There were about 20,000 books on the catalogue and I reduced that down to 4,000. You might think I’m exaggerating, but no. The VERY FIRST THING I did in that school was got rid of about 80% of the books. I fought and fought and pissed off a lot of important people and managed to raise it to £14,500, but I was working with £3000 and a lot of old, shitty books for about 4 months. At a previous school, I was offered a budget of £3,0 students. “But it’s a library!” I hear you crying, “we need all the books we can get! Don’t you know we don’t have any money?!” I know what it’s like to run a school library with no money. Every single day, I get rid of more books. School librarians: WEED YOUR MOTHERFUCKING COLLECTION. I started at a new school in January and I’ve spent the past 6 months weeding. It is also going to be a post full of swears. This post is aimed at school librarians. It is also a repost of one I did over a year ago at my blog, absobookinglutely, but I decided to make a dedicated sweary librarian blog. It’s ugly and upsetting with only a small sliver of hope, and that’s what mental illness feels like for me.
There is no magic solve, there is no ‘a-ha!’ moment, and the love interest isn’t used as a plot device to cure Norah of her mental illness, and that’s why I liked it. It was a difficult read, but I enjoyed it. She hasn’t left the house in years except to go to her therapy appointments and she doesn’t see that changing any time soon, but she starts to become more curious about the world outside when Luke moves in next door. The premise of the book is that Norah, who lives with her mum, has agoraphobia and (I assume) OCD. It is a difficult read for someone with OCD and agoraphobia, and it’s one of the few books I’ve read that has described aspects of my mental health so accurately that I began to feel the first frissons of a panic attack while reading certain parts. Under Rose-Tainted Skies took me to my darkest days. Other times, my partner has to beg me to drink tiny sips of water because I’m too scared to drink for days (what if I catch dysentery?) and I go grey and get vertigo from dehydration. I can lick my fingers and touch the table and touch my face without worrying about the transfer of germs. Sometimes I can poke away a full pizza and have room for dessert. Some days, I can just leap out the door with only a slight twinge of ‘what if?’ and other days just sitting up in bed feels too risky (what if I sit up too fast and all the blood rushes to my head and I fall and knock myself unconscious on the corner of my bedside table and bleed to death?) It’s a funny thing, not being able to leave the house.
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