Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books - by Kirsten Miller

Lula Dean didn't intend for the Little Library she put in her front yard to be filled with books she had requested be removed from the school and public libraries, but some stealthy young folks replaced her "clean" books with the forbidden ones, hiding them with the covers of the books she originally had in her collection. Suddenly kids know about periods, and women know about witchcraft, and some people even want to remove the statue of a slave owner from the town square. 

Burning books is offered as a solution for those works that some don't want others to read. This is the case for people on the left and the right. Lula Dean and the Concerned Parents Committee (CPC) suggest this for the books they want "reconsidered". Likewise Delvin Crump decides to burn Our Confederate Heroes when he finds it in Lula Dean's library. 

Not once in his life had Delvin Crump ever contemplated burning a book. When he'd joined the army, he had taken an oath to defend the Constitution which gave all Americans the right to free speech, including the backward-ass bastard who'd written Our Confederate Heroes. But it was time to take this piece of shit out of circulation. 

Delvin has his grill fired up when he discovers that Toni Morrison's Beloved is really inside the book cover.

Don't burn books you don't like. You cannot determine for other people what they can read. People have the right to read what books they want, and have their own reasons for reading them. 

This book has 35 chapters, each named for a book. Additionally, a number of books are mentioned in the work but do not have chapters named for them. In her author's note Miller tells the readers that some of the book titles she uses are real, and others are fictitious. I did recognize many of the book titles. Some, such as: Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret; The Handmaid's Tale; and Fifty Shades of Grey have their own posts on this blog. I was particularly interested to find How the Word is Passed among those titles used. It is a book I am currently listening to on Audible.

The town librarian Mara Ocumma is a true defender of privacy and of free speech. When Melody Sykes, one of the members of the CPC shows up at the library looking a book of poison mushrooms, Ocumma knows exactly why. Melody's nasty husband Randy is certainly worthy of a murder fantasy. However unlikeable Melody is, though, she still is entitled to good information and privacy, and Ocumma ensures she gets both.

A fun satire. 
 

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.  

Lailah's Lunchbox: A Ramadan Story - by Reem Faruqi

 

In honor of Ramadan which starts today, and National Library Week, which starts tomorrow, I read Lailah's Lunchbox. In this beautifully illustrated book young Lailah is excited to be fasting for the month of Ramadan for the first time. She is worried, though, that her classmates and teachers in Peachtree, Georgia won't understand why she isn't joining them at lunch. She decides to go to the library during her lunch period where she is greeted by an understanding librarian, Mrs. Carman, who is happy to share the time with her, and to help her gather her thoughts so she can best explain why she is fasting, and why Ramadan is a special time.

Loves, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Beginnings - by Lydia Sherrer

Gotta love a magical librarian.

Lily Singer only had a vague sense that she was different growing up in Alabama with her mother, step-father, and step-siblings. She knew little about her birth father and her mother was evasive about him. Feeling like an outsider, she left home as soon as she could and ultimately became a librarian landing a job in the Archives at the Agnes Scott College McCain Library. The description of her office was enough to make me question the verisimilitude of the story, although the College and library are indeed real places.

Her office was a spacious room on the first floor, with a high ceiling and expansive windows. Tall bookshelves covered most of the other three walls, and a large, mahogany desk dominated the center of the room...The desk's dark wood surface was polished to a shine...

Also hard to believe is that not only has twenty-five year old Lily landed the prestigious position of Administrative Coordinator/Archives Manager, she did so without ever earning an advanced degree. While she has "four-years undergraduate work-study in the stacks" as well as a "BA in history and a minor in classics", generally such a position in an academic library in the 21st century would require, at the very least, a Master's of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree. In Lily's case it looks like nepotism of the wizarding sort played a large part in her procuring the position.

Of course, Lily's love of books, organized nature, and library experience weren't the only reasons behind Madam Barrington's choice. The real reason was she'd needed someone to to take over as curator of the "Basement"- a secret archive beneath the McCain Library containing a private collection of occult books on magic, wizardry, and arcane science. Being a wizard herself, Madam Barrington had recognized Lily's innate ability soon after she'd begun her freshman year. 

This book contains two stories (or "episodes"). In each we find Lily using both her wisdom and her wizardry to solve a magical problem.

Cavedweller - by Dorothy Allison

When 10-year-old Cissy Byrd's father dies her mother, Delia, packs up Cissy in her Datsun  and drives from their home in southern California to Cayro, Georgia. Cissy loves to read, which is a good thing because it is one of the few things that helps to keep her from going crazy as she meets her half-sisters for the first time, and watches as her mother cares for their dying father, a man who once abused Delia. Cissy reads a lot and  finds reading material from a variety of sources including

•  "pilfering" paperback romances from the mean-spirited twin daughters of her mother's friend M.T. and trading them in for science fiction at Crane's (a downtown book exchange)
• the public library (natch)
• borrowing from Nolan, the young man who is lovesick for her sister Dede, and who "meticulously" sorts and shelves his collection

Nolan also introduces Cissy to spelunking, which she discovers she loves perhaps more than reading. The book's most poetic (and sensuous) mention of libraries (which had little to do with books or reading) comes in a description of Cissy's dream about flowstone "the slowly moving rock beneath the dirt" that "comes in shades from pure white to calcium yellow to mottled red"

In her dreams flowstone was not hard but thick and soft as stale meringue. That white paste found in grade school libraries, dense and cloying and slowly stiffening against the skin, that was the flowstone of Cissy's dreams. She lay back into it and it took on the shape of her body, the warmth of her skin. It settled beneath her, gently crept between her fingers and toes, and rose to cradle her hips. Compressed, Viscous. Alive. Growing slowly, but growing. Flowstone made a white noise in Cissy's head, intimate and safe. She waited for it to wrap her around, slowly encase her body, and by that motion season her soul.

Like Cissy I like reading, too,  of course, but I do not share her interest in caving. I tried exploring a cave once and I am really not interested in doing it again. I will, however, occasionally find my way to a cavern tour, the kind in which there are perky guides, lots of colorful lights and other gimmicks, and no belly slithering.

Pam and James crawl out of Breathing cave Bath County, Va. c 1986

Becoming Odyssa - by Jennifer Pharr Davis

After graduating from college Jennifer Pharr Davis sets out to hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Her Odyssey prompts her to take the trail name "Odyessa" as she sets out on a journey of self discovery. Davis' writing is honest and funny and demonstrates a true love affair with the trail. Like the other books I've read about the "AT" (A Walk in the Woods; The Things you Find on the Appalachian Trail) I read this as part of my town's One Book One Community program. And while all of these books were enjoyable, and inspiring each in its own way, none have prompted me to want to dust off my old backpack and set out on the hike myself.

The bar for inclusion on this blog is simply that a library be mentioned, and Davis almost didn't make the cut. However, in a break from the trail to visit with family in Connecticut she visits the Yale University library and tells the tale of seeing "two volumes of the Gutenberg Bible at the Beinecke Rare Collections Library.

I look forward to hearing Ms. Davis speak about her experiences when she visits Bridgewater in May.

The author's middle name serves as her aptronynm as the distance as the Appalachian Trail is over 2100 miles long. It is also the name of a town I once lived in.

The Things You Find on the Appalachian Trail: A Memoir of Discovery, Endurance and a Lazy Dog - by Kevin Runolfson

Bridgewater, Massachusetts' One Book One Community selection for spring 2014 is Bill Bryson's memoir of an ill-fated attempt to hike the entire Appalachian Trial.  A Walk in the Woods is a book which I found hysterically funny. There was some discussion on the One Book Steering Committee, though, about whether some might not enjoy Bryson's particular brand of humor the way that I do, and that perhaps we should suggest some alternative selections. Runolfson's book looks like it is clearly in the running. I think it will have wide appeal with a variety of populations, especially since the author's faithful dog, Rufus plays such an endearing role in the work.

Hiking the entire trail from Georgia to Maine between March and October 2001 in an effort to recover from a bad divorce Runolfson learns much about himself, and the kindness of strangers, as he also finds love on the trail.

Of course, I was thrilled to read that he stopped at several libraries during his six-month quest. He specifically mentions this for the first time as he walks through the Virginia portion of the trail. He first mentions one small library in Glasgow, which I am not sure he actually stopped in, but he is clearly happy to find a "huge library two blocks from the campsite" in Waynesboro where he can access e-mail. He also uses the public library near the end of the New York portion of the trail to use a pay phone (I wonder if those are still functional along the AT?) and to "waste the rest of the day reading". Although normally I would take issue with the using the verb "waste" in conjunction with reading and spending time in a library, I'm going to let this one slide, he did after all, have a long journey with a bit of a deadline. He also mentions visiting the library in Rutland, Vermont.

Public libraries are important institutions that serve many constituencies. It is good to know that a visitor to a town can use the public library to read, check e-mail, use the rest room, refill their water bottle, use a pay phone, or simply take a break. Supporting the library in your own town is the ultimate act of kindness to strangers. When you use the library in another town you are the beneficiary of the kindness of others. This is how a civil society functions.

ttfn - by Lauren Myracle

In my research on censorship I have read a lot about Lauren Myracle, but had not actually read any of her books before. She is often compared to Judy Blume, I think as much for the fact that putting her name on a book will almost guarantee a challenge, as much as for her ability to speak so well to the generation she writes for, and about.


I must admit that I had a bit of trouble reading this, as the book is written entirely in text messages. My late-baby-boomer self was distracted by the shorthand, and creative spellings. The messages are between three high school friends Zoe (a.k.a zoegirl); Maddie (a.k.a madmaddie); and Angela (a.ka. Snow Angel). This book, along with others in its series, is among the top ten most challenged books of the new millenium. Reasons cited include references to oral sex, sexual experimentation, drug experimentation, and nudity - top it all off with a runaway teen and you've got yourself a bestselling book that's guaranteed to be challenged by parents all over the country! I have to say that none of this bothered me so much, though, as the fact that these girls were hardly ever at the library, and when they were there, they were NEVER looking for books or doing research. In two of the three cases where libraries are mentioned in this work, the girls specifically say they are in the school media center in order to IM each other (and here I have to admit that I almost missed these library references because of the use of the term "media center" instead of library). The other use our heroines come up with for libraries is for finding an electrical outlet to facilitate hair styling! Ah, well, at least they weren't using the library for their sexual hook ups or drug dealing.