QUT Library staff are sharing some recent reads that made us happy.
Hello, I’m Mimy.
I work as an Administration Officer for QUT Kelvin Grove Library. My role is to provide administrative support to the Kelvin Grove Branch Library and Manager, Library Service.
I love books, arts and spending time in a library, so I am in my element working in QUT Kelvin Grove Library with my wonderful colleagues 😊
I found reading soothes my mind and is a great escape from the daily grind, as Paul Aster put it in his quote “Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head.”
I have not been reading as much as I would like to lately. My favourite reading time and place is whenever I am on holidays in Caloundra, where I would have the luxury of time to read until my eyes were too tired to continue and then look at the ocean to rest my eyes.
I am currently reading Olga by Bernhard Schlink. Olga is an orphan raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village around the turn of the 20th century. Smart and rebellious, she falls in love with Herbert, a local aristocrat whose parents disapprove of Olga’s lowly status. Their love is entwined with German history from the late 19th to the early 21st century.
Works by Bernhard Schlink can be found in the library.
Stephanie: Games as Self Care in 2021 
Hello, I’m Stephanie and I’m a Library Adviser with the Creative Industries team. I primarily assist students with researching and referencing through chat and appointments. I also assist the CI team with any other work that keeps our collection looking at its best, like purchasing new titles and updating library guides to show off what our collection has to offer. My most recent efforts have been focused on the games collection at the Kelvin Grove library.
With much of 2020 spent in lockdown, I found that many people were turning to games that could help them stay connected with their friends or could provide a little escapism. I was no exception. I turned to one of my favourite hobbies, tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPs). While my group had to stop play for a while as a tiny new member joined our little family of nerds, I got stuck into reading sections from my two favourite TTRPG titles. It was much needed brain food while I wasn’t playing, where learned strategies to become a better player and hopefully a better storyteller myself. It’s also inspired me to return to the source texts that inspired these settings, the myriad of fantasy novels both old and new. I absolutely love the collaborative storytelling that comes from these games, and I can’t wait to use all the new things I learned.
At the moment, I’ve been diving in a lot of Dungeons & Dragons books, like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. A number of Dungeons & Dragons titles are available in the library and other TTRPG titles as well. As the semester presses on, it will be more important than ever to stay connected with friends, and what better way than with a game!
[Pic above: my watermelon pouch, which contains my tiny hoard of dice.]
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