Reading unprinted stuff

I have a box with seven manuscripts sitting in my room. They are submissions for a local small press' constest. The people than run the press ask us readers to read at least fifty pages of each manuscript and recommend to them whether or not each novel is worthy of a more detailed reading by the staff. I have about two weeks to go and today I finished up the first one. I stopped at page fifty but I had desire to keep reading it. I guess that's a good sign. It's the story of a boy growing up in a mill town in South Carolina back in the fifties. The writer seems to be pulling from personal experience and it was a nice little journey. I can only hope that the rest of the manuscripts are just as good. I dread picking up a crappy one.

Being able to participate in something like this is another of those cool perks that comes with being a librarian. I was thrilled to be asked to do this. Heck, I am even going to get a small payment for doing it.