Too Much and Never Enough - by Mary Trump

Beyond a "tell all" the forty-fifth president's niece provides a deep insider's knowledge of the Trump family through a psychological lens in this bestselling book. Not surprisingly, there was no mention of the young Trump family heading to the public library for story hour, in fact the only library mentioned is the one in "the House" (the residence where Donald and his four siblings grew up in Queens, New York). I probably wouldn't have bothered at all to create a blog about this except that the description of said library is so telling. About halfway through the book Mary provides this tidbit

When the family was together, we spent most of our time in the library, a room without books (emphasis mine) until Donald's ghostwritten The Art of the Deal was published in 1987. The bookshelves were used instead to display wedding photos and portraits.

Well there you have it. A whole room that could have been dedicated to books but wasn't. I must say, I'm not surprised.

Dude, Where's My Country - by Michael Moore

I picked this book up at a used book sale a few years ago and it was sitting on my to-be-read shelf (along with so many others) until the pandemic and consequent stay-at-home orders had me finally taking a look at some of these neglected works.

Moore's now 17-year-old book written in the aftermath of 9/11 when Bush (43) was president harkens back to a kinder, gentler sort of evil - a time when we could not have imagined living in a this dystopian landscape headed by a complete incompetent. Moore pulls no punches as he points to specific examples of President Bush's poor leadership, both unintentional and willful, following the terrorist attacks in 2001. 

He begins by describing the problems he had in distributing his previous book Stupid White Men in the wake of the crisis

The first 50,000 copies...came off the printing press the day before 9/11, but when tragedy struck the next morning, the trucks that would carry them to the nation's bookstores never left the loading dock. The publisher then held the books hostage for five long months-not simply out of good taste and respect (which I might have been able to understand), but out of a desire to censor me and the things I wanted to say. They insisted I rewrite up to 50 percent of the book and that I remove sections that they found offensive to our leader, Mr. Bush.

Facing the potential of having the books "pulped" if he did not acquiesce, it was a librarian, Ann Sparanese, who came to the rescue. Without benefit of Facebook (which did not exist at the time) Sparanese learned of the impending censorship and mobilized all the other librarians on her e-mail list to contact Regan books. 

Fearing there would soon be a crazed mob of wild librarians storming down Fifth Avenue and surrounding the HarperCollins building...the News Corp surrendered. They dumped my book in some bookstores with no advertising, no reviews, and the offer of a three-city tour...In other words, the book was sent to the gallows for a quick painless death...within hours after the book's release, it went to number one on Amazon-and within five days it had gone to its ninth printing.

There is, not surprisingly, a lot about the USA PATRIOT Act here, and how it allows the government to access otherwise confidential information, especially where library records are concerned. Likewise Moore makes clear throughout that American citizens like and use their libraries and want the government to support them.

When I start reading a book I am always glad to find the first mention of libraries, and in this case I believed it to be in the Introduction (so early in the work the pages are numbered in lower case roman numerals). However, when I opened the book again to write this post I found that the real first time is actually even earlier than that, on the page before the title page (a place one does not usually find any writing). It contains this bit of satire

 

Part of Our Lives: A People's History of the American Public Library - by Wayne A. Wiegand

Wayne Wiegand was one of the first people I remember learning about in library school in the early 1990s. He was like the E.F. Hutton of libraryland, whatever he said was gospel. When I took a course on Scholarly Communication and we learned about how the peer-review process worked, it was also explained to us that there were certain people who would always get their works published, Wiegand being one of them.

Predictions of the demise of the public library are common in the twenty-first century. I've certainly heard them myself. After all, everyone can access whatever they want from their own home computer, right? People who work in libraries can tell you that libraries are still used, and loved, by the many people who frequent them. They are safe havens after school for students, places for those who do not have internet access at home to research and job search, and according to this New York Times article, the trendy hot spot for the under-five set (for story time). I expect libraries will be around for a while yet. They do however, evolve, and, as always, librarians will be at the forefront of the changes. Just as libraries 100 years ago sponsored cooking, sewing, and English language classes when the need became evident, libraries today have started loaning out tools, gardening supplies, cake pans, and seeds in response to demands.

In reading this book I was especially interested to find out about how librarians' own views of their profession and duties have transformed. Whereas today we librarians largely see our roles as connecting people with whatever information they want, many of our ancestors saw themselves more as gatekeepers. When the Boston Public Library opened in the mid 1800s it had rules in place to "protect ladies' delicate sensibilities...to ensure that none got questionable materials" And for a very long time librarians put a lot of pressure on themselves to make sure their patrons read "good" books, by which they meant non-fiction. It seems that there was quite a bit of hand-wringing over the fact that most people wanted to read fiction. Some libraries considered not stocking any, others required that patrons who wanted a fiction book, also had to check out a non-fiction work. Once librarians conceded to keeping fiction, they then clashed with their patrons about what was considered "trashy". The people wanted series fiction. Librarians saw this as frivolous. From Horatio Alger, to Nancy Drew, to the Sweet Valley High series the same debates have played out for over 100 years.

Questions about censorship, and what constitutes it, have been a perpetual theme in libraries. Are librarians guilty of censorship when they select certain works over others? Is it ever okay to remove a controversial work from the collection? Who gets to decide? Libraries may reflect their own community standards, but often librarians are helping to create those standards. During World War I patrons were likely to find books about Germany (or written in the German language) had "disappeared" from their local library shelves. By World War II, however, librarians were more actively fighting censorship. It was just before the United States' involvement  in the war that the Library Bill of Rights was adopted and waiting lists grew for library copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf.

One new thing I learned about in this book was the word "Inferno" used as a place that libraries designate to "sequester certain books" which must then be specially requested. Librarians are then put in the place of deciding whether or not the requester should be able to have the book. I have been aware that many libraries have such policies, I did not know that there was a special word for it.

While librarians today are sometimes characterized as "hysterical" liberals our profession has not always shown itself to be as actively politically as might now be expected. I was surprised to learn that the American Library Association took no stance on desegregation of libraries in the south during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Throughout the book, though, what I saw was that "the more things change, the more they stay the same". Librarians used the same excuses for refusing to purchase Valley of the Dolls in 1967 as they did in 2014 for not buying 50 Shades of Gray: it wasn't the content they objected to, but rather that the books were poorly written. This is really hogwash. No librarian reads all the books they purchase. All libraries have poorly written works in them. When reading about Madonna's 1992 book Sex ("largely a book of nude photos") I realized that binding the book with cheap spiral was probably the biggest favor the pop icon could have done for librarians. They could refuse to purchase the book based on the fact that it was poorly bound, and would not hold up to wide circulation. Just the kind of thing that was probably already part of the many libraries' collection development policies. A search of WorldCat indicates that today there are only 215 libraries in the country that own a copy. I seem to remember that when I worked at a public library in Texas one of the nearby libraries owned a copy, but it was in the "Inferno". I do recall, though, that at least we librarians got to make a lot of jokes at the time about whether or not we should have Sex in the library.

People still "cover up" Mickey's naked body in Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen (I discovered shorts pasted on the otherwise bare protagonist in my own (academic) library's copy of the book. Reading about people listening around a radio at the New York Public Library to hear the news that Pearl Harbor had just been attacked in 1941was reminiscent of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 when the public library I worked in set up a television set in a meeting room so people could follow the news. We did the same thing when the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced.   Just as in the 1960s people of color, and LGBT individuals, struggle to find books that represent their own experiences; and libraries that serve largely African American populations find themselves with fewer resources that those that serve affluent white communities. And yet, despite all the naysayers and budget cuts, people still love their libraries and  librarians still do change lives.

2016: A Novel of America and the World - by Marjory Maxwell Donn

I found this work while I was sorting my late father's things. It was inscribed by the author, with thanks for the help my father had provided. His name also appeared on the acknowledgments page which indicated that he and the author had been members of the same writer's group. All of this, in addition to the fact that the author's (middle) name is the same as the name of the library in which I work caused me to immediately move this to the top of my reading list.

This book was published in 2008, so the future Donn envisioned was not far away, even when she wrote it. Although some of what is written is grim, it is not a dystopian novel, and ends on a hopeful note, even as we see that there is still plenty of work still to be done (with regards to climate change, Middle-East Peace, a safe and sustainable food supply, and political corruption). The story follows an international cast of characters from Greece, to South Africa, to Israel, and to the United States. Each is confronting both political and personal crises and their lives intersect in a number of ways. There are twelve chapters, each covering one month of the year, and each with its own Discussion Guide so that book groups can read and discuss the book in smaller chunks.

There are several places where the libraries play a role in this work. One young Palestinian, Ahmad, uses his university library to get away from the noise of his overpopulated home. He also briefly considers using the university library as a safe place to hide from some of his denizens who have attacked him and chased him into Israeli territory. His subsequent arrest prevents him from following through on the plan, however.

Ahmad is not the only character who finds himself in prison. Ahmad is released thanks to the help of his American-Jewish friend Monty Greenberg. Monty then finds himself in the federal penitentiary for airing some opinions in his monthly business column that are unpopular with the government. He finds solace in keeping a journal, and also visiting the prison library where he researches Eastern philosophies.

Esther Perlman, wife of Rabbi Avrim, is a minor character in the book. We don't know much about her outside of her family life, except for the very important fact that she is a librarian. It is evident that this is meaningful work both for her, and her husband. When Avrim loses his job and needs to look for a new congregation. He accepts "the offer of a congregation in Haifa, a big enough city that Esther was sure she could find a library job."

Bonus!
I usually don't read discussion guides, but I made an exception in this case, and was delighted to see that the author gives props to librarians under her "General Suggestions" heading

We [Donn had a partner for writing the discussion guide] have provided Web addresses for more information on the issues raised, and, in some cases, have listed books as well. Discussion leaders who do not have personal computers can look up information on the Web at their local library. Librarians have the training to help people find information, whether through books or on the Web.

Additional Bonus!
While this was not the first book I read written by a fellow Unitarian Universalist (UU) (see my post for Walden), I do believe it may be the first with a UU character. While there are many characters in the book, the action is centralized around one: Martha Greenberg (wife of Monty) who we learn at the end is neither Jewish, nor Christian, nor Muslim, but rather "...something like Unitary Universe?" Indeed, the Greenbergs are UUs who gives thanks before meals in much the same way my family does by thinking

about all the people who worked so that we could have this great dinner...especially the farm workers who planted the potatoes and then dug them out of the ground, the truck drivers who carried them and the people in our stores who sold them to us.

So happy to have had a chance to read this.

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 Feminine Mystique - by Betty Friedan

During World War II millions of American women went to work in factories at jobs left by men who were fighting overseas. Spurred on by a government campaign that included Rosie the Riveter, these women also became de facto heads of household and were responsible for running the household finances. When the war ended women were not only forced out of these jobs (again, by government campaign) so that men could have them, they were also discouraged from completing their educations, so that they could instead marry young and become "housewives". Aided and abetted by women's magazines, and even the curriculum in women's colleges, the myth of the "feminine mystique" gave the post-war generation of women the message that they could best find fulfillment as wives, mothers, and housekeepers. The messages and images from the 1950s put men in the role of protectors and breadwinners, while women were told they didn't need an education, career, or even a job (Rosie the Riveter not withstanding). Having these things would not only prevent them from fully developing as women, it would also undermine their husbands' roles. In reality, of course, the women's development was stunted, and they were left to wonder what was missing from their lives.

Earlier this year the publishing and library magazines that routinely come across my desk featured articles that reflected on the 50 years since the publishing of Friedan's feminist manifesto. (A 50th- anniversary edition has been published, but I read a 10th-anniversary edition). I had heard about this classic work, and remember selling copies of it back in my college days working in a bookstore, but I had never read it. It seemed the time was right. I could not have imagined how right it was. I started writing this post even before I finished the first chapter. By the time I got to the third chapter my head was spinning. There is just so much to say about this book. As the writer of this New York Times article states some of the attitudes reflected in the work "remain unchanged". Here I point to several recent news stories:

Facebook recently lit up with protests when Swiffer co-opted the famous World War II "Rosie the Riveter" icon to sell a cleaning product. 

                     

Swiffer did respond to protests by removing the image from its advertising.

A recent report from the University of Chicago revealed that in 40% of households women are the primary breadwinners. In many cases this is because there is no man present, nevertheless, four commentators from FoxNews have a meltdown over this news.' It is against nature'. 'It will destroy the American family'. The fear that the men's role as protector will be undermined is too evident. This shows little change from Friedan's statement 50 years before that "[a]t every step of the way feminists had to fight the conception that they were violating the God-given nature of women". Friedan also quotes from the book Modern Woman: The Lost Sex which claimed that "careers and higher education were leading to the 'masculization of women with enormously dangerous consequences to the home...'"

To follow up on this vitriol, in June  a high school commencement speaker in Indiana told graduating young women to embrace their roles as wives and mothers. "We don't need more women CEOs" he says in clear response to the popularity of Sheryl Sandberg's recent bestseller Lean In (which I just started reading, if she mentions libraries you'll find out here!).

Short stories in women's magazines the 1950s & 1960s contained messages that women should be wondering why straying husbands were looking elsewhere. What could a woman do that might bring her husband back? Change her hair color? Lose some weight? Keep the house cleaner? It is her job to figure out why he is cheating, and make the necessary changes to herself! so that he'll come back. And so also says Pat Robertson, 2013.

Articles in women's magazines then (as now) featured actress not in their roles as successful career women, but as wives and mothers. (And, by the way, can we please stop using the term "baby bump"? And what's with the arrow always pointing to a celebrity's stomach, as if we wouldn't know which part of a woman's body to look at for evidence that she's pregnant!?)

Janet Maslin, the author of the aforementioned NYT article closes by saying "I have a photograph of myself with Betty Friedan. We were together on a radio show. I was there because I was a critic for The Times and I arrived at The Times because of opportunities her book created. I wish I had known how much I owed her." This statement I contrast to conservative political commentator Monica Crowley's remarks in the fabulous PBS series "Makers". Twice in her short segment Crowley refers to feminists as "so called" feminists, as if that is not what they really were (or that perhaps we no longer exist), and clearly has no recognition that she would be never have gotten where she is without benefiting from their struggle. I highly recommend watching the Makers series, BTW. All three episodes can be viewed by clicking on the link above.

But what does Friedan say about libraries?
Yes, Betty Friedan did write about libraries in this work. She begins with acknowledging the "Frederick Lewis Allen Room of the New York Public Library and its provision to a writer of quiet work space and continuous access to research sources" without which "this particular mother of three might never have started a book, much less finished it". She also describes sitting "for many days in the New York Public Library, going through bound volumes of American women's magazines for last twenty years." This image resonated with me because it reminded me of doing the same sort of project myself in the 1980s when I took my first Women's Studies class. I was assigned to look at women's magazines from the 1940s and remember sitting with the big bound volumes at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. Other students in my class were assigned to look at other decades. I remember our professor telling us that we shouldn't expect see much change in the messages over the 50-year time period we were studying, even though the images may have evolved. I was particularly interested in the fact that Friedan discovered that the magazines from the 1930s and 1940s did carry more articles about "the world outside the home" than those of the 1950s and 1960s. 

I was saddened to see this message about librarians in a passage in which Friedan describes the types of career-woman role models she had growing up

The only other kind of women I knew [besides housewives]...were the old-maid high-school teachers; the librarian; the one woman doctor in our town, who cut her hair like a man; and a few of my college professors. None of these women lived in the warm center of life as I had known it at home. Many had not married or had children. I dreaded being like them, even the ones who truly taught me to respect my own mind and use it, to feel that I had a part in the world. I never knew a woman, when I was growing up, who used her mind, played her own part in the world, and also had children. 

I have thought about this passage a lot. It reminded me of learning about Sor Juana Ines, the Spanish mystic nun and author who lived during the 17th century. She, like her brethren, knew that the way for a woman to become educated in their day was to become a nun, which did necessarily giving up marriage and children. It is too bad that Friedan seemed to see these teacher and librarian career women as simply "old-maids", rather than as women who made a choice to become educated and have a career - a choice that allowed the women activists who came after them to build upon their work and knowledge, so that others might have a few more choices themselves. Again, it is important to acknowledge those who came before us.

In interviewing young college women in 1959 Friedan spoke to one senior who lamented not using the library more. She had taken to "wandering around the stacks" to find books that interested her. She wished, in fact that she had developed more interests. She had learned her freshman year to "turn up [her] nose at the library". But as a graduating senior she wished she had taken harder courses and read more. "But" she adds, "I guess those things don't matter when you're married." Another young woman, who admitted to being excited by books, and would sometimes spend all day (8 a.m. to 10 p.m.) in her college library dropped out of the honors program and stopped reading quite so much, for fear of not being able to lead a rich life which she said included marriage, children and "a nice house".

Other places libraries are mentioned were as places for women to volunteer. Remarkably, she also notes that the more interesting volunteer jobs-

the leadership of the cooperative nurseries, the free libraries, the school board posts, even the PTA presidencies - are filled by men. The housewife who doesn't "have time" to take serious responsibility in the community, like the woman who doesn't "have time" to pursue a professional career, evades a serious commitment through which she might finally realize herself; she evades it by stepping up her domestic routine until she is fully trapped.

Furthermore she notes that women who did step into these more challenging roles found a greater sense of fulfillment.

This book is a must read. Its message is clearly just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.

The Casual Vacancy - by J.K. Rowling

"A casual vacancy is deemed to have occurred:

a) when a local councillor  fails to make his declaration of acceptance  of office within the proper time; or

b)when his notice of resignation is received, or

c)on the day of his death..."

My sister read this book before I did, and I asked her what she thought of it. "There are no like-able characters" was her response. After reading the book myself I must concur. There are some characters who are less despicable than others, but this is certainly no "triumph of good over evil" story. In fact "Harry Potter" fans will not find much in common with the books they love in this adult-themed novel. This is not to say it is not a good book. I enjoyed reading it, and found it to be quite a page turner. Although it takes place in small-town England, the back-biting politics described could just as easily been in small-town New England. Coincidentally, my own small New England town has just found itself with a "casual vacancy" of its own, and it seems there are already some questions as to how to fill it. Watching this play out should be even better than reading the book

There are two kinds of libraries mentioned in the book. A high school library, that is simply an incidental setting, and the other is a first for this blog - a hospital library trolley. The Trolley is pushed through the wards  by hospital volunteer Shirley Mollison, one of the many unlike-able characters in the story.

The Librarian - by Larry Beinhart

Beware the librarian who knows too much! In this political thriller university librarian, David Goldberg, finds himself targeted by Homeland Security for information he allegedly learned by helping an eccentric billionaire archive his papers. He is framed for bestiality (of all things) and goes into hiding in order to save his own life.

This book reads like a handbook for buying an election. Big spenders, behind the scene's deals, and top secret documents combined with Beinhart's thinly veiled characters, and real-life events, made me feel almost as paranoid as the poor librarians who were being stalked (and murdered) in this work.

This book boasts at least four different kinds of libraries: the university library where Goldberg works; the Library of Congress; a community college library; and the private library of billionaire Bill Stowe described as

...wonderful, the literary portion of the dream that was the house. While we [the university library] were closing earlier and earlier and cutting Sundays and holidays and our walls were blank and barren and the steel shelves were unadorned and it all flickered under that shuttering light that flourescents put out, this had mahogany shelves and tungsten lighting and fine comfortable furniture. 

So clear here that rich people deserve good libraries, and the rest of us do not. This point is also made evident earlier in the story when Goldberg must fire one of his librarians. He tells her

The chancellor of the university has a privately funded study that he received from the Heritage Institute, on libraries...and it says that there are far too many physical volumes. That all this can be replaced, except for some rare volumes of historic value, perhaps, by a great cyber library, one library for all accessed from our home and office PCs. That would cut down on the need for almost all librarians, except for cyber ones and it would make all this space available...for classrooms or dorm rooms, which actually earn money.

Those who make these comments really make clear that they either don't understand, or don't care, that libraries are places where those who don't have homes, or offices, can get access to information.

In addition to Goldberg, there are several other librarians in this work. Bookish Elaina Whisthoven (the one who is fired) is described in a rather stereotypical way

Elaina Whisthoven loved books and presumed they would love her back and she wanted to serve humanity, so she became a librarian. She wore large glasses and had large curls that were always clean and always brushed and never styled. She lived like a nun  on her meager starting salary in a room she rented from a retired professor and his elderly wife...

Whereas, head librarian, Inga Lokisborg

with an accent as thick as hand-cut bread [is] a crone, judgmental, and by librarian standards, fierce. The lines on her face are like the fissures in layered shale, her eyes, overall, are the color of slate, but there are chips in them the color of bluestone...

She also has a surprising sexual secret.

Finally we learn briefly about hapless librarian Larry Berk "a wonderful man whom God has mistaken for Job."

There is a lot of commentary in this work about different kinds of information, and knowledge, and how it is used (or not) in order to create reality. This page-turning dark comedy will make anyone who reads it think twice about what they believe they know.