Library Loot: Taoism, Crichton, Social Media — Oh, My!

More often than not, my library use defines my interest of the moment. So, class, what am I checking out these days?

First, there's Michael Crichton. Karen and I are reading Next together, and I like Richard Preston.

Then there's Taoism, which I find fascinating. I've read most of the Tao Te Ching and all of The Tao of Pooh. Is it applicable to my way of life right about now? One way to find out.

Finally, weirdly enough, I'm less insulted by being called an "idiot" than "dummy," so I go for that line of instructional books. No, seriously, I like the way they're written and formatted (not to mention I'm more of a fan of orange than yellow). If you want a good overview, go to the Idiots, I always say.
 

Or, "Join the club."

I may not finish all of these books immediately (aside from Next). I can handle only one Crichton at a time, and the novels have to be properly spaced to avoid author fatigue. 

Plus, I can tolerate only so much philosophy before it starts to sound like pablum. I may have chosen unwisely for the topic of Taoism. (David is reading The Tao of Pooh right now, but I may steal it from him if my hardcover copy doesn't arrive by tomorrow — thanks, Amazon Prime!)

At any rate, this stack is  not long for this reader. Crichton is a quick read and my Idiot level for social media may be sort of low. Anyway, no need to keep any of these books out of the hands of other like-minded souls, right?

So, what have you checked out lately?

Library Loot: Movies, Cookbooks and Fiction — Oh, My!

A trip to the library is a giddy pleasure: free books for the taking! Sure, you have to return them, but that's okay because you just get more.

Here is my latest stack of books:

I've had the cookbooks for a while. My husband David is the family chef, so I gathered these for his reading enjoyment — but still found about a dozen recipes to share with him. Mostly dessert. Shocker.

It's October, which means I have to find some creepy books to read. John Dies at the End counts, as does the conspiracy theory novel The Shell Game (a recommendation from Reader Karen). I may not get to Gone Girl by the end of its lending period, but I will try.

David and I are going to the Caribbean next year, and we have to start plotting now, hence the travel books.

There are two movies on top. One is based on a book and — well, both of them are. Never mind.

So, what have you borrowed from your library lately?

Library Loot: Hugo, Fragments and a Little Secret

I checked out three library books this week. Each has a specific role in my reading life.  I am very excited!

• Fragments by Marilyn Monroe. She wrote poetry, or at least fragments of poetry. Why am I surprised that this artist would commit her poetry to paper? Rest assured, Poetry Wednesday will benefit from this.

• The Invention of Hugo Cabaret by Brian Selznick. I sent it to my friend Marie for her birthday last year, and I haven't read it. I will remedy that before I see her again. I haven't seen the movie — have you? Did you enjoy it? Do I want to see it?
  

• Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. My book club read it, but reviews are mixed at best. I haven't consumed it yet, and I may wait to read it until all of the reviews are in.

For the first time this calendar year, I have no materials on hold. I returned Ruby Red earlier this year before I could read it, and you know how I love time travel fiction. I may set it up for hold to pick up in October — thank heavens for delayed reservations so I can plot my library reading!


What did you pick up at the library this week?


Thanks to Linda (Silly Little Mischief), Claire (The Captive Reader) and Mary (The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader ) for establishing the weekly Library Loot. Check out what they're checking out!

Summer Reading: This Year, Read and Share

There's something carefree about reading during the summer.

Even when I took summer school classes (for fun!), I always had extra time to read. In fact, many of the classes I took included reading lists that somehow seemed less daunting because the books could be read under a tree, on the beach, in a hammock.

I could tackle hefty books in the bright summer sunlight. I could breeze through light fare on the windswept beach of the Pacific Ocean of my childhood. There was nothing too huge that couldn't be faced in the summer.

One excellent source of summer reading lists was my local library. There was always a reading competition, an incentive to read more, the most, the best. Not to brag, but one year I read more books than any other kid in the library. The librarians ran out of prizes — which was even better because reading was its own reward.

But as I left school and found myself in the workaday world, I found fewer and fewer reading programs. Libraries used to offer reading recommendations, but recent budget cuts have reduced staff time and programs. Now, only children are encouraged to read, and rewarded for reading.


I am going to change that.


With Chris' Summer Reading Challenge, I encourage everyone to read as much as they can finish. Spend long summer days lounging with a book and a cold drink. I want people to be so immersed in their books they forget about lunch.


What's the reward? Give it back.


For every book read, I want readers to pledge to donate to their library or literacy program of their choice. Choose cash (a buck a book, or the cost of all books read, or even a copy of the books themselves). Find out how your library or literacy program prefers its donations. Remember: volunteer hours are an excellent way to give back, whether it's to the library or the organization of your choice.

For me, the summer solstice begins at 7:09 pm June 20. Within a week of the official start of summer, I will publish my reading list for the summer and who will benefit from my reading.

So, who's in?

In the comments below, include your reading list and your beneficiary, and how you hope to share your love of reading.

Or drop me a line and I'll share (if you let me) or respond (if it stays between us).


Let's make this a summer to remember!

Banned Books Week: What's the Big Deal?

Every year, the American Library Association reminds us that freedom is not free by holding Banned Books Week.  And every year, I get the same questions: What's the big deal?  Books aren't really banned, they're just challenged — and shouldn't I have the right to tell my kids what they can read?

Well, here's the thing: parents have the right to tell their own children what they can read.  However, they do not have the right to tell other people's children, including me and mine, what they can read.

I was among the more fortunate children: my parents didn't curtail my reading.  I showed my folks what I had checked out from the library; in the off-chance they weren't around or available when I got home, the books were stacked on my nightstand in my bedroom.  They were books, for heaven's sake, and everyone loves books, right?

That doesn't mean I didn't make my parents uncomfortable with what I read.  When I asked Dad about a phrase in Sonnets from the Portuguese that included the phrase "pregnant lips," he gravely suggested I was too young to read it — which translated to "Dad the engineer doesn't want to discuss poetical lips."  I was six, and I was learning to judge what was the best resources for research.

This understanding that some language was "hot" made the reading of Very Special People a little confusing a couple of years later.  One set of conjoined twins was described as having separate upper bodies but sharing a lower body.  I knew about lungs, intestines and anus, but penis?  Whether I had heard that word before (during Mom's "facts of life" discussions) was immaterial: I had never seen it written.  It seemed rather "lip"-y in nature, so I went straight to the dictionary.

Try reading the definition of any word when you haven't a clue as to what it is. 

That definition included another word I couldn't understand, whose definition was equally puzzling, which led to another definition... I surrendered, extrapolating from the sentence enough information I needed to move on.

However, I did encounter a book I didn't understand — and when Mom saw it on my stack of library books, she wondered aloud if it was a little "old" for me.  I told her I didn't know, and we left it at that.  I found the first few pages tedious and terribly boring, so I returned it rather quickly.  The title? Helter Skelter. I was eleven.

In short, I read anything I wanted.  I read all of the exciting, titillating books girls my age were read, swapping amongst each other.  My friend Carole remembers the same list, her copies fat and swollen from repeated droppings in the pool, where she and her friends shared and read them.

Whether I should have read Audrey Rose, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Sybil, Go Ask Alice, Forever or Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret isn't the real question.  (If it was, the answer is unequivocally "yes.")  The question is: who should have decided what I should read?

I always respect a parent's wishes regarding their children's exposure to books, music and movies.  However, they're not my parents.  They're not my kids' parents.  They have no right to tell anyone but their own children what they may consume.

Library funds are so limited, the broad array of books once found in the library already is dwindling.  Don't use that to control your own children's — and, inevitably, everyone else's children's — reading material.  Go with your family to the library, help them choose, and steer them away from books like And Tango Makes Three, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things. That is your perogative.

Just don't decide for me what those things are, and I won't do that for you.

Happy Banned Books Week, people.  Choose your reading materials, and read something that might or might not be objectionable.  Be your own judge.

Books Without Borders

I have seen the future without Borders, and it is Target.

And it makes me wish to weep.

David and I stopped by Borders the other day to indulge yet again (and to say "hello" to our future shelves).  We had a stack of goods we literally could not carry without each others' help.  Between coffee table books on music and guitars, a Jackie Chan video, Game of Thrones, The Anubis Gates, another Flavia mystery novel and a few novels and DVDs that will be gifts, our arms were full.

While we were there, I could not find some of the more recently published books, but I suspect most of the newer items had been snatched up quickly.  There was a biography I had tried for the better part of a year to pick up at the bookstore, but was again unsuccessful.

Today I encountered a book trailer that made me want to race out and purchase said book (thanks to Harper Collins Canada).  I knew I wasn't going to risk another encounter at Borders so soon — it's too exhausting to see such a loved bookstore in such disarray and disrepair.  I was going to Target, anyway, so figured I'd try my luck there.

"No luck" doesn't quite describe it.

There was room for for 12 books in the young adult "section."  Three slots were taken up by the first Harry Potter novel.  The top row was all Rick Riordian novels.  The rest of the collection was composed of whatever teen vampire romances are hot to teens.

I wanted to cry.

I knew I'd miss Borders, but I didn't realize the vast wasteland that awaited me.

It is in part my own fault.  I have a thing about Barnes & Noble: I don't like paying for a "club" discount.  I'm not a member of those big box warehouse stores for that very reason (well, that, and  refusing to buy a vat of mayonnaise I'l never finish, if only because I can't reach the bottom of the 10-gallon barrel to finish it off).  Paying what is a comparatively paltry sum to receive reasonable discounts shouldn't rub me the wrong way, but it does.

I'll be a member of a free discount club to the end of time, and they are free to mine my purchasing history for their marketing programs; it's only fair to help them sell me what I may (or may not) need.  For that information alone I deserve a discount, and I'm glad to take it at what seems like no additional cost to me.  (I am not foolish enough to think anything is truly free.)  However, to pay for that same "privilege" offends me.  Both I and the company in question will benefit, them more so because they can use my data to further their sales, market to their customers and determine their inventory.  I just want to buy at the "member" discount without having to pay for it up front.

However, if Target makes me weep over books again, I might give up bookstores altogether.  Amazon serves me well, gives me recommendations, sells to me at a reasonable price and delivers it at lightning-quick speed — and I can shop in my underpants.  (Sorry for the visual — and no, pouring bleach in your eyes will not help.)  I love my library and have been voraciously consuming those books at an alarming rate.  I just want to hand a book I love to a friend, who then can love it, too — and the library frowns on that.

I cannot go cold turkey, so I'll still hit up my thrift stores and used bookstores, which are my true passion.  However, as it stands, sparkling new bookstores may be a thing of the past.

Hopefully Barnes & Noble will come around to my way of thinking, especially since the competition is shrinking (for the time being).  If not, I'll have to totally change my book buying habits which, while a benefit to my wallet, will take its toll on my bookish soul. 

Tell me: what are you doing for your books these days, now that the Age of Borders is waning?

A Video Poem — Go Librarians!

Click here to read the lyrics.

Thanks to Suzanne Levy for sharing.  And remember: every week is Library Week!

Comfort in Books

For the first time in nearly two decades, I am not surrounded by books.

Well, let me clarify: I am not inundated by books stacked around me in every room in the house.

That doesn't mean I don't have books in the house.  And it's not even my house!

Last summer, Carole helped me "de-clutter" my library so the amount of books I had actually fit within the bookshelves. (I know, where is the fun in that?)  Rest assured, it was for a good cause: the house was on the market, and professionals recommended implementing the "d" word.

What that meant was the boxing of about 20 boxes of books.  Give or take, that is; I didn't count.  I just closed my eyes and received the books Carole handed me.  We weeded out the ones I wasn't reading at the moment, added the ones I was unlikely to re-read in the immediate future, and made the remaining ones look like they were meant to be there.  Carole arranged the ones that remained with attractive, bookish knickknacks from her own shelves, rescued some from mine, and displayed them in a lovely fashion.

It was that room that sold the house.

Oh, don't misunderstand me: the new kitchen floor wasn't a washout and the couch set off the living room.  However, it was the love on those shelves that made someone think about how they would love that house, too — and, apparently, see beyond the cat scratching posts flanking the front door.

However, now... Now I have half a box of books in a cube in Alicia's guest room.

Well, that's how it started.  Then I found Summer of Night by Dan Simmons tucked, unread, on her bedroom shelves, and that was promptly plopped on the air purifier. 

Then I was lured into the library book sale and found myself the new owner of a stack of books, including new-to-David Dean Koontz and, for me,  American Wife (which had good reviews and I had meant to read when it first came out).  And a few more titles that looked delicious... With hardback novels priced at a dollar and the money funding library programs, who was I to deny the Friends of the Library a few shekels in exchange for books?

Alicia made a Marge Simpson sound when she saw them stacked on the shoe holder that evening.  "Okay, but no more books!" she declared, the only sane person in the house.  David and I nodded.  We could comply.

That is, until the latest Borders coupon was too much to resist.  I had managed to walk out of the store without A Discovery of Witches enough times to make me feel pious, and the box of books we took to Alicia's house was still buried.  I could see the end of At Home looming on the horizon: what was I to do?  I was too excited to not tell Alicia.  She just shook her head.

Then I dropped off some items at the local thrift store with low prices and a decent selection of books.  I told myself that one book was going to the Lunchroom Lending Library at work, one was for David and the other two... well, I'd give them away when I finished them.  Really.

I showed Alicia the first one, for David, which appeared work-related.  "Eat This, Not That? I've seen that at the bookstores," she said.  Then she saw the others.  "And where are these going?" she asked.

"One is going to work," I responded weakly.

She sighed.  I was officially incorrigible.  (Which was not news to either of us.)

I am sated — for now.  I have plotted them carefully: first, I finish Summer of Night.  That will take me a few days.  After that, I will follow up that with the new-to-me Penny Vincenzi in the box we brought with us, then dive right into Witches. 

At least, that's the plan.  I've had a few more titles suggested to me, and I've unfrozen my library reservation list, so I might have a few new titles from which to choose.

What other titles can you suggest to lure me off the straight-and-narrow?  Tempt me with your suggestions!

The Library in Poetry

It is no secret, my love of books.  I hope also it is no secret I hold an equally deep love for libraries, especially public ones.  The first tax-supported public library opened on this day in 1833, in Peterborough, N.H., and it stands today with more than 9,000 other public libraries that feed our need for information and resources.  

You may not be able to get a subscription to the Post or pay for Internet connection, but you know you can get that at the library — as well as books in many languages, DVDs, recorded books and reference material and magazines from all over the world.

We talk about all of the things we can live without in economic hard times.  Some jurisdictions seem to think libraries are one of those things that can come and go when "times get tough."  You and I know better.  Call your mayor, call your chairman, call your parish president or county leader and make sure they know that, too.

 While we're at it, let's have a shout-out to all of the librarians out there who know where, when and how to find out anything we need to know (whether we knew it or not).  Between them and the Dewey Decimal System, we're saved!

 

HEAR IT AGAIN

'For out of olde feldes, as men seyth, Cometh al this newe corne yer by yere, And out of olde bokes, in good feyth, Cometh al this newe science that men lere.' Chaucer: The Parlement of Foules Fourteen centuries have learned, From charred remains, that what took place When Alexandria's library burned Brain-damaged the human race. Whatever escaped Was hidden by bookish monks in their damp cells Hunted by Alfred dug for by Charlemagne Got through the Dark Ages little enough but enough For Dante and Chaucer sitting up all night looking for light. A Serbian Prof's insanity, Commanding guns, to split the heart, His and his people's, tore apart The Sarajevo library. Tyrants know where to aim As Hitler poured his petrol and tossed matches Stalin collected the bards... In other words the mobile and only libraries... of all those enslaved peoples from the Black to the Bering Sea And made a bonfire Of the mainsprings of national identities to melt the folk into one puddle And the three seconds of the present moment By massacring those wordy fellows whose memories were bigger than armies. Where any nation starts awake Books are the memory. And it's plain Decay of libraries is like Alzheimer's in the nation's brain. And in my own day in my own land I have heard the fiery whisper: 'We are here To destroy the Book To destroy the rooted stock of the Book and The Book's perennial vintage, destroy it Not with a hammer or a sickle And not exactly according to Mao who also Drained the skull of adult and adolescent To build a shining new society With the empties...' For this one's dreams and that one's acts For all who've failed or aged beyond The reach of teachers, here are found The inspiration and the facts. As we all know and have heard all our lives Just as we've heard that here. Even the most misfitting child Who's chanced upon the library's worth, Sits with the genius of the Earth And turns the key to the whole world. Hear it again.

by Ted Hughes
courtesy New Library: The People's Network

It Can’t Get Any Better Than This

Poetry and libraries, books and librarians — life is sweet.


My First Memory (of Librarians)

This is my first memory:
A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky
wood floor
A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center
Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply
too short
For me to sit in and read
So my first book was always big

In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided
To the left side the card catalogue
On the right newspapers draped over what looked like
a quilt rack
Magazines face out from the wall

The welcoming smile of my librarian
The anticipation in my heart
All those books—another world—just waiting
At my fingertips.

by Nikki Giovanni
with thanks to the Academy of American Poets

The Library is Open! Hurray!

After two long, grueling months without a library down the street, I have been rewarded.

My library has opened again — to the acclaim of all. The library had a party, and literally hundreds of people showed up.

In the age of Mega-Bookstore-Cafes and Internet saturation, I worry about the humble library. It's a municipal institution, and most people think "municipal" is not sexy. And while going to other libraries to get my book fix, I saw that to be true in older edifices: low ceilings, close bookshelves, fluorescent lighting, few chairs, even fewer tables. And no coffee or cookies for sale — not that our lard-fanny society should miss a Starbucks or hundred....

However, if my newly opened library is any indication, modern libraries are evolving. Now you can bring coffee in if it's in a sealed cup. There are easy chairs, wingback chairs, high ceilings, pleasant lighting and ambiance. There are DVDs of the latest movies, CDs of the latest books, new lending strategies for popular books, expanded hours and a selection that should make even the heartiest bibliophile salivate.

The problem is that we pour money into Borders without a second thought, but we cringe at the idea of doing the same to our libraries. Think about it: in these economic times, when the R-word is being bandied about and politicians are trying to think of way to "save" the economy, think about what gets cut first in government budgets. Libraries often are on the cutting block. We expect librarians and library staff to work longer hours and provide expanded service and product but somehow expect less, while we keep expecting more.

I'm not saying there should be a "tip jar" at the checkout counter of every library. (I hate those things.) What I am saying is that when budget time comes around for your municipality — which is just about now for those with a July 1 fiscal year start date — make sure government leaders know what you support. More importantly, make sure you know how the government is spending your money. Get a copy of the city or county budget and read it cover to cover. Find how how much (or how little) the state and feds provide. Talk to your elected representatives and your municipal leaders. Know what the government values, and make sure it matches the values of your community.

From what I have seen today, when hundreds of people thumbed through magazines, sat on the floor with their children to listen to the flute duo or stood in line to check out books, libraries are very highly valued. Make sure your government agrees with you. After all, it's your community.

Now go check out a book and celebrate the public lending library. I will see you there.