Holly & Ivy (the movie)

Melody (Janel Parrish), a young, eager, recent library school graduate moves to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin and starts haunting the Bridgewater Branch of the public library hoping to get a job. She keeps hopping around with ideas for the endlessly patient children's librarian (Anne Sward) even though it has been explained to her, repeatedly, that there is no funding for any new hires. Meanwhile, she befriends her neighbor Nina (Marisol Nichols) and Nina's daughters (Holly and Ivy). Of course, in true Hallmark Christmas movie fashion, there is also a dreamy new beau, Adam (Jeremy Jordan). As the movie takes place during the Christmas season all of the following take place over a few weeks: we learn that Nina is dying and has no family who will be able to care for her daughters when she is gone; Melody is a foster child who had only herself to rely on; Melody bought a fixer-upper house that needs serious renovation; Adam is both a building contractor (what his parents want) and a furniture builder (his true passion). There are a lot of deadlines that stretch credulity, and of course everything comes together just in time for the holidays. 

My father-in-law recommended this movie for its librarian-theme, its Wisconsin setting, as well as its Bridgewater connection. 

Everything All at Once - by Katrina Leno

About to graduate from high school Lottie is mourning the death of her favorite aunt (Helen) a famous children's book author. Aunt Helen's books are about a pair of immortal siblings (Alvin and Margo Hatter) and are wildly popular among people of all ages. There are of course those who do not like her books "the Anti-Hatters [who] burn the books on YouTube...They say the idea of immortality is a sin against God".

Aunt Helen donated half of her estate to "various charities and libraries of her choosing". She clearly understands the importance of libraries to authors. Some authors seem to think that libraries are somehow stealing royalites from them.

Aunt Helen also had owned the "most expansive private library" of anyone Lottie knew. Helen was even "featured on the front page of Libraries International twelve separate times". Lottie is emphatic in her instance that "Libraries International was an actual magazine". I, however, could find no evidence that such a magazine exists.

We don't actually see much of Lottie using the library although she does meet her friend Sam at one. Sam travels a lot and tells her that he gets a library card wherever he goes "that's important" he tells her.

 

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For - by Alison Bechdel

Baltimore County Public Library's #BWellRead challenge for September 2018 was to "read a book you've always meant to read". I wasn't sure how to interpret "always" but I looked back on the list I've been keeping since about the start of this century and decided that a book that's been waiting ten years to be read qualified.

I made several attempts to purchase this at an independent bookstore, which it turns out would have been appropriate since much of the action takes place in such a store. Ultimately, however, I caved and ended up getting this from Amazon. I do offer myself some absolution though as I bought something at each of the independent shops I visited.

Although this reads as a graphic novel it is, in fact, a collection of the Dykes to Watch Out For comic strips. The book includes strips originally published between 1987-2008. While each panel features an independent episode, it reads as a soap opera with characters falling in and out of love, changing careers, becoming parents, and negotiating the evolving political landscape. I had not thought about some of the old political issues that come up in this work for a long time, and likewise was reminded how long some of the stalwarts in Washington have been around making trouble. It was sort of like visiting an old "frenemy".

Despite the fact that the characters in this work are quite well read, it was not until about the midway point of this 390-page book that I found any mention of libraries at all, and it was in a fantasy sequence. Each of three roommates (Ginger, Lois, and Sparrow) imagines what it would be like to live without the other two. Ginger's daydream involves a well organized bookshelf  "in Library of Congress order". I then had to read another 80-ish  pages before a library comes into play again, this time for real. Mo and her paramour Sydney do it "by the book" (so to speak) right there in the HQ 70s in the University Library (the range that includes books on lesbianism). It is no doubt the excitement of this tryst that prompts Mo to apply to library school, something we discover on the very next page! It is at this point that the libraries just keep coming as we follow Mo through her acceptance, taking classes, graduation, and getting her first job - in a post PATRIOT act world.

I am posting this one in honor of National Coming Out Day.

Everything Matters! - by Ron Currie, Jr.

What would you do if you knew the exact date and time the world would come to an end? Who would you tell? When? Why? and How? These are the questions that trouble Junior Thibodeau, who has known since before he was born that a comet would hit the earth during his 37th year and obliterate all life. His knowledge of this haunts him and leads to problems with drug abuse and alienates him from his family and his girlfriend. The chapters are told in the first person from alternating perspectives of Junior, his family members and other acquaintances, with occasional interruptions of the omniscient "voice" that Junior hears telling him things about the past, present and future, sometimes simply providing information, other times offering advice that he sometimes takes and sometimes doesn't.

Junior uses the library several times on his way to doomsday. He does research on how to cure his father's lung cancer and takes his young daughter Ruby to the public library where she learns about the fragility of the environment and has her own existential crisis. Ruby knows nothing about how the world will end. Does it matter?

In addition to the library related passages, I marked another of particular interest to me. Junior's father is advised to go to Brockton Hospital for cancer treatment. This is intriguing not just in the fact that someone living in Maine would be sent not to Boston for world-class cancer care, but to a little-known city just south of it (and just to the north of Bridgewater, where I live). Brockton is a real place, it is, in fact, the city where my daughter was born. And Brockton Hospital is a place that I have received minor surgery (although it is not where I delivered my daughter). I don't think I've ever read a novel that mentioned Brockton before. It was serendipity that I picked out this book to read from my local library. I read the jacket flap and liked that it appeared to have a surreal quality. There was no indication that it might have a bit of local interest.

A story of supernatural forces, time travel, parallel universes, infinity, conspiracies, choices, and second chances.

2030 - by Albert Brooks

After a rather dry spell of reading four books in a row without libraries, I was beginning to think that I would not be blogging about this one either, but about 50 pages before the end of this 374 page work I came upon the one and only mention of a library. And really it was just the idea of a library. As first-lady Betsy Bernstein  prepares to make her husband the first president to become divorced while in office, advisor John Van Dyke talks to her about her decision to leave. Will she stay through this term? "...eighteen months even living separately, is going to be difficult. I offer no guarantees" she answers. Van Dyke realizes she is pretty serious but can do "nothing more than make a joke. 'So fund-raising for his library is out of the question?'"

So, not much of a library book, but I do believe it is the first time I've blogged about a presidential library.

The story itself was pretty good. It takes place in the summer of the year 2030, a world in which cancer and obesity have been virtually eradicated, allowing people to live longer than ever. The "olds" (as the younger generation refers to those over 70) have become the new scapegoats, with the young people believing they are sucking all of the resources from them. It is also the year when "the big one" finally hits Los Angeles. The destruction and devastation of the 9.1 earthquake are so severe that not only are there not enough government resources to rebuild, the United States is unable to borrow the trillions of dollars needed from other countries. This isn't so much of a dystopian novel, though. More of a satire.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - by Rebecca Skloot

I've been intrigued by this title for several years. So, recently when two different friends of mine suggested that it be would be a good choice for Bridgewater's One Book One Community (OBOC) reading program several of us on the OBOC steering committee decided to read it. It does look like an excellent choice for a community-wide read with a lot of issues for discussion including race, class, medical ethics, legal ethics, and science vs. religion.

Author Rebecca Skloot, sets out to find out about the real person behind the HeLa cell line. In 1951 cancer cells were taken from Henrietta Lacks who was being treated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland (one of the few places that offered treatment to African American patients at the time). Lacks' cells turned out to have an incredible rate of reproduction and were the first cells that were able to be kept alive in a culture. Still reproducing today they have been used in countless medical, and other scientific experiments. Lacks' family did not find out about the cells until 25 years later. And virtually none of the people doing research with Lacks' cells knew anything about the woman they came from (most thought her name was Helen Lane). In Skloot's quest to find out about the mother of five who died of cervical cancer at age 31 she consulted doctors and researchers; traveled to Lacks' family home in Clover, Virginia; and interviewed family members, much of the time accompanied Lacks' daughter Deborah, who knew almost as little about her mother as Skloot did.

Henrietta Lacks moved from her hometown of Clover to Turner Station, a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland for her husband to take a job at Bethlehem Steel. So, it is at the Turner Station Branch of the Baltimore County Public Library that Skloot meets the librarian who shows her a VHS tape of the BBC program The Way of All Flesh.

At the time of Lacks' death there were no laws or ethical codes that required doctors to ask permission from patients to take living tissue. There were laws requiring permission of the family before removal of tissue from dead bodies. Controversy remains as to when the cells were removed, and whether consent was granted.

This work is completely readable and accessible, even for those of us who have not had a science class since tenth grade biology.

More information
http://rebeccaskloot.com/
http://henriettalacksfoundation.org/
Recent article from the New York Times tells of the Lacks family finally being given a place at the table.
Remembering Henrietta Lacks
The Supreme Court ruled in June that naturally occurring genes could not be patented, although synthetic ones can be.