The Motherload!

Upon arriving for work, I noticed two large boxes from Bak3r & Tayl0r in the staff workroom. They were still sealed, so Mrs. C had not begun cataloging them.

You might think we'd be thrilled at the arrival of new books, but we rarely are. Cataloging is time consuming as is the book-processing done afterward, and the fact that we tend to order books for multiple area libraries, makes sorting a shipment even more complicated.

After a couple of hours, Mrs. C suggested to me that I might want to go ahead and sort the new books. I was about to say something like, "Oh, boy! Can I?" before doing what I was told, when she added that the shipment contained most of the graphic novels and comics material I'd recently ordered for the library. That got me moving, and without sarcastic commentary.

See, a few weeks back, Mrs. C told me she was about to place an order and suggested I pick a few graphic novels out of her latest B&T order book. I rarely find anything of use in B&T because their catalogs tend to only offer the 18th volumes of seventeen different manga series, none of which we own previous volumes of and many of which look suspiciously mature and likely to piss off parents. (I know, I know, Manga is the big thing in comics these days. I'd like to order some, but I find it kind of dangerous waters to play in being as how very quickly some of it tends to leap into the realms of tentacle porn or ya0i. If you're into it, so be it, but I don't need the headaches. I'll probably donate my collection of old Gon and Usagi Yojimbo trades to even things out.) So I circled a couple of things in B&T then dashed to the special B&T comics catalog that I've been hoarding at my desk since the last state library conference I attended and gave that to Mrs. C as well. I'd highlighted a bunch of things in it, not intending to order them all at once but, instead, to give Mrs. C a goodly list of quality material she could pick from.

Well, pick she did. In fact, I think she ordered damn near all of it.

Not everything on my list arrived in this shipment, but plenty did. There was Marvel's Civil War TPB, Bone Vol 5 : Rock Jaw, two Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew trades, a new Babymouse book, Brad Meltzer's JLA: Tornado's Path collection, Spider-Man: Death of the Stacy's, Wolverine: Weapon X, All Star Superman Vol 1, a Beowulf adaptation by Gareth Hinds (making two, since we ordered Stephan Petrucha's adaptation of the same work a few weeks back), and the first TPB of Warren Ellis's Fell, called Feral City. And I think I still have Avengers Disassembled, Infinite Crisis and maybe even some Concrete on the way. (If not, I might donate all my old Concrete trades so I can have an excuse to buy the nice little Manga-sized collections for myself.)

"Wow, that blows my comics budget for the whole year," I said. Not that I've been given a specific budget for comics, but still, I'd feel guilty ordering more any time soon.

I immediately sorted the box and then divided the books up between adult fiction (Fell), Young Adult (Civil War) and then Juvenille (everything else).

Happy non-birthday to me!