about

"Must...consume...culture."

Greetings! I'm Kari, a first-year Middle School Librarian in Nashville, Tenn. I recently moved back to my hometown of Nashville after a nine-year stint in New York City where I earned both an undergrad degree (New York University: Media, Culture, and Communication) and graduate degree (Queens College: Master of Library Science). For much of my time in the Big Apple post-undergrad, I worked as the Digital Marketing Coordinator for a small children's educational publisher. Other exciting professional endeavors in NYC include internships in the Education Department at the New-York Historical Society and the production studio of the Rachael Ray Show.

In 2009, I began a blog called The Five Borough Book Review as a way for my friends and I to share and discuss the books we read, because we could never find the time for a book club. Over the next five years, this blog created an archive of over 350 book reviews, notes, and discussions covering a wide range of genres. By 2014, I was beginning to find "The Five Borough Book Review" a rather limiting and increasingly irrelevant title. The original collaborative nature of the blog had dwindled; I was launching a new career and finding new angles and perspectives of bookish interactions; and most importantly, I had moved out of New York!

"Consuming Culture" was born to broaden the scope of this blog. It's an outdated notion that libraries only house books; they are repositories of culture providing unlimited opportunities to question, explore, learn, and grow. Here I'll continue to share the books I read, but I'll also share other forms of media, as well as relevant stories that affect libraries, education, and information literacy. If you're anything like me, you have a to-read list and a Netflix queue that grow way faster than they shrink. There's more culture out there than could ever possibly be consumed...but that won't stop me from trying!