The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag - the movie

Hard to believe this one is over twenty years old. I must have seen it the first time around the time I got my first librarian job. There is a lot of playing with stereotypes here, with young children's librarian Betty Lou (Penelope Ann Miller) contrasted with the older more prim Margaret Armstrong (Marian Seldes). Betty Lou, however young and energetic is still rather mousy though, and draped in Laura Ashley, until she becomes a celebrity when she finds (and fires) a gun that was used in a murder. Her new prisonhouse friends give her a makeover before her day in court, and she suddenly has not only the attention of her detective husband, but the rest of her small town as well.

The Nature of College - by James J. Farrell

Just in time for Back to School! I read this book in preparation for the fall semester during which I will be teaching a course called Sustainability 101. Students in the class will be assigned this book along with Colin Beavan's No Impact Man (which it pains me to say doesn't mention libraries at all).

Anyway, I digress. I read this in preparation for teaching the class, but it was especially thought-provoking for me to read as I sent my own daughter off to college for the first time. Farrell's book looks at the many resources a college student uses in given day. My daughter's college helpfully provided us a list of things she would need for her dorm, and in case they forgot to include anything Target had a special section of the store labeled dorm "essentials" - things such as string lights and welcome mats. I must admit that I found it easier just to load up the cart than to critique the list (or argue with my daughter). I think I ultimately talked her out of one thing. And so before she even got to college we had amassed a bounty of  "things" for her to take with her. I have honestly decided just to bury my own head in the sand rather than calculating the environmental cost of it all.

Farrell's book mentions libraries a few times, generally as part of a list of places a student might go. They are not specifically analyzed in terms of what resources they use, or help conserve, however.

Delicious! - by Ruth Reichl

A long-locked library at a food magazine (Delicious!) provides a treasure hunt for Billie Breslin, the only employee left at the publication after its shut down. Left to field calls from subscribers who are  either taking advantage of the magazine's money-back guarantee on any recipe that doesn't satisfy, or needing to find an old recipe, Billie discovers a secret room in the unused archives. The files in the hidden space contain letters written during World War II from a young girl (Lulu Swan) to legendary chef James Beard. Billie discovers that a complicated cryptography on color-coded cards in the old wooden card catalog was developed by former librarian, Bertie. The cards contain to clues as to where more letters can be found.  I was baffled by this at first - wondering why a librarian would make finding information so difficult, but all is made clear by the end of the book. Billie also does some research at the Cleveland Public Library in hopes finding out what happened to Lulu. The libraries in the book are safe, welcoming places, as they should be.

Read-A-Romance Month: Adrian's Librarian - by Hollis Shiloh

I discovered late last week that we were in the midst of Read-A-Romance Month. I don't read much in the way of romance novels, but I also try not to be too dismissive. I also like to have a variety of genres represented on my blog. With all this in mind, I set out to find a romance with a librarian in it. I found several titles through a simple google search, but as I searched on iBooks for one I could download it turned out the first one with that qualification was a gay romance. I've included a few romance titles on this blog, but up til now haven't any same-sex romances. Time to fix that.

Adrian's librarian is Oliver (Ollie) whom Adrian rescues from his evil pimp by offering him a boondoggle - organizing his personal library. The books had been perfectly ordered, but he had the rest of his staff put them in disarray in order to provide an opportunity for the handsome lad he'd met at a masquerade ball.

The "about the author" blurb at the end of the book says that "Hollis's stories tend toward the sweet rather than the spicy." That is an accurate description of this work. While there is no doubt that the two young lovers share a bed, what they do there is left mostly to the reader's imagination. One thing that is clear is that these two enjoy reading aloud to each other, a practice I find both sweet and sexy. Adrian and Ollie are both portrayed as rather vulnerable, and there is a long, frustrating build up toward their happy ending.

Read more about same sex romances here.

In the Unlikely Event - by Judy Blume

Judy Blume did a lot a research in order to write this novel about real life events that took place in 1951-1952 when three planes crashed in Elizabeth, New Jersey over a two month period. The story is of lost lives, and dashed dreams. It is also about hope and community and moving on. Fans of Judy Blume know well that she has never forgotten what it was like to be a child, or a teenager. This book demonstrates that she also has not forgotten the thrill of first love, the rush of first sexual excitement, or the devastation of first heartbreak, or what it feels like to lose a friend.

Ms. Blume thanks five librarians by name, and three different libraries in her acknowledgements. In this work she also created characters who were book lovers, and library users. Smart Daisy Dupree loves to read and to give books as gifts. She uses the library a lot, but "the bookshop is for books [she] just has to own." Former first-grade teacher Jo Foster always has a stack of library books ready to read to her two daughters at bedtime. Their babysitter Miri Ammerman, fantasizes an alternate reality in which Jo took the girls "someplace, to the library maybe..." after a plane crashes into their house and kills one of the young girls. Miri also uses the convenient "I'm going to the library" excuse when she decides to get her hair styled and cut like Elizabeth Taylor's so as not to have her mother Rusty ask a lot of questions, or forbid her from doing it. And when Miri runs into her boyfriend with an older woman on her way home from school she wishes for a "do-over" in which she would take a different route, or maybe go to the library. Writing this I realize that it seems that Miri thinks about using the library a lot, but it is unclear whether she actually ever went. She mentions a lecture her stepsister gave at the library on "channeling your past lives" during one of her book tours, but even there we are not sure if Miri attended. We do know Miri's mother used a "penny library" (presumably a subscription library?) to check out From Here to Eternity.

Blume has created sympathetic, strong characters who also have regrets and flaws. This well- researched work was hard to put down.

Lullaby - by Chuck Palahniuk

This is one of the quirkiest, and darkest, satires I have ever read. It is the story of realtor Helen Hoover Boyle, and journalist Carl Streator. They share the tragic bond of having lost their only children to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Each has also discovered that they had read the same lullaby to their children the night before they were discovered dead. The song is found on page 27 of a book called Poems and Rhymes from Around the World. This particular lullaby is called a "culling song" and is sung to create a painless death for the sick and weak. Both Boyle and Streator have also made the connection between this book and dozens of other cases of SIDS. Concerned, as book banners so often are, that the book might fall into the wrong hands, the two go on a cross-country quest to find all copies of the book in libraries and used bookstores and remove page 27. The pair worry that others might make the connection and that a plague of words could result. What is particularly ironic is that Streator finds that he himself cannot control his urges with regards to the poem. Whenever confronted with the slightest annoyance from another human being the song plays in his head and the person falls down dead.

The commentary on the "danger" of information and its dissemination is not subtle. Carl Streator imagines a dystopian world in which the culling song has leaked out and variations created

The kind of security they have now at airports, imagine that kind of crackdown at all libraries, schools, theaters, bookstores...Anywhere information might be disseminated, you'll find armed guards.

The airwaves will be as empty as a public swimming pool during a polio scare. After that only a few government broadcasts will air, Only well-scrubbed news and music. After that, any music, books, and movies will be tested on lab animals or volunteer convicts before release to the public. 

He imagines everyone with earphones to block out any "unsafe" songs, and government approval of all information.

At least one librarian falls victim to the culling song - for refusing to "break the rules" and tell Helen and Carl who has checked out Poems and Rhymes from Around the World. We don't know much about this hero, except that he refused a bribe in order to protect the privacy of his patron.  It is too bad he had to pay with his life. Probably it's best in such circumstances to call in someone whose pay grade is more in line with taking such risks.

There are a lot of bizarre twists in this one, and a variety of unsavory characters, including a smarmy necrophiliac. Some might see this a just a rather sick story, but this librarian found it to be rather thought-provoking. When and where do we draw the line between censorship and protection? Who get's to make the decision?

Inkheart - by Cornelia Funke

In the spirit of Libriomancer and The Neverending Story the characters in this work blur the lines between fantasy and reality. And like The Seven Minutes  this is a novel about a fictitious novel with the same title.

Young Meggie, and her father Mo both have the ability to read people (and other creatures) out of books. This is hardly a gift, as it is difficult for them to control, and results in the introduction of some unsavory characters into their own world. Additionally, each being who is read into their world necessitates an exchange of one of their own (the reason Meggie does not remember her mother, who disappeared when she was young). When Dustfinger, a character who appeared on the scene at the time that Meggie's mother vanished, shows up at Mo and Meggie's house after many years Mo realizes they are in danger and attempts to hide out with a relative (Elinor, the aunt of his missing wife). Mo, Meggie, Elinor, Dustfinger and his marten (Gwin) are ultimately captured by the evil Capricorn (a.k.a. "Inkheart") and must use their cunning and exceptional reading abilities to escape.

Mo is a book mender which makes for a fair number of references to libraries as he talks about his work. Elinor is a bibliophile, and there are countless mentions of her personal library throughout. Libraries and bookstores are also the places that Capricorn sought out all remaining copies of Inkheart so that he could be assured that he had the only copy in existence, thus preventing himself from having to return to his own world.

Truly escape reading. I found this on a list of 19 Books to Read if You Loved the Harry Potter Series.