To celebrate quitting my last retail job ever (oh please, oh please let this be true), here’s a top ten list of the things I will not miss one little bit:
10. People asking how much an item is while standing right in front of the sign that says how much it is.
9. “Do you work here?” Sadly, I get this in stores I don’t work in too – something about me screams menial worker
8. Sales goals which are completely useless for part-time employees that work 4-8 hours a month!
7. People on cell phones that expect your complete, undivided attention while giving you about 25% of theirs
6. Liars – some people will lie terribly (both terrible lies and poor execution)to your face for just about anything, large or small
5. Kids - or more specifically, parents who think it’s fine for their kids to play with and destroy things that we are trying to make a living from selling
4. Even more than that, parents who keep their small children up until 10pm shopping and don’t understand (or care) why they are crying and throwing tantrums and giving me a migraine
3. Retail companies that expect their lowest paid employees to make only the most positive impressions on customers with no support by way of equipment that works, products that are universal between stores, catalogs, and online, or current and reliable information on company policies and promotions
2. The Customer is Always Right mentality, usually pulled out by people who are blatently wrong
1. People who think that the $9.99 they’re spending on any given item includes the right to treat sales clerks like morons/peons/slaves/whipping boys or long lost friends
Ice cream and libraries may not go together like peanut butter and jelly (melting cream and sugar in library book pages; the stuff of nightmares!), but there’s 
Rossamund Bookchild (unfortunate name for a boy), a foundling raised in a Marine orphanage, has always dreamed of the dangerous life of a vinegaroon (sailor), hopefully fighting lots of monsters and saving civilization, thereby earning his very own monster blood tattoos. Instead, he’s saved from being the oldest foundling in the building by being recruited by the lamplighters, which sounds quite safe and dull to Rossamund. We join him as he enters the wide world at last, and we all learn a thing or two about where to find real monsters and what’s safe and what isn’t.
Shannon,
In case you haven’t noticed, 
Mary lives in a small village in the middle of the forest governed by the religious Sisterhood and bordered with a fence to keep out the Unconsecrated—a horde of the undead unleashed many generations ago by a mysterious and cataclysmic event. Life is simple but preordained; Mary fears her betrothal to a man she doesn’t love almost as much as the hungry jaws slavering at the fence links. Soon Mary and a small band of desperate survivors are thrown together to outwit the undead and work through their own weaknesses, suspicions, and jealousies. Grades 9-12. –Daniel Kraus (Booklist)
