I’m lazy, what can I say?) It’s quite exciting for me to be on-board here at Today.com, writing reviews on nonfiction books. I grew up reading fiction, so if someone had told me a year ago that I’d be thrilled to write reviews on nonfiction books, I would have laughed at them. I liked books with a great plot and action and all of that other good stuff. Boring nonfiction books didn’t exactly do it for me.

But books in any form have always been a huge part of my life. As a child, my family would sit around the dinner table, each person with their own book, calmly reading and eating at the same time, the only thing breaking the silence being an occasional “Please pass the salt.” There were seven of us in the family, but you wouldn’t have guessed it from the noise level. My poor mother used to have to scold us and threaten us with bodily damage to get us to put the books away when company came over to eat. As a child, whatever your lifestyle is, that’s what’s normal to you, so to me, it wasn’t rude to read and eat at the same time anymore than it would be rude to breathe air. That’s just what you did at dinner, so I never really appreciated my mother’s attempts to keep the books away from the dinner table. It wasn’t until I hit my 20’s that I started to realize just what an unorthodox upbringing I had in that respect.

Considering all of that, you would think that a career as a librarian would top my list of dream jobs as a child, but quite honestly, I never considered it. At various times I was going to be an author, a store owner, a teacher, an astronaut, and a plethora of other random jobs. Never once did I consider the library.

That all changed when my husband and I moved back home to be closer to my parents (we now live roughly 45 minutes away from them) and I happened to stroll into the local library and spot a Help Wanted sign. I had just finished a job interview for a dead end job I didn’t want anyway, so when I spotted the sign, I thought, “Bingo! A job at the library - how much better could it get?” So I applied right then, was interviewed the next day, and hired the day after that. I’ve loved it from day one.

I work at the circulation desk, which means I check books back in when they’re returned, and I check books out to patrons when they want to take them home. Basically, this means I get to eyeball every book that goes in and out of the library, and I’ll often put promising ones on my hold list to come to me after they’ve been checked in. It’s common to get to work and find four books on hold for me that just came in from various patrons. It’s like Christmas, but it happens five days a week. A book lover’s dream come true.

I finally decided that I need to make this official, and I applied to go to college this fall to get my AA in Library Science. I will most likely continue on from there but I have to start somewhere.  I was blessed to receive a full ride scholarship for the first year of school, and with any luck, they will renew it for a second year, so my AA should be completely paid for.  I have never been so grateful for anything in my whole life as I was that scholarship letter.

And it’s because of the library that I finally learned to love nonfiction books. When I first started there, I was reading regular fiction as always, but the more I worked there, the more the nonfiction books started to intrigue me. There were just so many interesting topics that I could learn more about! I have always loved to learn, so to me, the library has provided an almost overwhelming amount of choices. I struggle not to bring home every book that catches my eye, but even with my best efforts, I still end up with books covering the end table, the coffee table, the dining room table, the hall tree, and the two built-in bookshelves. And that’s when I’ve managed to keep them from stacking next to me on the couch! My husband good naturedly moves the books when he wants to sit down, and I pretend as if I didn’t hear him sigh.

When I got this blogging job, I thought, “How cool! I want to round up all of the nonfiction books that I have checked out of the library and write reviews about them before turning them in.” I started gathering up all of the nonfiction books that I had read but hadn’t returned, and had a whopping 7 in the stack.  This is not counting all of the ones I had checked out but hadn’t had a chance to read yet. I’m blessed with the ability to speed read (I have never taken a class on it - it’s just a natural talent most of my family seems to have) so I’m able to tear through a book a day quite often, more if there’s nothing else on the agenda.

Have I mentioned I like books yet?

Lest you think that I do nothing but read books all day (I wish!) I have to confess and say that I actually have four part-time jobs. They are as follows:

*I, of course, work part-time at the local library.  Best job I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot of jobs!

*I work part-time pulling records for an insurance company at the local courthouse, and make roughly $20 - $25 an hour doing it.  This is by far my most lucrative job that I have in terms of pay per hour, but it is only a couple of hours every two weeks.  If you have a laptop and are free a couple of hours a week, check out Sunlark Research and see if they’re hiring in your area.  It’ll be worth your time, I promise!

*I blog here at Today, of course.  This job combines the best of two worlds: Reading and writing.  If I couldn’t work at the library, I would become a full-time book reviewer, I think.

*I also manage roughly 50+ blogs about (you would believe it!) TV shows. The irony here is, I’d much rather read than watch TV, and before I started this job, I hadn’t heard of half of the shows that we’re covering in the network.  A couple of months ago, my husband went away on a business trip for two weeks, and when he got back, I realized that I hadn’t turned on the TV once the entire time. I’m just not a TV person, which I suppose is a good thing, because there’s no way I could keep up with a host of TV shows plus my reading habit. Luckily, I thoroughly enjoy this job and the great bloggers that it brings me in contact with every day.  It’s loads of fun!  I’ll be there for the long haul.

As you’ll soon see, I read a wide variety of books - from cookbooks to college prep books to animal training to biographies (my favorite!) to planting a garden to books on writing a novel. If it looks interesting, I’ll pick it up. I won’t always finish it, but I’ll note whether I finished it or not in my review, because although I don’t have the desire or time to finish every book I pick up (some are just a waste of time!) it is important to know whether I finished it or not, because perhaps the ending saved the book so it really is worth reading. Not likely, but ya never know.

Is there a particular kind of book that you love to read? Who is your favorite author or subject? Feel free to either leave a comment below, or on one of my posts. I love to hear from my readers, so please, speak up!

To great books,

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