Calm - by S.J. Baker

I picked up this YA Dystopian novel from a local Little Free Library. In this fool's paradise the government has drugged the water supply to keep everyone lulled into a sense of complacecny and from having any feelings (good or bad). Of course books in this world are also hard to come by. And as with any dystopia there are resistors. Tiegan, a young dyed-in-the-wool Resistor who is running from the Servants remembers that her own home had a "little store [of books]...hidden in the cupboard...even though their very presence in the house meant danger."

Something else worth mentioning about this book it that it recognizes that when on the lam menstruating people may have trouble managing their periods. It was frankly refreshing to read a book that appreciated this problem.

Apex Hides the Hurt - by Colson Whitehead

A nomenclature consultant is paid to name things, mainly products, but in this satire the unnamed hero is hired to pick a new name for the town of Winthrop. Winthrop has a hotel, a bar, and of course a library. In fact one of the town's former librarians wrote a history of the town. This is provided to the consultant who supposes that "writing your town's local history was the librarian version of climbing Everest". Maybe so, as long as it doesn't get too badly edited for not being "ass-kissy" enough. 

While the consultant does meet one of the librarians (Beverly) and has some between-the-stacks type fantasies about her, he doesn't really get to use the library as it is being moved from one building to another during his visit.  Descriptions of the nearly empty space have a definite dystopian air

The place was a husk. The books were gone. Where he would usually be intimidated by an army of daunting spines, there were only dust-ball rinds and Dewey decimal grave markers. As if by consensus, all the educational posters and maps had cast out their top right-hand corner tacks so that their undersides bowed over like blades of grass. Nothing would be referenced this afternoon, save indomitable market forces.

Even the globe was gone. Over there on a table in the corner he saw the stand, the bronze pincers that once held the world in place, but the world was gone.

One would be forgiven for thinking that this was a description of a contemporary library once Moms for Liberty had their way with it. 

Beverly "a young white chick with dyed black hair [and] twenty or forty bracelets on her wrists...made an unlikely librarian, stereotype-wise". Nevertheless the consultant decides that she must be wearing "one bracelet for every shush".

A quick fun read that I picked up at my local library.

Mockingbird Summer - by Lynda Rutledge

 In 1964 Ms. Delacorte public librarian in High Cotton, Texas suggests newly-minted teenager Kate "Corky" Corcoran read To Kill a Mockingbird. Corky shares the book with her brother, Mack who has just completed his first year of college; and with her new friend, America who otherwise cannot use the library in the segregated town.  

Through the lenses of these characters we see how each creates their own meaning of Harper Lee's work. Corky's journey includes learning what the word "rape" means as well as a discovery that although the story took place three decades prior it really wasn't so long ago as the same battles were still being fought in the segregated south.

The Civil Rights bill forms a backdrop to the story and Corky's mother Belle is expecting to benefit herself from the legislation as it also includes rights for women. Belle is looking forward to taking a job at the public library, in defiance of her husband.

96 Miles - by J.L. Esplin

A mysterious power outage leaves brothers John and Stew to survive in the Nevada desert without their father. With the help of neighbors they are able to attend a community meeting at their school library. 

Although I understand the importance of libraries as meeting places, I almost skipped posting about this book, as it was the only time a library appeared in the work. However, later in the novel, when I read that their small school housed grades K-12 and had 47 students total I realized the magnitude of the fact that the school even had a library, and in fact had a librarian. In a time when school librarians are being considered superfluous, and school libraries are closing due to lack of staff, we see a world in which libraries are clearly understood to be the essential spaces that we know them to be.

Free for All: The Public Library (PBS: Independent Lens)

Featuring viewpoints from PEN America, The American Library Association, librarians, and library users this documentary film provides an historical perspective of libraries from Benjamin Franklin, Melville Dewey, and Andrew Carnegie to the present day culture wars that involve drag queens and a book banning crisis. In addition to many little known librarians throughout history the film gives insight into Arturo Shomburg who built a black history collection during the Harlem renaissance and to Ruth Brown who was fired during the McCarthy era for "harboring" subversive materials. Throughout, the film demonstrates the importance of libraries in all parts of the country (urban, rural, and suburban) as well as the tenacity of librarians in the face of tax cuts and calls to shut down libraries completely.

The documentary Free for All: The Public Library is available for free for all at pbs.org

Innocence Under the Elms - by Louise Dickinson Rich

I've known about this memoir about growing up in Bridgewater, Massachusetts (at the turn of the twentieth century) for some time. Many in my adopted hometown had told me about it and I finally got around to reading it just as I was moving out of Bridgewater after 27 and a half years. 

When I arrived in Bridgewater in 1997 one of the first things I did was to get a library card. Shortly after that I gave birth to my only child with whom I spent many hours in the library, and reading books at home together that we checked out. I also served for three terms on the Board of the Bridgewater Public Library (one as President). Therefore, I especially enjoyed reading about Rich's love of the same library. The Library, in fact, was also the place of the author's "first paid job".

The town, it seemed, had allocated a sum of money to be used for cleaning and refurbishing the Public Library. The two librarians, Miss Lucia Christian (Adults) and Miss Rachel Crocker (Children), considered it essential that in addition to the necessary painting and floor finishing, every book in the place should be taken down and dusted.

In those days the shelves were closed to the public. If you wanted a book, you told the librarian about it, and she went and got it for you, while you waited outside the carved wooden fence that separated the sheep from the goats. The shelves came very decidedly under the category of Sacred Grouind, available only to the librarians or their duly empowered agents and assistants and jealously guarded from unlawful hands and eyes. There was no random and casual browsing by goats, who if they did nothing worse, could surely be counted upon to put the books back in the wrong places. Under this system some books weren't even touched, let alone read, from one year's end to the next. It wasn't very surprising or unnatural that during that time they collected quite a coating of dust. And who better could be found to cope with the situation than the little Dickinson girls, who in addition to being Reliable, were Readers and Respecters of Books, and who, moreover, could be expected because of their tender years to work for much less than a regular cleaning woman would?

We were paid, I think, five cents an hour, which seemed like the wealth of Croesus to us.

From there the author describes the additional benefits of working in the library "turning us loose in the library was like turning an alcoholic loose in the wine cellar...those five or six weeks of dusting books contributed more to our so-called education than sixteen years...of school attendance". By stopping to read the books they were dusting Louise and Alice learned that not everyone held the same opinion about everything "you could believe anything you wanted to! You didn't have to accept what anyone, even teachers, told you!" Quite a heady lesson that we'd do well to remember a century later.

And that's not all! There was more exciting library work for Louise and her sister Alice as they got a bit older. 

The following summer, Miss Christian and Miss Crocker were obliged for personal reasons to take their two weeks' vacation at the same time. ..Faced with the the necessity of leaving their sacred trust in untested hands, they thought of the little Dickinson girls...We went into the library for a week or so to learn the ropes; and then Miss Christian and Miss Crocker took off, leaving us in charge.

Dickinson goes on to describe how she and her sister stamped out books, collected fines, and "frowning at anyone who raised his voice above the lawful whisper". They also determined on their own to "give people not what they wanted to read" but what Louise and Alice determined they should read "for their own good". And so we see why libraries should be run by actual librarians, and not school children, no matter how reliable they might be.

Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books - by Kirsten Miller

Lula Dean didn't intend for the Little Library she put in her front yard to be filled with books she had requested be removed from the school and public libraries, but some stealthy young folks replaced her "clean" books with the forbidden ones, hiding them with the covers of the books she originally had in her collection. Suddenly kids know about periods, and women know about witchcraft, and some people even want to remove the statue of a slave owner from the town square. 

Burning books is offered as a solution for those works that some don't want others to read. This is the case for people on the left and the right. Lula Dean and the Concerned Parents Committee (CPC) suggest this for the books they want "reconsidered". Likewise Delvin Crump decides to burn Our Confederate Heroes when he finds it in Lula Dean's library. 

Not once in his life had Delvin Crump ever contemplated burning a book. When he'd joined the army, he had taken an oath to defend the Constitution which gave all Americans the right to free speech, including the backward-ass bastard who'd written Our Confederate Heroes. But it was time to take this piece of shit out of circulation. 

Delvin has his grill fired up when he discovers that Toni Morrison's Beloved is really inside the book cover.

Don't burn books you don't like. You cannot determine for other people what they can read. People have the right to read what books they want, and have their own reasons for reading them. 

This book has 35 chapters, each named for a book. Additionally, a number of books are mentioned in the work but do not have chapters named for them. In her author's note Miller tells the readers that some of the book titles she uses are real, and others are fictitious. I did recognize many of the book titles. Some, such as: Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret; The Handmaid's Tale; and Fifty Shades of Grey have their own posts on this blog. I was particularly interested to find How the Word is Passed among those titles used. It is a book I am currently listening to on Audible.

The town librarian Mara Ocumma is a true defender of privacy and of free speech. When Melody Sykes, one of the members of the CPC shows up at the library looking a book of poison mushrooms, Ocumma knows exactly why. Melody's nasty husband Randy is certainly worthy of a murder fantasy. However unlikeable Melody is, though, she still is entitled to good information and privacy, and Ocumma ensures she gets both.

A fun satire.