Sex Criminals (Volume 1) One Weird Thing - by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky

I appreciate a book that recognizes that librarians are sexual beings. I also appreciate a book that recognizes the superhero status of librarians. In Sex Criminals authors Fraction and Zdarsky have created a librarian character (Suzie) whose superpowers are activated when she reaches orgasm. Suzie can make time stop whenever she comes. She meets her match in Jon, who has the same gift she does. The two decide to use their power to become modern day Robin Hoods - robbing from the rich (the evil banks) and giving to the poor (the about-to-be foreclosed library).

The authors clearly appreciate a good library (and a good librarian). And they make a bit of a dig at the woeful status of sex information a young person might discover at school. Remembering her quest for information when she discovers her special secret Suzie asks

Ever try to utilize the resources of the public school system to learn about sex? No wonder so many dumb kids get knocked up. Nobody knows anything and if they do, they're legally bound from telling you.

However, she "falls in love with libraries" when she gets the assistance she needs from a non-judgmental and super helpful public librarian. (This is clearly what inspired her to become a librarian herself).

There are five books in this series. Although I found this fun, I don't plan on reading the rest. I get the gist.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - by J.K. Rowling

SPOILER ALERTS!

As I have done for the past several years, I re-read one of the "Harry Potter" books in time to blog for Harry's July 31 birthday. I think the fourth book in the series may be my least favorite. It really threw me the first time I read this to find that Lord Voldemort did indeed rise again. And he is really just so mean.

As with the other books, readers will find Harry and his friends using the library quite often for their research. Harry, Ron and Hermione all work tirelessly poring over books trying to find the elusive information on how a person can breathe underwater so Harry can perform the second task of the Triwizard Tournament (even going so far as to asking "the irritable vulture-like librarian, Madam Pince, for help"). Furthermore, students at Hogwarts can't simply "Google" how to perform a stunning hex, you have to look it up in a book. Herminone spends additional time in the library where she researches the history of the enslavement of House Elves in order to start S.P.E.W. (The Society for the Promotion of Elvish Welfare). Hermione's presence in the library turns the brooding Victor Krum (a visitor from the Durmstrang School, and famous Quidditch player) into an avid library user as well. This causes a bit of chagrin on Hermione's part, not because she doesn't like Victor, but rather because he has a fan club that follows him into the stacks, disturbing the scholarly atmosphere. Eventually the library proves to be just the right mood setter for Victor to find the courage to ask Hermione to the Yule ball.

This is still magical even upon the third reading (even if it isn't my favorite).

And, just in time for Harry's birthday : researchers find a correlation between reading HP books, and feeling empathy for marginalized groups.

Two Library/ASL movies

One of my summer projects was taking an online American Sign Language (ASL) course for librarians. As a result I've been doing a bit a research into deaf culture and learned about the book Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language. I also found out about the 1986 movie Children of a Lesser God and was reminded of an old favorite from my high school days - Voices. Finishing the course coincided with a visit from my Wisconsin cousin with whom I share an affinity for Voices (we must have watched it together half a dozen times on HBO during the summer of 1980). She has also taken, and taught some ASL courses. Given all this, we really had no choice but to watch Voices again. We had to purchase a copy of the DVD as it is not available on Netflix, or Amazon streaming (my go-to places for movies).

Voices stars Michael Ontkean as Drew Rothman, a musician who falls in love with (or in '70s vernacular "really digs") Rosemarie Lemon (Amy Irving) a beautiful deaf dance teacher. While not a comedy, my cousin and I laughed all the way through this, wondering why our teenage selves thought this was such a great film. Ontkean does his own singing, and he really isn't very good. The story is also a bit melodramatic. I told my cousin watching Ontkean in this venue was like seeing Greg Brady as a college graduate. Irving did an admirable job playing Lemon, at least she was challenging herself in the role. There is one scene in a library where, strangely enough, Rosemarie teaches her dance classes. Drew also checks a book on ASL out of the library.

Children of a Lesser God stars William Hurt as James Leeds and Marlee Matlin as Sarah Norman. Like Voices the story is of a hearing man who falls in love with a deaf woman and believes she can be more than she is. In this case Norman is a janitor at a deaf school and Leeds thinks that if she would just learn to read lips and use her voice all kinds of new opportunities would open up for her.  It is in the school library that Norman explains her rather sordid sexual history to Leeds. This one was made seven years after Voices, and the story is much the same. The acting is definitely better in this one than in Voices though, and Matlin plays a much stronger character than Irving does. I am sure they were both breakthrough films in their time, but they seem quite dated now.

Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language - by Nora Ellen Groce

For over 200 years from the mid 1600s to the early 1900s, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts a large deaf community thrived. While other deaf people often lived in isolation, those on Martha's Vineyard not only knew many other deaf people (a quarter of the population was deaf at the peak) with whom they could communicate, they could also sign to their hearing neighbors who all also knew sign language. At the time Groce did her research in the late 1970s and early 1980s the last of the population with hereditary deafness had died out, but there were still some on the island who remembered when "everyone here spoke sign language". Through oral histories and old records Groce discovers that the deaf population was fully integrated into the life of the island including business dealings, social life, church, and politics.

One of Groce's contacts, a hearing octogenarian at the time of the interview, remembered her mother talking about a professor who came from Boston before she (the interviewee) was born. The professor wanted to know about Vineyard deaf, and her mother never understood why he was so interested in them. "'There was nothing unusual at all about them, you know' her mother would add." A few months after the interview Groce learns that the professor was, in fact,Alexander Graham Bell. She discovers his notes at the Dukes County Historical Society Library. Bell was researching whether deafness could be inherited - "a very controversial question at that time." Groce tracked down more of Bell's notes, packed away in storage, at the John Hitz Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. - Note I subsequently learned that Bell's research interest was in eugenics. 

There was one other passing mention of libraries. One contact remembered going to Tucker parties

The Methodists didn't believe in dancing, you see, so we walked around and we'd change partners andwe'd face our partners and we went right and left...They [Tucker parties] were benefits usually, benefits for the library or the church, or something.

I checked this book out from the library I work in after I started taking an online class in American Sign Language for Librarians.

Something Wicked this Way Comes - by Ray Bradbury

Earlier this month I posted about the movie Something Wicked this Way Comes and I mentioned that I had not read the book, so I needed to rectify that situation. I had the same trouble following the book as I did the movie, although I followed enough to know that there were some plot points that were changed when the story went from page to screen. However, the important thing remained. One of the main characters, Charles Holloway, is the town librarian, and he helps to save the town from evil (but isn't that what all librarians do?). The library is truly described as a magical place

Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chines, four abreast, marched on forever.

What is also clear in the book, is that Mr. Halloway met his wife in the library. As he tells it to his son, Will

I looked up from my great self-wrestling match one night when your mother came to the library for a book and got me instead. And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between.

The library also becomes is a hiding place for Will and his friend Jim. And Mr. Halloway actually uses it the old-fashioned way - to do research. He tells the two boys he knows something evil is afoot and that he is going to
"check police records on carnivals, newspaper files at the library, books, old folios, everything that might fit..." in order to come up with a plan to foil the plans of the wicked ones.

When the boys return to the library to find out the plan Will is afraid to go in, and his young mind invents some wild scenarios about what might happen

'The library' said Will 'I'm afraid of it, now' All the books he thought, perched there, hundreds of years old, peeling skin, leaning on each other like ten million vultures. Walk along the dark stacks and all the gold titles shine their eyes at you. Between old carnival, old library and his own father everything old...well...
'I know Dad's in there, but is it Dad? I mean, what if they came, changed him, made him bad, promised him something they can't give but he thinks they can, and we go in there and some day fifty years from now someone opens a book in there an you and me drop out, like two dry moth wings on the floor, Jim, someone pressed and hid us between pages, and no one ever guessed where we went-'

Ultimately the fear of being outside the library overcomes the fear of being in it.

A lot of the action takes place in the library, and some of it is scary, but ultimately the librarian understands what is happening and what needs to be done.

A story about the evil in all of us.

Read My Lips - by Debby Herbenick and Vanessa Schick

The subtitle of this is "The Complete Guide to the Vulva and Vagina." I must say it is rather complete. Readers will find chapters (among others) on arousal; sex toys; birth control; masturbation; menstruation; vaginal health; ideas for vagina and vulva arts & crafts; and information on vagina and vulva maintenance which includes my favorite topic (NOT) - pubic hair shaving. When did this become a thing? I keep seeing articles about it on my FaceBook feed always with the authors explaining their choice to shave or not, as if there is some sort of major policy debate we have to have on this issue. Shave or don't - your partner will just be happy to see you naked.

Anyway, I did learn a lot from reading this comprehensive work. One thing I learned is that viewing Playboy, and similar magazines, is where many young women will find their first images of vulvas other than their own, and these "...may misinform women and men about what's 'normal' for women in terms of their genitals. Because people want to feel normal this is important." But what about women who find images elsewhere, for instance those who "seek out anatomy textbooks in their local libraries." The authors point out that this is not the norm.

Given how private people feel about genitals (some people call them "privates"), it is less likely that people are openly seeking out these images when they have access to a plethora of vulva images on their home computer. 

 They are probably right in this regard. I should, therefore, point out that librarians are trained to use the utmost discretion when assisting people with their research, and also to respect their privacy. This is actually federal law. Unfortunately, this was the one and only mention of libraries in Herbenick and Schick's book. Sigh.

Something Wicked this Way Comes - the movie

I saw this on a list of "library movies". I was worried that it would be scary, and watched it before it got dark out. Then I found out it was a Disney flick. Made in 1983 James pointed out a couple of things that were rather Back-to-the Future-y (1985) especially with regard to time travel and lightning bolts. Neither one of us really understood what was going on in this adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel (which I have not read). However, we did ultimately get this important message from the film: the town librarian (Jason Robards) saved the day!