National Library Week

I enjoyed the heck out of this NPR blog post about how awesome libraries are. It's a lot about how it's free, but there was also this:

In particular, I found that all those cheap romance paperbacks were beaten, mangled, shaken and stirred. Not so that you couldn't read them, but just so you knew they'd been read a lot. Oddly, I found this ... comforting. I picked up some of those horribly abused books and felt like I was putting my hands on tangible populism. Those books are there because they're read, and it actually made kind of a good reminder that the library was trying to help, that the idea was to serve readers.

And anyone who manages to check out DFW's Infinite Jest and three Nora Roberts novels on a single visit deserves applause for sheer awesomeness. (Also for being quite a bit like me, although I needed my own IJ copy, and have different guilty pleasure authors.)

Librarians to the Rescue

This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All - Marilyn Johnson (HarperCollins, 2010)

For the past two months, I have been working on my e-Portfolio, the culminating project for my MLIS. As I have pondered core competencies and looked for evidence that I have met them, I have been guided by Johnson's humorous and impassioned look at the library profession. She's popped up in 3 or 4 of my essays, and thus I don't have much desire to pull a lot of quotes for you here.

But I will recommend this book to library-lovers, as well as those who are interested in how we are navigating the Information Age. Also those who like charming looks at the hidden sides of "boring" professions.

Johnson covers a lot of territory - I remember hearing first that she gets into librarianship in Second Life and other adventures in cyberspace. And yes, she does. But that's only one part of it. She talks about Radical Reference and librarians out of the streets, hawking their trade for social justice. She talks about cataloging, and the cultural importance of good subject headings, the economic value of libraries, the tension between scholars and the general public at renowned institutions like NYPL, and the value of reading as a reliable cure for racing thoughts. (It was a relief to be reminded I'm not the only one who does this.)

Did she get everything perfect? Doubtful. Will she save librarianship? That's too loaded a question to even tackle. But it's a fun and often witty reminder that my chosen profession is home to as much variety and opportunity as I could ever hope for. (Provided I ever actually find a job.)

Paranormal Romance

Kiss & Hell - Dakota Cassidy (Berkeley Publishing, 2009)

The post title refers to the official genre designation that Penguin gives for this book, according to the back cover. I've been writing a paper on genre classification - and whether libraries should shelve books separately by genre - so this sort of thing is on my mind. For example, paranormal romance is quite possible the right classification for Ms. Sookie, although maybe paranormal suspence w/ lots o' sex is more accurate.

Anyway. Somehow this book made it into my book list. I hate this. Sometimes I remember exactly when I heard about a book and it stuck well enough to make me get out my little notebook and pencil. But sometimes I clearly am acting on whim and titles just seem to appear in there. K&H is chick lit with ghosts. Or demons. Well, both. Delaney is a medium, who has dedicated the last several years to helping the newly departed clear up whatever's going on so that they can go into the light (instead of getting swayed to hell by demons out to collect souls). Except her best friend is a demon. And she doesn't have much of a social life, unless you count her motley crew of dogs.

So when a sexy nerdy demon shows up and tells her he's been assigned to seduce her and take her back to hell, except he's not really going to do that because he ended up in hell by mistake, she proceeds to let him go right ahead with the first part of his plan. Because he's hot. Anyway, the plot twist holding this whole thing together is beyond ridiculous, but the set-up is kinda fantastic. Lots of adorable humor.

Cassidy has a couple stylistic tics that I both like and find utterly frustrating about chick lit. The one that leans more toward the like is her tendency to end sections/chapters with incomplete sentences, usually laced with sarcasm. Like "And that meant hard core" or "End of." This is part of a broader trend toward highly idiosyncratic, contemporary slang. It felt awkward and sloppy rather than natural, and I think that Cassidy fully capable of a more interesting writer. Maybe I'm not representative of her target readers, but I think they could handle some more sophisticated prose.

Totally fun, breezy, and often sexy. It was in my beach bag for a barbecue, and I found myself recommending it to the ladies. How could I resist?

History = yay; libraries = yay. History of libraries = zzzz

I am lazy. Therefore...

History of Libraries of the Western World by Michael H. Harris


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I like libraries. I like history. So there's really no reason this book should have put me to sleep so often. :(
It's not all boring though, and it particularly gets better in the second half when it moves onto modern library history.

View all my reviews >>

Serendipity, finally

Not quite ready for the real post, but I've been excited about mentioning this for two weeks now...

A few years ago, I was walking around West LA listening to the NYT Book Review podcast where one of the reviewers mentioned a book that she just absolutely fell in love with. I forget the context, but whatever she said made me want to read it. So when I got home, I wrote the following in my "books to read" list: "An Uncommon Kindness - Muriel T..." But when I went to find this book at the library, it didn't seem to exist. I'd try again now and then when I noticed it, but really, I kinda figured it was a lost cause. Why, oh why, did I not actually listen to the podcast again right when I got home so I'd get the author right?

But then, a couple weeks ago, I was at the library, list in hand, looking to see what was in stock. (Not much.) I went to find The Flying Troutmans, even though from what I could remember hearing about it, I wasn't sure it was the book I wanted to read right then. But it wasn't on the shelf anyway. But sitting right where said book was supposed to be: A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews. Erin to self: Wait a second.... [jaw dropping]

So there it was. Uncommon and Complicated: got that wrong. Muriel & Miriam: really? Toews though? That's clearly forgivable. (Why I know and like the name Toews right now, btw. Chicago's my ideal hope for the Stanley Cup this year, and I like their players w/o knowing really anything about them except that they are mostly young and all signed to looooooooong contracts.)

Anyway, so I found the book. By accident. Yays.

Hey Lauren Lipton, please write another novel

It's About Your Husband - Lauren Lipton
New York: 5 Spot, 2006

With the exception of some weird Twilight madness that overtook me last fall, I really don't read multiple books by the same author all at once (and by "all at once" I mean within 6 months or so). I tend to spread them out. But occasionally I make exceptions. And since Mating Rituals... apparently got to me so much, I decided to inaugurate my new library card (hello Huntington Beach!) with Lipton's earlier novel.

Let's see. Iris is a newly-unemployed transplant from the San Fernando Valley to New York. (Why oh why does everyone knock the Valley so much, btw?) Because apparently the fact that she confuses twin sisters is a sign of her awesome detective skills, she somehow gets herself hired to track Sister #2's husband, who may or may not be having an affair. And, predictably. mayhem ensues. Oh, and puppies. Two of the main characters are a pug and a Jack Russell terrier (Awww).

One thing I will say about this novel that I really needed is that there really aren't any evil characters. (Is that a spoiler? It might be.) You go through thinking, oh, well this person is a cad/bitch/psycho/whatever, and then they aren't. They're just misguided, or a little selfish, and human, and forgivable. So that's nice. In the middle of stressful life changes and moves and end-of-semester workloads, it's nice to visit a world where good things happen.

Since Lipton's second novel just came out earlier this year, I'm not expecting anything new anytime soon, but when it does come, I will read it. Ooh, and hey! she's working on her next novel. And it's going to be "literary!" Yays all around.

I read newspapers & stuff...

A couple book-y articles that have caught my eye in the last couple days...

I didn't even notice the title of "Hero librarians save my babies" ("Librarians saved my babies" in the print edition) until I finished reading it. This says something about how little I notice headlines when I am charging my way through the paper. Anyway, it's a cute essay about how the characters in a novelist's work are like children that you send off into the world, and that reviews and fan mail and sightings of your book on store shelves are the ways in which you hear that your little ones are all right and making their way out there. And that when you hear your book has been remaindered... well, that's bad news for your characters. Except...

The horror of the "R" letter is mitigated by only one thought: Your babies are safe at the library! Were it not for libraries, there would be no safe harbor for characters and stories, nowhere for them to wait out disasters and economic storms. And were it not for librarians, there would be no one to introduce your characters to new children as the older ones grow up and move on.

And for this, I want to thank librarians, for the work they do and for the many, many lives they save.

So, there it is. Good job, libraries.

And then courtesy of John Dickerson's Twitter feed, I get to find out this morning about a woman who is reading a book a day for a year. (This was impressive enough back in 2007 when my friend Siel did so for a month.) So, Nina Sankovitch, I envy you. I want to do this. And then have a blog about it. Except I wouldn't want to give up the things that the NYT article says she has: The New Yorker, coffee with friends. And what I definitely would miss is getting to take time off after reading a book that really moves you. Or getting to stop and wait at least a day before you finish, because you want to prolong the experience of being inside the book's world.

Oh, and I imagine we'll see Sankovitch's book at some point in the next couple years? And finally, while I have read excerpts and stories from several more of the books, of the 349 books she has read thus far, I have read a whopping total of 7. Seems like I need to get busy...

My new president supports my new career

I know it's just one line from one speech to a special interest group, but still, yay!

“More than a building that houses books and data, the library represents a window to a larger world, the place where we’ve always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward and the human story forward. ... That’s what libraries are about. At the moment that we persuade a child, any child to cross that threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better. It’s an enormous force for good.”

-Barack Obama, speaking at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, 2005

Edit: 11/10 - so, apparently I already knew about this quote 3 years ago... See, I was an Obama fan back in the day. Glad so many Americans caught up with me.

Library girl (that would be me)

I've been busy with school. The bulk of my reading has had to do with information science, or management theory (or political blogs or the ever-present New Yorkers, which have gotten the best of me again.) And even my airplane reading on the flight back from Hawaii turned out to be related to school...

Which takes me to Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian, from McSweeney's contributer and Anaheim librarian Scott Douglas. Douglas is about my age. Except he started working as a library page in college, and then went straight to library school. So he's been official for something like 5 or 6 years. And working in libraries for more like 10. (Also, most of my classmates are already longtime employees of some library or another. This makes me nervous for my future career prospects. How am I going to get hired when everyone else already has way more experience? Answer: quit my day job and get unpaid internships?) Anyway, I'm going to say that Douglas has certain writing quirks that mark him as part of the Dave Eggers cadre. (I'm not sure what I even mean by that, and am afraid of getting myself into trouble, so I'm just going to link to a wiki post for Eggers, and make a vague reference to a sort of self-referential, insouciant, nerdy hipsterism.) He also reminded me - with his penchant for wanting to share more information than he can possibly fit in through use of footnotes and "for shelving" asides - of David Foster Wallace, which just makes me sad.

Anyway. Douglas is funny. I laughed. He is good at noting the ridiculous. Yet everytime he edges toward being mean, he tries to take a step back, and I believe he is fundamentally a good guy who just happens to love telling a good story. None of the story of his time in school at SJSU or his early days at the library particularly makes me excited about what lies ahead. In fact, I sat at the airport wondering if I could run out of there and just live on my uncle's couch in Honolulu and swim in his building's beautiful new saltwater pool. But that's a life dilemma for another moment.

And Douglas isn't all "working in a library with librarians is C.R.A.Z.Y." He mocks them, and says they really don't read (working with books too much kills some of the joy, like Dr. Franzblau in this episode). But still, libraries will always be "the gateway to something greater." And the community that they inspire as they serve the community (tortured sentence structure, I know) is really something special.

CHOCOLATE (and magic)

I read Chocolat sometime during the spring of my sophomore or junior year in college. I am unclear on how I had time to read a pretty little tale on domestic witchcraft and the joys of food and love and identity and acceptance and friendship, etc. while I was taking classes. But I have very clear memories about where I sat in our backyard and everything. The movie was not as good, despite my love for Juliette Binoche. In part I blame an intransigent movie-mate, and in part I blame the subterranean theater, and the NYC subway trains that shook the whole place every 5 minutes or so.

All of which leads me to Joanne Harris' sequel, The Girl with No Shadow (or The Lollipop Shoes in the UK) which I read in a great big rush at the beginning of the week. [We emphatically do not like the LAPL's new loan period. It is hard to begin a 440 page book on Sunday and turn it in on Tuesday.] But this was a good book to read all at once. It's immersive and fast and mysterious and (literally) magical. We meet Vianne and her daughter four years after the events in Chocolat. They have new names, and there is a new daughter, and a new witch on the horizon. Plus Vianne has abandoned magic in an attempt to create a normal and safe life for her family. And obviously this is not going to work. No surprise.

I was often swept away by the book in that lovely way that books can sweep you away. Where the magic of storytelling just makes you feel safe and free and alive with possibility. But I was also very deeply troubled. The dark aspects of the book were very dark, and the villain's cynicism seductive. The result for me was a kind of dissatisfied turmoil, not a black mark against the novel, but all the same enough to knock me off-kilter.

Minus 2 points for sarcasm

Maybe I'm biased, because I seem to have a soft spot for Turkey, or at least for its Nobel laureates. So this story on Treehugger both attracted my attention and raised a little bit of pique.

It turns out that the Turkish government has provided free textbooks for schoolchildren. (Yay, obviously.) Except that they give them away, at a cost of $800 million and lots and lots of trees, and then they mostly get thrown out at the end of the year. And so they produce all new ones and the cycle continues.

"So [and here comes the snark] they’ve come up with an ingenious remedy that some folks have been practicing for centuries, book lending." Students will now return the books at the end of the school year, which is what I did through my years of public education. Not only is this good environmentally and economically, but it can offer Turkish children the opportunity to engage in such fun activities as seeing who had your textbook in years past, and writing in fake "funny" names to entertain future generations of textbook users.

A Happy e-mail in my inbox

Good news

I am thrilled to inform you that we have successfully restored $1.5
million in funding to our City’s public libraries. We will now be
able to buy new books to fill library shelves and keep regional library
branches opened on Sundays.

As Vice-Chair of the Los Angeles Budget and Finance Committee I was
honored to fight for one of our City’s most valued resources, our
libraries. But we could not have achieved this victory without the
impressive outpouring of community support to restore funds. I received
hundreds of emails, phone calls and letters expressing concern about the
proposed funding cuts. I thank you for your commitment to keeping our
treasured libraries open and available to all our residents. I look
forward to hearing from you again soon.

Sincerely,

Councilwoman Wendy Greuel
Second Council District

Mary Poppins wrote about this too in today's Times.

My new job...

Well, probably not. But um, who knew you could make a career out of picking out Indiana Jones' books?

We all know I am several issues behind on the New Yorker, so I am just now discovering things more timely readers would have known back at the end of September. (Someday, I believe, I will catch up again.) Anyway, an October 1st "Talk of the Town" - linked above - is about Strand Bookstore and its books-by-the-foot service.

Since the program’s inception, in 1986, the Strand has built scores of imaginary reading rooms, from the prison library in “Oz” to the Barnes & Noble clone in “You’ve Got Mail.” Clients also include window dressers, commercial architects (the Strand furnished each floor in the Library Hotel with a different Dewey decimal category), and people with more shelf space than leisure time. Kelsey Grammer requested all hardback fiction in two of his homes, while Steven Spielberg, who, incidentally, is the director of the new Indiana Jones movie, allowed a wider range (cookbooks, children’s books, volumes on art and film) to penetrate his Hamptons estate. “There have been a lot of biographies on him, so I put those in there, too,” Nancy Bass Wyden, a co-owner of the store, said.

I wonder if Strand needs a West Coast affiliate...

Feeling Liberal

Erin hearts Paul Krugman. (Not enough to have paid for TimesSelect during that little experiment, but nonetheless...) So when the Library's Aloud series brought him to town, I decided I had to be there.

And being there was fun. Krugman is a good speaker. And UC Irvine prof and Nation contributing editor Jon Wiener was a decent interviewer, particularly good at letting Krugman wander as he would, then bringing him back. So the conversation ranged over a variety of topics, beginning in the 1950s and the middle-class society that emerged out of the New Deal. The rise and fall of America as a middle-class society is - so I gather - a central narrative for Krugman, and he argues that "politics have a huge impact on income distribution." And they are able to do so even in a democracy b/c of smokescreen campaign issues (like "gay married terrorists"). He had some fascinating observations on the ways Republican politicians, without necessarily being racist, have exploited racism and a deep sense of being wronged in order to win elections.

Health care: PK is a fan of single-payer ("Civilized countries don't let people fail to get basic health care"), but believes that it is more feasible right now to support the consensus plan put forward by leading Democratic candidates.

The financial climate: "I don't know." He's nervous about the fallout from sub-prime and other loans, but not as nervous as some. So we'll see.

And of course, Bush: the 2000 campaign was a "radicalizing experience" for Krugman. And while he won't make any argument for whether Bush & co. should be criminally prosecuted once they are out, he does believe that we need to "open the books" on the Administration, and learn the truth about everything that's happened.

Reading so much Wonkette has made me feel like I ought to be more snarky. But really all I have to say is Krugman is crazy-smart and witty and yet calm and thoughtful, and it was a pleasure listening to him.

Ode to a Library

As a graduate student at Georgetown, I relied heavily on inter-library loan and the Library of Congress. But occasionally, I liked to get away from the academic grind, and turned to the local library.

My local branch was a beautiful mansionesque building at Wisconsin and R. Set up on a hill, it looked over the rest of the neighborhood. And on Monday, it burned. And I can't tell from news reports how much was salvaged. It wasn't alone either - another DC treasure, Eastern Market - was also heavily damaged by a fire earlier in the day.

History suffered too:

The library's archivist, meanwhile, stood at Wisconsin and R streets, heartbroken over warped and soot-covered historic paintings and documents that firefighters were bringing out and placing on plastic sheeting on the sidewalk.

The branch's holdings include photos, maps and paintings of the neighborhood and individual files on each home in Georgetown that have been donated over the decades.

I have no words. Libraries and history should never be lost.

Ending Library Week with some stories on libraries

Libraries got some play in the front section of today's LA Times.

On page A17, "Chicago State's brave new library" made news with a series of crates and robotic bins instead of old-fashioned stacks. Users request a book online, and the appropriate bin is delivered to the librarian, who can quickly grab the right book. Elapsed time: 3 minutes. (This is impressive, seeing as how the Library of Congress used a similar system, and my waiting times were usually closer to an hour.)

Library and Information Sciences Dean Lawrence McCrank (McCrank?!) extols the new technology:

"We discovered that the average student took 30 minutes to find a book. Books would be misplaced or not filed correctly," McCrank said. "That's a lot of time that cuts into how long students can spend analyzing the material, focusing on work, or continuing to find even more research on a particular subject."

But I am sympathetic to critics "who note that these storage systems eliminate the tradition of students accidentally discovering new and sometimes better material while roaming through the stacks." And while that didn't happen to me that often, I did enjoy roaming down halls and coming across bizarre titles on the way to my book.

And on the other side of the page, not only is NYU getting my friend Jen this fall, but the university's Tamiment Library has recently received the US Communist Party archives. The process of cataloging all these goodies may take up to five years. (The print edition has some pictures that aren't online, of rallies and posters.)

And one more article for today: the New York Times discovers fair trade in their midst. And I discovered that I apparently have hipster cred. Or, as they put it:

Fair trade, like more familiar labels such as organic, cruelty-free and sustainable, is another in a series of ethical claims to appear on products — a kind of hipster seal of approval. The fair trade ethic is spreading eastward from the West Coast, where it has been promoted by well-financed activist campaigns and where progressive politics are more intertwined with youth culture.

This was a little bit of a surprise to me, b/c while plenty of cool kids do the fair trade thing, most of Fair Trade LA's members got involved through religious groups who focused on social justice. Upon a second reading, I'm feeling more generous, but on the first pass the article seemed pretty patronizing. But then again, it was in Fashion & Style.

Best Week Ever!

I like to use hyperbole, but seriously, I am celebrating this week. Why?

It's National Library Week! A whole week of love for that great institution that contains books and knowledge - and shares them for free. The LA County library system is excited too, with speakers each night. Co-hosting, another of my favorite things: the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. It's only two weeks away, and tickets will be available starting at noon next Sunday - to help cure your blues and post-library week hangover.

The city's libraries are more circumspect, I guess, b/c I didn't see anything about it on their website. And didn't notice anything during my quick trip to my local branch Saturday. However, while I was searching, I did remind myself of the amazing events hosted regularly by the library. I signed up for a couple mailing lists. You should check out the site and maybe do so too.

Erin's Library will be celebrating the week by posting every day (or attempting to). So check back often.

Reading under the influence

I never really figured out how to combine reading and a nightlife. But you know who has? Will Shamlian and Michael Leko, at their recently opened Library Bar, a short hop from the Central Library in downtown LA. (A couple good pictures are available here.) In addition to the wall of books - which was an eclectic mix including a few I'd actually read - there are comfy chairs and a fabulous selection of music. My apple beer (like a cider but without the fizz) was yummy even if a little pricey, and came in one of those awesome Belgian beer glasses.

If it were near my office, I'd be there every night after work. (I'd probably bring my own book though.)

My field trip to the library

It's been a while since I've been able to borrow books, perusing shelves and online catalogs, but today I visited my new local library branch. It's a bit of a hike, but definitely walkable, and is open post-rush hour every weeknight. And the community definitely seems to take advantage of it - pretty much every seat in the place was filled with readers, students, tutors, researchers, whathaveyou. My favorite feature was the self check-out machine, which I haven't seen since Berkeley (and there I seemed to always do it wrong). Skipping the line is nice sometimes (especially if you are carrying a book that you are mildly embarrassed about being seen with).

So thus was my trip. Book reviews on my loot coming soon...