and played some cricket.

In February, my baby girl started school and my boy built a tower that reached to the sky.

In March (and a bit of February), I covered a fair portion of Philip Island on my bike.

I also made some necklaces.

In April I found a mermaid at the beach and three days later watched her jump on a hail covered trampoline.

In May, we bought a car and flew to Queensland the next day.

We also bought a new waterproof camera.

In June I sold a piece of jewellery to a stranger for the first time. I also found time for some soccer practice.

In July we played with some giant chipmunks

a giant car

and giant ants.

In August, we did some baby sitting

built a snowman

and made a coffee table for my wife’s birthday.

In September we welcomed a new cousin into the world

and had a super hero birthday party.

In October I was acting Hawthorn Librarian and work took a lot of my focus

but I did find time for a spot of pruning.

In November we went hunting butterflies

spent some quality time with Nanny when she visited from Canada

and celebrated a birthday party with the world’s cutest fairies.

In December I made some vases

a soccer goal

a rapunzel tower

and did some decoupage.

We enjoyed pancakes at Phillip Island with family

and hosted Christmas for the first time.

We played with some critters

ran

laughed

and smiled

And we had spent another year together.

No wonder I’m tired.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

It turns out that tiny bedbugs and their eggs can hide in the spines of hardcover books. The bugs crawl out at night to feed, find a new home in a headboard, and soon readers are enjoying not only plot twists but post-bite welts.

Something to add to the list of things didn’t teach me in library school:

To reassure skittish patrons like Mrs. McAdoo, libraries are training circulation staff members to look for carcasses and live insects. Some employees treat suspect books with heat before re-shelving them, to kill bedbugs, which are about the size of an apple seed when fully grown.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

Built by designer Craig Small and the store’s owner Stephen Fowler, the ‘Biblio-Mat’ is an old metal locker that dispenses random, used tomes at $2 each.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

‘IT STILL looks messy.” A student is heckling illustrator Craig Smith as he whips up a remarkable charcoal drawing of Billy the Punk, a character he illustrated for a popular children’s book.

Mr Smith laughs and applies finishing touches. He enjoys interacting with young readers at schools such as St Brendan’s Primary School.

He has visited about 30 schools this year, but at this Catholic primary school in Flemington he has an important mission – to act as a role model for Books in Homes, a program that provides children from disadvantaged backgrounds with nine books to take home each year.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

What indie rock bands have figured out is that the purchase of music does not have to be an either/or proposition. They don’t make their customers choose between analog or digital. Whenever you buy a record from just about any indie band, it comes with either a CD or with a card that contains a URL and a download code so you can get a digital copy at no additional cost.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

You’ll probably also recognise it as the square of 4.

Apparently, 16 is also the smallest number with exactly five divisors.

You may not know that:

• As a power of 2 it has an aliquot sum one less than itself; 15, and is the fifth composite member of the 3-aliquot tree having the 7 member aliquot sequence (16, 15, 9, 4, 3, 1, 0).
• Sixteen is the first number to be the aliquot sum of a lesser number; 12, it is also the aliquot sum of the greater number; the discrete semiprime, 26. It is the fourth power of two.
• Sixteen is the only integer that equals mn and nm, for some unequal integers m and n (m = 4, n = 2, or vice versa). It has this property because 22 = 2 × 2. It is also equal to 32 (see tetration).
• 15 and 16 form a Ruth–Aaron pair under the second definition in which repeated prime factors are counted as often as they occur.
• Since it is possible to find sequences of 16 consecutive integers such that each inner member shares a factor with either the first or the last member, 16 is an Erd?s–Woods number. The smallest such range of 16 consecutive integers is from 2184 to 2200.
• In bases 20, 24 and 30, sixteen is a 1-automorphic number (displayed as the numeral ‘G’).
• 16 is a centered pentagonal number.
• 16 is the base of the hexadecimal number system, which is used extensively in computer science.
• 16 appears in the Padovan sequence, preceded by the terms 7, 9, 12 (it is the sum of the first two of these).

(isn’t wikipedia wonderful)

There was a time I used to know a bit about maths. But aliquot sums, composite numbers, discrete semiprimes, tetration, Ruth-Aaron pairs, consecutive integers, and the Padovan sequence mean nothing to me.

There was a time I didn’t know what it meant to be in love. But all that changed 16 years ago today. So that’s what 16 means to me. 16 years of being in love with, and being loved by the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.

And I’ll take that over all the consecutive integers in the world.

Happy anniversary J. I love you and can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend an automorphic number of years with.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

What fines do I have to pay if I return an item late?

We are easy going people. We do not have late fees/fines. A conscience box is located on the counter for you to make a donation for late items. Privileges may be temporarily suspended if items are a few months overdue. Please be courteous to fellow library users and bring your items back in a timely fashion.

I'm sure there are all sorts of complicated problems with doing away with late fines, but I do like the idea of fine-free libraries. One of those problems might be about how auditors would respond to the idea of a “conscience box” of cash on the counter. Of course what works for one particular library might not be a good fit for another. Needless to say, this post contains my personal views only.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

And now, the final results are in. While it’s no surprise to see Harry Potter and the Hunger Games trilogy on top, this year’s list also highlights some writers we weren’t as familiar with. For example, John Green, author of the 2012 hit The Fault in Our Stars, appears five times in the top 100.

In fact, John Green has 4 books in the top 22. Yes, he deserves it. People like John Green, Scott Westerfeld, David Levithan might be household names within YA circles, but I think there are a whole lot of people who have never heard of them but would love their work.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

Très bien. Now, please forgive us, but we must ask: would you rather read about a shooting, a bludgeoning, or a drowning?

Just like it says, Choose your Highsmith will ask a series of questions to help you decide which Patricia Highsmith book to read next. For what it's worth, I was asked the above question after choosing France as a setting. Mr Ripley anyone?

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net