Dewey's Christmas at the Library - by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter

I first blogged about Dewey the Library Cat three years ago during my year of "Celebrating the States" during which I celebrated the anniversary of each state with a movie, a book, and an appropriate food item. For my Iowa book I read Vicki Myron's Dewey: The Library Cat, a book for middle-grade readers about a real cat who was left in a book drop at the public library in Spencer, Iowa. Dewey Readmore Books was subsequently adopted by the whole town. This book was based on the orginal "Dewey" book: Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat who Touched the World. There are several children's picture books about the Library Cat, including Dewey's Christmas in the Library, which I was able to download on my iPad for a mere $2.99. I am a sucker for Christmas stories, and this one was extra special to me, being about a library after all. This story tells about Dewey's first Christmas and how he helped to decorate the library's award-winning Christmas tree. A sweet story based on Dewey's real life adventures.

Liberal Arts - the movie

During a visit to his alma mater for the retirement party of a favorite professor, Jesse meets Zibby, a sophomore. The two are quite taken with each other, but Jesse is concerned about their 16 year age difference.

SPOILER ALERT

In a twist on the usual and expected three plot points, in this movie boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets...librarian!

What I also found refreshing about this film was that normally in a movie where there are two women and one man, the audience is made to feel unsympathetic to the woman who doesn't get the man. Not so in this film.

Lean In:Women, Work, and the Will to Lead - by Sheryl Sandberg

Back in June I blogged about Betty Friedan's classic feminist work The Feminine Mystique. I mentioned then that I had just started to read Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In commenting that if there were any libraries in the book you would find out here. So here I make good on my promise. There is one. Sandberg tells of the first job she took out of college "at the World Bank as research assistant to Larry Summers...[She] spent the first nine months  in the stacks of the Bank library...looking up facts and figures for Larry's papers and speeches." We can safely assume that she was not Summers' assistant, though, when he made his now infamous remarks at Harvard in 2005 about women's (lack of) aptitude in the sciences. I actually found it rather ironic how much she praised Summers in this book. A quick look at the index indicated that he actually gets twelve times as much print space as libraries do!

When this work first came out earlier this year it got a lot of press. There was some controversy of course, what with a woman suggesting that other women can be leaders and all. I read this slowly (two chapters a month) as part of a discussion group on our campus. We met monthly to discuss what we read, and to reflect on how the book might relate to us. There were several dozen women who were part of this group, which included not only librarians, but administrators, clerical workers, maintenance workers, and faculty members. I think it is fair to say that Sandberg's book reflects her own socioeconomic, heteronormative status, but that is not to say that her words are not relevant to those who do not share those statuses. In our discussions we were all able to see how we could lead from where we were, and to suggest ways to make things better for ourselves, and others. There were places though where we recognized that Sandberg's privilege plays a big role in what she is able to accomplish. We also agreed that while we can make some changes for ourselves, there is much that needs to be recognized by society at large. Sandberg, for example suggests to "make your partner a partner". For those of us who have partners this is fine advice as far as it goes, but even for those of us whose husband's drive the carpool, and share other household responsibilities we still have to contend with things like schools only ever calling the mother to pick up a sick child (even when the father's name and number are listed first). I also find that while I generally enjoy working in the same organization as my husband, one major drawback is that some people seem to think of me as his messenger. If he isn't in his office when they happen to stop by, or he is slow to respond to e-mail they have no compunction of contacting me and asking me to "let him know that...", or even ask me to deliver something to him. He virtually never gets messages for me unless they are of the 'remember me to your wife' variety.

Sandberg's message that women should decide what is important to them and ask for it is another place where her socioeconomic status seems to make her unaware of how much of the world functions. I can hardly imagine a woman working two minimum wage jobs having the privilege of telling her boss that she'd like to be home for dinner with her children most days of the week. While she may be just as likely to want such a simple thing, she is not likely to have much flexibility in her scheduled hours, and may be too busy getting from one job to the other to even consider making that dream come true.

Despite its problems, ultimately I give this book a thumbs up. I do believe Sandberg has the best interests of everyone (men, women, and children) at the heart of this work, and everyone can find something from which to benefit in it.

Mona in the Promised Land - by Gish Jen

I read this novel over about a 10-week period as part of a weekly book discussion, along with some students at the University. The story tells of Mona, a Chinese American teenager growing up in Scarshill, New York in the 1960s. Mona begins to volunteer at a suicide prevention hotline that is run by a local Jewish Temple, and decides to convert to Judiaism, much to her Catholic parents' chagrin. The students in my discussion group, who were all Latin American, were surprised to find so many themes in this work that resonated with them. For instance it is universally true that teenagers will have conflicts with their parents.

Libraries didn't play any real role in this book, but there were a few passing mentions of them. Mona's best friend is Barbara whose family moves to a huge house with six bedrooms, and among other amenities has "a library with chestnut paneling".What home would be complete without books, after all?

Mona is quite bright, and does exceptionally well in school. This leads some of her peers to steer clear of her ("Mona has never admitted how much she reads, figuring, Why act brainier?"). However, the handsome Seth, a pseudo-bohemian/pseudo-intellectual is very interested in spending time with Mona. He is also very interested in spending time with Barbara, and deflowers each in turn. Foreplay involves impressing them with deep philosophical discussions of Kant. "Mona can tell Barbara feels left out by the fact that she's even checked that Kant book out of the library to see how it ends." Seth eventually "begins to share with Barbara his synopses and hypotheses and analyses, his assumptions and suppositions. Whereupon to Mona's confoundment, Barbara goes intellectual."

Throw into the mix the charming Andy Kaplan who everyone wants to be connected to although "for a long time he was just like anybody else, only shorter...[b]ut after he suddenly grew eleven inches, he became the sort of guy  with whom people like to claim some connection. His mom worked his their mom on the library committee. They used to be on his paper route. Even Seth claims to play chess with Andy now and then..."

Barbara, Mona, and Seth spend a lot of time getting high, eating, drinking and "rapping". Their discussions sometimes question whose oppression is the worst: Chinese immigrants, blacks, or Jews. Contemplating history as well as current events they recognize "the auction blocks and the Ku Klux Klan and the fuss over getting even a library card..."

There is one rather convoluted library metaphor. I had to read it several times to get it. Seth and Mona, in trying to help a friend, ultimately feel betrayed. Mona considers how Seth perceives this:

It is as if he is just discovering that he grew up an only child, which in a way, he did. His step-brothers were all buy out of the house by the time he came along; and what with his interests, he could practically have been a Old World scholar boy, the kind with cuff links and green skin and no appetite. Even now, she can see him with a piano, and an illuminated globe, and a sliding wooden ladder that he really does need, to get to all his books. They one day: Enter a group of playmates. And when they leave, the library is a whole different place.

I think my favorite library mention though, was reading that Barbara's parents decided to take a last minute June vacation, even though "it mean[t] doing two research papers without a library." What were they thinking?!

The Celestial Bed - by Irving Wallace

As in Wallace's The Seven Minutes this work explores a modern day witch hunt involving sex and an over zealous district attorney (Hoyt Lewis). Aided and abetted by a phony televangelist (Rev. Josh Scrafield), and an aspiring newspaper reporter suffering from premature ejaculation (Chet Hunter), Lewis sets out to investigate and arrest the renowned sex therapist Dr. Arnold Freeburg, and one of the sex surrogates he employs, the lovely Gayle Miller.

Ironically, it is Hunter's girlfriend Suzy Edwards, who is also Freeburg's secretary, who provides the lead that gets her employer arrested. In referring her boyfriend to the sex therapist she also unwittingly opens the door to the investigation.

Hunter and Edwards first meet at the Hillsdale Main Public Library, where Hunter is doing some research for hire:

This fellow, probably in his thirties, surely no more than five years older than she, was carrying some books from the shelves, and the only spot open was the chair next to hers. Apologetically, he eased into the chair tight against her own. She had been taken by him at once. He was of medium build, receding neat brown hair, high forehead, soulful brown eyes highlighted by steel-framed spectacles set near the tip of his pug nose, his manner reserved but obviously an intellectual type.

It is also clear, however, that his work at the Acme Research Bureau "digging up facts from countless sources for free-lance writers graduate students, magazines, newspapers" is no job for a real man, as it barely pays subsistence wages, and at least one of his clients, the Revered Josh Scrafield had always looked at the researcher with "mild contempt [and as] something of a frail grub and intellectual nerd, sallow and frightened of life".

Ultimately, Hunter sees the error of his ways (once he experiences a successful coupling with Edwards), and refuses to cooperate with the DA, and of course, is rewarded with the real job at the newspaper he always dreamed of. A true fairy tale ending in which good sex conquers all.

The Reader - the movie

An enigmatic woman, Hanna Smitz (played by Kate Winslet) helps a teenage boy, Michael Berg (David Kross) return to his home after he falls ill and the two begin an affair. Set in 1950s Germany the Hanna insists that  Michael read to her each time they meet, before they make love. Eventually she disappears from his life and the next time Michael sees Hanna she is a defendant at a Nazi war crimes trial. Hanna is sentenced and adult Michael (played by Ralph Fiennes) continues to read to her by way of recorded cassette tapes sent to her in prison.

There is one scene in the prison library in which Hanna asks for one of the books she has been listening to.

Ghosts of the Bridgewater Triangle - by Christopher Balzano

Last month my husband and I attended the premiere of the documentary The Bridgewater Triangle. For those who are not familiar with this paranormal place the Triangle is located in southeastern Massachusetts, centered on the Hockomock Swamp. Bigfoot has been sighted there, along with a big chicken, big cats, UFOs, Pukwudgies, and a host of ghosts. It is named for the three "Bridgewaters" (Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, and West Bridgewater) but includes many other towns, and the spooky stuff also leaks out from the borders of the Triangle.

I am a bit of a skeptic myself when it comes to ghosts and other paranormal stuff, but since I live and work in the Bridgewater Triangle, and make it a habit to explore all things Bridgewater, I was very interested to see the movie, and likewise could not resist this book when I saw it on display at the Bridgewater Public Library. After I began reading it I almost put it down, as it was rather poorly edited - rife with grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and awkward syntax - but since I was so interested in the topic I decided to keep reading. My resolve was rewarded with several stories about librarian ghosts - a first for this blog! 

Just a piece up the road from Bridgewater, is Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. According to Balzano's book, Wheaton has several ghosts, including the "old librarian" Mary Armstrong (aka Aunt Mary) who rides the elevator, moves books, and opens and closes doors. 

The story goes that she joined the staff in the early 1920s and became overworked. She moved away to live with her sister, and for reasons unknown, perhaps the stress of the job she had just left, took her own life. She returned to her true passion though, and continues the job she both loved and hated.

The Wareham Public Library is said to have ghost who (stereo-typically of librarians) doesn't like loud music and is responsible for changing the radio station of cars that pass by the library to classical music.
However...

No name is even given for the librarian, and in fact, she never really existed. The uncommon occurrence in Wareham has nothing to do with a ghost. It just so happens that right on that spot is a weird split in the town's radio reception. Near that spot is a convergence of two different radio stations. One is a rock station and the other a classical, and a radio with weak reception will switch between the two as it drives down the street.

(See what I mean about the poor editing).

The author also mentions a haunted library in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, but does not provide details.

This work also includes details about some of the ghosts who haunt Bridgewater State University (where I work). I've been here 16 years and only learned recently (from a program at the Bridgewater Public Library) that there were ghosts on campus! I never knew about George (who haunts the theater), nor the dorm ghosts in Shea-Durgin Hall and Woodward Hall, nor the phantom horse on the athletic field, nor the ghost that haunts Tillinghast Hall, where I once had an office.

More Information on Bridgewater State University ghosts can be found here and here.

More information about the Bridgewater Triangle can be found here.