The Princess Trap - by Talia Hibbert

 

A twist on the fake-girlfriend trope, this romance has Ruben, a Danish Prince, convincing Cherry, an English citizen, to pretend to be his fiancée for one year. He offers to pay her an exorbitant sum of money in exchange for this service. The amount is never disclosed to the reader, but it is enough to pay for the expensive medical bills, tuition, and living expenses of Cherry's younger sister who is attending Harvard. Although they arrange a fake engagement, the sex is real, and pretty explicit. The ending is as anyone would expect.

Although Ruben is royalty he prefers living in a small house, rather than his mansion. But of course this is a fairy tale and what kind of fairy tale would Cherry be living in if their were no library in the house? Ruben offers to let her redecorate it, but Cherry apparently doesn't take him up. She does however find a bodice-ripping romance to read there, which she assumes was originally procured by Ruben's grandmother (something Ruben would rather not think about). Of course a woman reading is a rather sexy sight, so when Ruben discovers Cherry in the library reading it doesn't take long for the real bodice ripping to begin, right there amongst the books.

Unmasking AI - by Joy Buolamwini

 

Algorithms are created by humans. Humans are flawed and have biases, these flaws and biases are programmed into algorithms, perhaps not explicitly, but with consequences nonetheless.

As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Buolamwini, using an open-source face tracking library to work on a project, discovers that facial recognition programs are especially bad at recognizing black and brown faces. Her research eventually brought her to The White House, to testify before Congress, to National Television, and Netflix. And ultimately to become founder of the Algorithmic Justice League. She mentions the use of code libraries on several occasions.

She describes volunteering as an undergraduate at the Carter Center on a project to eradicate tropical diseases. Visiting the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Athens, Georgia she 

walked through the gardens near...the library [and] saw a piece of art that offered hope - a bronze statue of a child leading a blind elder using a stick they both held. Sightless Among Miracles had been donated to the center to underscore the effort to support the global control of onchocerciasis (river blindness).

Perhaps the most disheartening (for me) passage was this

After two years on the MIT campus I was finally making my way to the Hayden Library. With online access to almost all the resources I needed, I had yet to step foot into a campus library. After printing out results on archival paper that felt soft yet sturdy to the touch and hunting down last-minute typos, I felt ready to submit my master's thesis.

While I recognize that online resources have allowed us to put libraries into users' pockets, which is decidedly more convenient for all, it doesn't mean the physical library isn't important as a place. And since I'm required to be in my office most of the time, even though almost everyone is using the library remotely, I do wish more people would take advantage of the space.  

Fangirl - by Rainbow Rowell

Cath and her twin sister Wren are starting college at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, but in different dorms. Cath is less than thrilled about this arrangement and is more than a bit intimidated by her roommate Reagan. At least she still has her fanfiction to disappear into. Cath and Wren used to write Simon Snow fanfiction together, but Wren lost interest and Cath now writes on her own. 

After getting special permission to take a 300-level fiction writing class Cath meets Nick and the two become writing partners. Nick works at Love Library "(That was the actual name; thank you for your donation, Mayor Don Lathrop Love)" shelving books, although he clearly doesn't take the job seriously enough. He left a cart full of books at the end of his shift because he was doing his homework instead of shelving. When Cath points this out he assures her that "the morning girl can do it. It'll remind her that she's alive". This turns out to be a bit of foreshadowing as we discover that Nick is all to happy to take credit for work that women do.

Cath mostly holds her own in the upper-level writing class, but is taken aback by an accusation of plagiarism when she uses some of her fan fiction as a basis for one of the writing assignments. Her professor is understanding, but will not change the failing grade, or allow Cath to rewrite the assignment. I disagree that what Cath turned in was plagiarized. If she had turned in the same story and used different character names her professor would probably never have realized. Also, I turned in a similar assignment myself as a graduate student (re-wrote a scene from a novel from a different character's point of view). My professor loved it. I got an A.

Cath spends a lot of time in the library, and her full nerd-dom is clear when we discover that she has a bit of a fantasy about "being trapped in a library overnight." She even writes a Simon Snow scene that takes place between the stacks.

Cath finds love (or something like it) with Levi. One of their early bonding experiences involves Cath reading The Outsiders aloud to Levi who has trouble with reading to himself. And really who doesn't love The Outsiders? I've said it before and I'll say it again: reading aloud with another person is never a bad idea. You will always have something to talk about.