The Boys on the Boat - by Daniel James Brown

This audio book was loaned to me by a friend, who, like my husband has a passion for rowing. James and I listened to this during a series of car rides to and from our "Whaling House" (our home near the water where James' whaleboat-rowing club meets).

Joe Rantz was one of the members of the United States rowing crew who won the gold medal at Berlin Olympics in 1936. Rantz's story frames this tale, but as a dying Rantz told the author when he was interviewed, the book is not just his story. It is about "the boat...something more than just the shell or its crew...it encompasse[s] but transcend[s] both...something mysterious and almost beyond definition" (from the prologue).

Rantz's story is especially inspiring and the author skillfully spins a yarn about a young boy too often left to fend for himself who learns that in order to win the gold means he must also learn to depend on others.

All the young men on the team were hardworking and we learned a bit of backstory about each one, but the only one (besides Rantz) will get a special mention here. George "Shorty" Hunt was a renaissance man who, we learn, once worked as an "assistant librarian" among many other things.

Alternating with chapters about the team members, and logistics of rowing, was the history of what was happening in Germany prior to the Olympic games. Hitler and his megalomaniac inner circle managed to avoid a boycott of the games through a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign.

I must also give a shout out to Edward Herrmann, the reader of this audiobook. An excellent voice, with perfect cadence.

Come as You Are : The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life - by Emily Nagoski

Nagoski weaves stories of real women into the book she has written on the science of sex, and discovering pleasure. The title isn't simply a cute play on words; it is an affirmation. Over and over the author reminds us that we are all "made of the same parts, just organized in different ways." What may seem normal for some (or many) may not be right for others, and there is not necessarily a need to change in order to conform. People have sexual breaks and accelerators; these are different for everyone. These breaks and accelerators can be recognized, and explored, which may in turn increase sexual pleasure. Nogoski uses herself and her identical twin to explain how different people, even those with the same DNA and "grew up in the same house, went to the same schools, watched the same TV shows, and read many of the same books", can end up with "very different maps" in their heads. Nogoski's image of woman as an Ideal Sexual Being came from "women's magazines, porn, and romance novels. Her sister's image, however, was that of woman as "Moral" model - smart girls weren't interested in sex. Both she and her sister were surprised about what they learned about themselves when they started having sex.

Nagoski uses the term "mental library" twice to explain how she organizes the stories women tell her in her brain. She also tells one story in which a client "Laurie" frustrated and feeling pressure because she didn't want sex as often as her husband did sent her husband and her son out of the house "to the library so that she could have the luxury of the house to herself..." Her time alone to reflect allowed to to discover, almost by accident, that feeling pleasure wasn't selfish, and she could allow herself that feeling during sex.

Libraries really do change lives.

Back to the Future Part II - the movie

Like so many others yesterday I watched Back to the Future Part II - it was Back to the Future Day, after all. In BttF2 our heroes Doc Brown and Marty McFly travel across six decades. Beginning on October 26, 1985, then on to October 21, 2015, and back to 1985, and finally backwards in time to November 12, 1955. The most important thing that happens in any of this is that Doc Brown uses the Public Library (in 1985) and uses the newspaper archive there to discover that Marty's father had been murdered 12 years prior, and that he (Brown) had been committed to a psychiatric hospital (questions still remain about why that was front page news). Sadly, I must also say that it appears that Brown stole the bound periodicals in order to show them to Marty (perhaps he checked them out, but generally libraries don't circulate archival newspaper), and it is clear that Marty tore the page with his father's story out of the book! Whatever good reason the Doc and Marty think they had for stealing and defacing public property, this behavior cannot be condoned.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (for Banned Books Week)

I posted about the first Harry Potter book four years ago for Banned Books Week. Since then I have re-read one book each year, and posted in honor of Harry's birthday on July 31. I missed his birthday this year, but book five seems more appropriate for Banned Books Week, as it features a case of censorship.

By Order of

The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts

Any student found to be in possession of the magazine The Quibbler will be expelled.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven. 

Signed:

Dolores Jane Umbridge

High Inquisitor

Of course all the students then set out to read the issue of The Quibbler that contained the interview with Harry Potter.

Meanwhile Professor Umbridge was stalking the school, stopping students at random and demanding that they turn out their pockets. Harry knew she was looking for copies of The Quibbler, but the students were several steps ahead of her. The pages carrying Harry's interview had been bewitched to resemble extracts from textbooks if anyone but themselves read it, or else wiped magically blank until they wanted to peruse it again. Soon it seemed that every person in the school had read it.

In a bit of meta-censorship, Educational Decree number 26 banned teachers from "giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subjects they are paid to teach" thus preventing them from mentioning the interview.

but they found ways to express their feelings about it all the same. Professor Sprout awarded Gryffindor twenty points when Harry passed her a watering can; a beaming Professor Flitwick pressed a box of squeaking sugar mice on him at the end of Charms, said "Shh!" and hurried away; and Professor Trelawney...announced to a startled class...that Harry was not going to to suffer an early death after all, but would live to a ripe old age, become Minister of Magic, and have twelve children.

As is true with the previous four Potter books, our heroes find themselves in the library quite often doing research and finishing homework. Nasty librarian Madam Pince makes two appearances in this volume, both times being her negative self.

Harry found Ron and Hermione in the library, where they were working on Umbridge's most recent ream of homework. Other students, nearly all of them fifth years, sat at lamp-lit tables nearby, noses close to books, quills scratching feverishly...the only other sound was the slight squeaking on one of Madam Pince's shoes as the librarian prowled the aisles menacingly, breaking down the necks of those touching her precious books.

Later, when Ginny brings a chocolate Easter egg, sent by Mrs. Weasley to Harry, Madam Pince chases them out of the library "her shriveled face contorted with rage...And whipping out her wand...caused Harry's books, bag, and ink bottle to chase him and Ginny from the library, whacking them repeatedly over the head as they ran."

Most libraries have given up on the "no eating" policy. But I guess there's no telling what trouble a bewitched Fizzing Whizbee might wreak in a book of spells.

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.