Educated - by Tara Westover

Raised and home-schooled by survivalist parents in the Idaho mountains Tara Westover rejected her family's admonishments not to go to college and enrolled in Brigham Young University (BYU) before she turned 18. Ultimately she becomes a Cambridge-educated PhD, but not without painfully examining her role in the family. Her father's conspiracy theories about universities and the Illuminati were made known to her long before she thought about going to college herself. Her mother had taken charge of her children's homeschooling, which mostly consisted of letting them learn what they wanted when they wanted, and included occasional trips to "the Carnegie library in the center of town".

Westover recognized that she was one of the least disciplined of her siblings when it came to "doing school" which gave her a lot of reason to doubt her abilities when she arrived at BYU. Her misgivings were magnified when she discovered that her classmates had an understanding of US culture and history that she did not share. Her realization that everyone else knew what the Holocaust was, for instance, caused her not only embarrassment, but also opened her eyes to the fact that her peers shared a collective knowledge that she was missing. She did not even know what she did not know.

If Westover had anxieties about her place at BYU they were only compounded when she arrived at Cambridge. Upon her arrival on campus she and her denizens were invited to take a tour of the chapel, including the roof. She describes the experience of watching her classmates, and her professor fight the wind on top of the building as they cling to the wall while she climbs higher. Finally explaining to her professor that "she'd roofed [her] share of hay sheds" and that

The wind is just wind. You could withstand these gusts on the ground, so you can withstand them in the air. There is no difference. Except the difference you make in your head...I'm just standing...You are all trying to compensate...You've made yourselves vulnerable. If you could just control your panic, this wind would be nothing.

Even this insight though, was accompanied by apprehension

I wanted the mind of a scholar, but it seemed that Dr. Kerry saw in me the mind of a roofer. The other students belonged in a library; I belonged on a crane.

Her ultimate success in earning her PhD demonstrates that she certainly did belong in a library, and the final third of the book (from the time she lands in Cambridge for the first time) is scattered with references to using it. This stands in stark contrast to the first 200 (plus) pages, where there is only one.

Commonwealth - by Ann Patchet

This year I am participating in the Baltimore County Public Library's #BWellRead Challenge which specifies one kind of book to read each month. I grew up in Baltimore County and I got my very first library card from BCPL in the 1970s, so although I now live and work in Massachusetts I am delighted to be a part of this endeavor. So far I've read Mona's Simpson's Anywhere But Here (January) and Beloved by Toni Morrison for February (no libraries in that one). March's challenge is to read a book with a one word title. I found Patchett's book on the Leisure Reading shelf of the Maxwell Library. I assumed it would be about Massachusetts, but it turns out the commonwealth in question is Virginia (FYI Kentucky and Pennsylvania are also commonwealths). And, like Irving Wallace's The Seven Minutes, the title of this book actually refers to a fictitious book of the same name.

This bit of meta-fiction about a blended family in the 1970s with six children is hardly the stuff of the Brady Bunch. Their parents' infidelity is what brings the Cousins and Keating children together and a disdain for their progenitors is what binds them. The novel follows the siblings through five decades. One of them, Franny, lands a job in the law library at the University of Chicago. This is what she refers to as her "real job". She also has an un-real job at the Palmer House restaurant as a cocktail waitress. The waitress job is the one that pays well while the pay at the library "is appalling".

As a child Franny was a heavy library user. She loved to read, forcing her father to make a comment that "It's a good thing there're going to be two lawyers in the family...Somebody's going to have to make the money to buy you all those books." To which Franny retorts "they're free...I check them out of the library."  Her sister Caroline makes a final condescending remark "Well, thank God for libraries".

Thank God, indeed.

Franny's stepbrother Albie finds that he can make good use of the public library as a free place to spend his evenings in order to give his sister and her family some privacy while he is sleeping on their couch. He always has a good book to read while he's there thanks to his job as a messenger which often has him delivering manuscripts to publishers. It is through this job that he finds himself with a copy of a novel that is clearly a thinly disguised story of his own family.

I found this work to be a true page-turner, and a perfect vacation read for my spring break trip to Florida. It was especially good for keeping my mind off of the airplane ride. My Florida friend saw that I was reading it and said that she had also recently read it for her book club and generally liked Ann Patchett's books. I will have to look for others.

The Night Bookmobile - by Audrey Niffnegger

The unnamed narrator in this surreal tale discovers a special mobile library that contains everything she has ever read - not just the books but also "periodicals and ephemera-cereal boxes and such". "It's a very complete collection" the enigmatic librarian, Mr. Openshaw, tells her. She spends a few hours with her books, but as the sun rises Mr. Openshaw shoos her out of the shabby Winnebago that serves as her literary memory explaining that the library's hours are "dusk to dawn". The narrator's obsession with finding the bookmobile again leads to several major life changes for her - including becoming a librarian herself.

A story about the love of books, and reading, and how books hold and become our memories.

Anywhere But Here - by Mona Simpson

Set in the 1970s Simpson's story tells of an aspiring teen actress (Ann), who leaves her home in Bay City, Wisconsin, along with her flighty mother (Adele) to find their way in Beverly Hills. Adele's inability to hold a job for very long, and her obsession with finding a husband make for a difficult journey to stardom. When Ann finally does get a break Adele attempts to sabotage it.

Not a very library-centric book, but Ann and Adele do use the public library a few times, and Adele also suggests that Ann go school early one day to study in the library instead of riding in with her classmates. Not surprisingly Ann (a rather mediocre student) declines this advice in favor of hanging out with her friends until her first class.

In perhaps one of the craziest uses of a public library I've read about, Ann's grandmother (Lillian) relates a tale of a man she knew who performed surgery on himself, in the hopes of making himself better looking.

...this man found a way to sneak into the public library at night...he was afraid for people to see him - and read up all about plastic surgery. He wanted to remake his face to be better. He got hold of needles and suture somehow and from studying these books he changed himself. I suppose he used mirrors to see. He said it took months, most of the winter. He had to wait for one part to heal before touching another. And he did it. Well, you can imagine the ruckus...it was a miracle the man hadn't killed himself...there were no infections, only clear, healed scars...There was a write up with a picture in the newspaper and a couple other doctors came to see. But it all died down, because the truth was, he still had such an ugly, ugly face.

We'll file this under "don't try this at home, folks."

So Very Many Books!

I wasn't surprised to find that I'd already read more than a few of these 100 Must Read Books about Libraries and Bookstores. Many can be found on this blog. Looks like there are plenty for me to add to my list, though.

This Child of Faith - by Sophronia Scott & Tain Gregory

I took on BookRiot's Read-Harder Challenge for 2017. Finding a "book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey" did turn out to be a challenge for me, and so Scott & Gregory's book was the last one I read to complete the list. The book was released on December 14, the fifth anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school. Gregory was a third grader at Sandy Hook on the day of the shooting and one of his best friends (Ben) was murdered that day. He and his mother (Scott) co-wrote this book about their faith and how it sustained them through the tragedy.

Most of the narrative in this memoir takes place prior to the shooting. It tells how the family sought out a church, found one that fit, and began to get involved in church life. Their faith was firmly held prior to the tragedy.

While libraries don't play a huge role in the story, it is distinctive in that all four types of libraries: academic, school, public, and special (in this case a church library) are mentioned and used by the authors:

• Scott tells how her Sunday morning job at Harvard's Cabot Science Library kept her from going to church while she was in college
  
• She tells about the "beautiful library" at the private school her son attended prior to transferring to Sandy Hook elementary
  
• And of checking out "Veggie Tales" music CDs from the public library for her young son to enjoy
  
• The church library is not just a place she goes to check out books, but is also used as a comfortable place to wait while her son is in choir practice

There is also this passage which describes reading about libraries, and presents them a safe places

When I was a girl I read the book Escape from Witch Mountain in which a girl named Tia could open any locked door simply by turning the handle. It only worked if it was okay for her to be in there, a right place to be, such as library or church...I was enchanted by the prospect of having such a magical power. But even more so I felt comforted by the idea that safe places would always be open and available.

It would be wonderful if anytime a person needed to be in a library they could find one open and welcoming. We do our best with budget and personnel constraints.

Our Bodies, Our Shelves: A Collection of Library Humor - by Roz Warren

I read a review of this book a few years ago, and wrote it down on my list of potential reading. I decided it would be a good choice for a read aloud with my husband during our Christmas break. I checked it out at my local public library and we did enjoy reading it together, and the short essays were perfect for wrapping up an evening before bed. 

Warren's essays are funny, and also highlight some of the issues that librarians struggle with such as censorship, crappy wages, and patron privacy. None of these things is black and white, and there are, of course, fifty shades of grey in between.