Once Upon a Prime - by Sarah Hart

 

Everything is connected to everything else. All the time. Every day.

This is my mantra. It frustrates me no end that University Administration thinks the humanities don't matter, and that they are somehow disconnected from the programs that teach "real job skills". Hart's book demonstrates "the wondrous connections between mathematics and literature". And it also demonstrates that smart people will see connections between things that might not be evident to others. It was a fascinating read which explained how math is used in some classic works including Moby Dick; Gulliver's Travels; Sherlock Holmes; and  Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. As well we find out why the numbers 3, 4, 7, and 12 figure (pun intended) so prominently in fairy tales. 

Interestingly, in this book about books, the first time a library is mentioned is very near the end. Hart describes the library in Jorge Luis Borges' short story "The Library of Babel". She admonishes readers to "pick up a book of his short stories without delay if you've never read him". And here I must make a confession. I have read "The Library of Babel" (in the original Spanish) with the specific intention of blogging about it here. I love Borges, and he was a librarian himself. The story though, so overwhelmed me that I didn't know where to start to write about it. So, with gratitude to Sarah Hart I use her words here to describe it

His story "The Library of Babel" features a mathematical oxymoron - a finite number of things that somehow have to fill a space that extends in all directions. The story is a first-person account of an inhabitant of the library - which is the universe. This "librarian" spends his life wandering the hexagonal rooms of the library, all of which are identically laid out, reading the books and trying to understand the meaning of the cosmos...

The library is an astonishing thing, says the librarian: it contains all possible books. Every book that has been written, that is being written now, that will one day be written, that will never be written, that has been started and abandoned, that has been banned, that has been lauded, that has never been imagined exists in the Library.

I highly recommend Hart's book (as well as Borge's short stories). And I want to believe that I was the first person to cite Hart's book (which was just published earlier this year). Read my article Utopia in the Stacks to see the citation.

Love in the Library - by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

In her Author's Note Tokuda-Hall tells the readers that this is the story of her maternal grandparents who met in Minidoka, a Japanese incarceration camp in Idaho. Tama (her grandmother) was the camp librarian, although "she didn't know how to be a librarian...In the camps people did the jobs that needed doing." Her grandmother had taken the job because "she liked books". George (Tokuda-Hall's grandfather) came every day to check out books. Tama questioned whether he could actually be reading all the long books he checked out. No, he wasn't reading them all. He was "only human". And the realization that she was the real reason he came every day dawned on her. Their love grew amidst their  whispers. 

George's "voice was so big it barely fit in the library..." Tama "held up her finger to remind him of the rules. They were in a library, after all."  

The Author's note also connects the story of Minidoka to current events. 

As much as I would hope this would be a story of a distant past, it is not. It's very much the story of America here and now. The racism the put my grandparents into Minidoka is the same hate that keeps children in cages on our border. It's the myth of white supremacy that brought slavery to our past and allows the police to murder Black people in our present. It's the same fear that brings Muslim bans. It's the same contempt that creates voter suppression, medical apartheid, and food deserts. The same cruelty that carved reservations out of stolen, sovereign land, that paved the Trail of Tears. Hate is not a virus; it is an American tradition.

Tokuda-Hall's author's note sparked controversy when Scholastic asked her to edit it in order to include the work in Scholastic's diversity-focused Rising Voices collection earlier this year. Tokuda-Hall refused and Scholastic ultimately issued an apology. More information about the request, Tokuda-Hall's response, and a link to the apology can be found in this article from Publisher's Weekly  

The Wishing Game - by Meg Shaffer

The description I read of this book before I listened to it was that it was like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but with books. That was pretty accurate. 

A gay hermit (Jack Masterson) who writes the wildly popular Clock Island series of children's books announces that he is writing another book after a very long hiatus. Furthermore, he announces that he is running a contest in which the contestants will be invited to his house on the real Clock Island and the winner will receive the only copy of the new book in existence to do with what they will. Lucy Hart is one of the lucky few invited to compete for the book. Her fervent wish is that she will be able to sell the book so she will have enough money to adopt Christopher, a boy in foster care. She gains more than she could have ever expected by the time the game is over.

My husband and I listened to this on audio. It was a good story, and of course featured some libraries. The story also alludes to the current wave of book banning, with Jack Masterson explaining why he has stayed in the closet. He doesn't want his identity as a gay man to prevent people from purchasing his books (or worse, removing them from library shelves).

This book is for everyone who is still waiting for their Hogwart's letter, or searching in the back of their closet for an opening to another world. 

Strange Arithmetic - by Kerrin Willis

In 1945 Maggie O'Callaghan discovers she's pregnant. The father of the baby is an Italian POW being held at Camp Myles Standish in Taunton, Massachusetts. The complications of this situation are many and the resolution is bad all around.

In 2016 Niahm Reilly really wants to be pregnant. The situation is complicated and the resolution turns out to be better than expected.

My husband and I heard this author speak earlier this year at An Unlikely Story Bookstore. We purchased both of the authors' books intending to read them together after we finished Margaret Atwood's recent book of Essays Old Babes in the Wood (which we had just started). Then we learned that Willis' book was our town's One Book One Community selection for this fall, so we moved it up to the top of the pile. We had not known that there was a POW camp nearby. We learned quite a bit of local history from reading this.

Niahm has a special place in her heart for libraries-her deceased mother was a librarian who'd bring her daughter to work with her. However, I cringed at the description of Niahm curled up under her mother's desk by her her "high-heeled feet". WTF?! What self-respecting librarian wears anything other than sensible shoes.