All posts by Adam

About Adam

Adam is a Digital Creation Specialist - Children who never has enough shelf space for his board game collection, wall space for his photographs, or stomach space for his baking. Once he’s got a book in his clutches (preferably a fantasy, or humorous non-fiction one) absolutely nothing else is getting done that day. Working in a library is a blessing and a curse to his free time.

Food for Nerds

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The cover of Star Wars Galaxy's Edge: the Official Black Spire Outpost Cookbook

It should be no surprise to anyone who has read my posts that I am a nerd and proud of it! I mean, my very first post was about science, math and humour. A 100+ hour video game made my best-of-2022 list. And I’m a Librarian who loves reading books about Libraries, so how’s that for a niche interest? Something only those who have read my bio will know, though, is that I’m a baker1. Combining these passions led to scouring the catalogue for nerdy cookbooks to share with our readers, which I found way more of than I anticipated. We’ve got cookbooks for Game of Thrones, World of Warcraft, Outlander, and even Alice in Wonderland. And those are just single-media cookbooks. Read on past the break to see a plethora of options that are sure to hit something you’re passionate about and give you ideas for a delicious, nerdy night in. Also, there might be some pictures of my attempt at one of the dishes.

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Help! I’ve finished the Discworld Novels!

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The Cover of The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett

Okay, okay, that’s only half a cry for help. I am a librarian1, after all; If I can’t find my own reads, how can I help others? Beyond making for a snappy title, though, it really is a call for suggestions. I’ve been working through the 41 Discworld books for… over a year now? I’ve taken breaks and read other things in between. Still, eventually, I dive back in and binge five or six in a row, mainly reading in publication order. As of writing this I haven’t quite finished but I’ve only got a few books left. Snuff, locking up Vimes’ story, Raising Steam, Most Von Lipwig’s final con, and The Shepherd’s Crown putting the main Discworld novels out to pasture. I wish there had been one more Death/Susan book after Thief of Time, but, I said goodbye to them as main characters months ago. As I’ve been reading digitally, I’m also missing out on Eric and The Last Hero, the two illustrated novels that I can’t find in library databases, so there’s still some Rincewind and Cohen the Barbarian stories I could seek out. If all these character names mean nothing to you, read on. If they do, and you miss them, please tell me in the comments what you’ve been reading to fill that hole.

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HOTS Farewell to 2022: A Year in Review

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It’s time to ring in a new year1 and say goodbye to the old! As I have the honour2 of writing the final Hot Off the Shelf post of 2022, I thought it’d be nice to have all the HOTS writers share their top three reads for the year. Or, to be more accurate: their top two reads for the year and then an open category for the 3rd, so long as it’s available at VPL. One of us chose a book, two chose albums, and one chose a game3. We also have a special Editor’s Choice category from our lead, Heather.

To make this more interesting than a simple list of items4 I followed up my colleagues’ choices with some questions, the answers to which you’ll find below. Like an answer, but want some follow-up? Ask in the comments! We’re all going to be monitoring this.

Along with each writer’s choices and answers to the questions, you’ll be getting my first thoughts on seeing/researching each title to help inform where my questions came from5.

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