The Paris Library - by Janet Skeslien Charles

Numbers floated round my head like stars. 823. The numbers were the key to new life. 822. Constellations of hope. 841. In my bedroom late at night, in the morning on the way to get croissants, series after series - 810,840,890-formed in front of my eyes. They represented freedom, the future.

So begins the story of Odile Souchet who thinks in Dewey Decimal numbers. She is thrilled to get a job at the American Library in Paris in 1939 where she can put both her library degree and her ability to speak English to good use. She has always loved books and the library, a place she frequented with her aunt as a child.  

Her job becomes a lot more challenging when Nazi's occupy her beloved "city of readers". The subversive librarians (including the aptly named Miss Reeder) find ways to continue to provide books and services to their Jewish patrons, even after the library is closed to them. Nazi's also looted libraries as well as the private collection of "prominent Jewish families" Additionally, censors regularly blacked out news from the daily papers making the sharing of knowledge that much more difficult. "Fake news" in the form of rumors also shakes up the library as a "sanctuary of facts" as patrons share misinformation with each other. 

Shushing is of course a time-honored tradition in libraries (at least as far as popular culture is concerned). While I will admit to having shushed a few exceptionally loud library users (usually university administrators) I have also, ironically, been shushed myself by people trying to study in the library, just as librarian Odile was shushed when she "screamed with joy" after returning to the library after 10 days of being away and seeing her brother's girlfriend Bitsi (who was also the children's librarian). In one passage Bitsi is described as "holding an open book over her head, like it's a roof" as if she is telling "the children that books are a sanctuary".

The story oscillates between Paris during World War II and Froid, Montana in the 1980s. Virtually all of the passages I marked while reading this are in the sections that take place in France. The only exception comes very late in the book. Lily, Odile's young neighbor storms "Dad's wife took away Forever!...She said Judy Blume writes 'smut'.' Censorship is wrong!" To which Odile responds "So is throwing a fit instead of sitting down to have a conversation...You should ask Ellie what she fears." She goes on to explain that "Ellie's scared the book will put ideas in your head, scared you'll want to experiment with sex." Lily retorts "I read Out of Africa and disn't establish a coffee plantation in Kenya!" I of course agree that censorship is wrong. I also agree that having a conversation is better than throwing a fit.

My Brilliant Friend - by Elena Ferrante

This coming of age story follows best friends Elena and Lila as they grow up outside of Naples, Italy in the 1950s. The two girls are the smartest in their class at school. While Elena is provided the opportunity to continue with her formal schooling beyond grammar school, Lila realizes that she must continue her education at "the people's university" - the public library. She figures out that she can borrow a lot more books than would normally be allowed by procuring library cards for everyone in her family, and then using them only for herself. Everyone in Lila's family is later invited to the library to be honored for being such avid readers. It would appear that Lila, her brother, mother, and father have come in first, second, third, and fourth for the most books read. Elena is also invited to the recognition ceremony for coming in fifth. No one from Lila's family (including Lila) comes to the ceremony and Elena accepts the awards for all.

The first book in a four-part series. This has also be adapted for television  - currently available on HBOMax.

D.W.'s Library Card - by Marc Brown

 

An old favorite in honor or National Library Card Sign-Up Month! 

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.

A Ride to Remember: A Civil Rights Story - by Sharon Langley and Amy Nathan

When I was very young my family and I enjoyed visits to Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Baltimore, Maryland. Hurricane Agnes destroyed the park in 1972 and it was not rebuilt. Rather than an amusement park, it now is a park of the type one might go for a picnic, or to fly a kite. 

Gwynn Oak Park opened in 1893 and like many amusement parks at the time it was segregated.I was unaware that the park had not been desegregated until 1963 when I heard about this book and attended a webinar about it last year. You can watch the webinar here.

My parents moved to Baltimore from the midwest in January of 1962 and started their family. My older sister was born in late September of the same year which made this story, about a girl who was 11 months old on August 28, 1963, especially relevant for me. Sharon Langley was the first African American to ride the Carousel at Gwynn Oak Park on the day it was desegregated. 

Langley explains segregation in this work via a conversation between herself and her parents about her family's role in desegregation.

For a long time, black and white kids couldn't do many things together. They couldn't go to the same schools or to the same restaurants and libraries or even sit together at the movies. It was the law.

    "Why didn't somebody do something about those kinds of laws?" I asked.

    "They did," said Mama.

    "We did," said Daddy.

    Many people - both blacks and whites - knew that segregation was unfair and just plain wrong.

    Some people said, Just wait. Times will change.

    But others said, Why wait? What's wrong with now? They held protests at restaurants, stores, and movie theaters. They tried to get officials and courts to make new laws to create a better city - a place that would welcome and include all people.

    By the time I was born, some unfair laws had changed in Baltimore. Kids could go to the same schools and libraries, restaurants, and some movie theaters, too - no matter the color of their skin. "But the amusement park just wouldn't budge," said Daddy. 

Beautifully illustrated by Coretta Scott King Award winner Floyd Cooper this book tells a story of segregation and desegregation appropriate for young readers.

The Book of Joy - by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams

The One Book One Community selection for the fall 2021 is The Book of Joy. After so much time on lockdown (with only virtual connections) the time seemed right for a book that explores what is joyful in life. Co-author Abrams follows these two religious leaders during a week-long meeting in which they discuss how they remain positive despite their experiences living under apartheid (in the case of the Archbishop) and the extreme difficulties of living in exile (in the case of the Dalai Lama). The Dalai Lama left Tibet for India in 1959 at the age of 24. He describes how during the Cultural Revolution China pledged to wipe out the Tibetan language 

so they burned books, such as the three-hundred-volume Tibetan canon of scriptures translated from India, as well as several thousand volumes written by Tibetans themselves

On a more joyful note however, the week wraps up with a party in honor of the Dalai Lama's eightieth birthday. And what better place to have a joyful birthday celebration than in a library! The party takes place in the Tibetan Children's Village school

As our motorcade approached, we heard the children's soaring voices, their welcome song high-pitched and plaintive, yet indomitable and joyful. It was a song they had composed...The choir and school staff lined the road. All around them sat waves of students in their school uniforms...The car finally arrived at the library and the children were still singing at the top of their lungs.

This was, ironically, a rather challenging book for me. As I read news of building collapses, an earthquake, the Taliban, raging wildfires, all while facing a pandemic that won't slow down because of deliberate manipulation of truth, perhaps remaining hopeful is the best I can do for now. Joy will have to wait.

Cruising the Library - by Melissa Adler

I noticed the title of this book while I was looking for something else in our library catalog. (I don't remember what I was originally searching.) The author begins with a discussion of the Library of Congress catalog subject term "Paraphilias" - a word I had never heard of before reading this book, which is exactly her point. Very few people know this word, and even if they could guess its meaning, they probably wouldn't think to search for it in the library catalog even if they had heard of it. Using the word as a subject heading effectively hides the work even as it is available on the open shelves of the library.

(At the time of this posting my own library had six titles listed under the subject heading Paraphilias.)

Through the exploration of this term Adler demonstrates that how we classify books has more to do with librarians determining what is "normal" (rather than simply reflecting it) especially when it comes to sex. Furthermore, the Library of Congress 

disciplines sex and sexuality by privileging scientific domains and text, granting such disciplines authority while obfuscating the humanities, popular literature, and emerging interdisciplinary and local knowledges.

She also demonstrates how whiteness and heterosexuality are presumed "normal" by searching the catalog for specific terms.

Much of this book is an exploration of the now defunct Delta collection of the Library of Congress - a little known collection of erotica, works deemed obscene, or those containing information about "perverse" or "aberrant" sexual practices. The Delta collection was restricted - those wishing to use it had to ask. By putting certain works in the Delta collection librarians had power in determining what was considered obscene or "aberrant". Now long gone, Adler discovered that even finding information about the existence of the Delta collection was hard to come by. An excerpt from her book about the collection was published on Literary Hub (which you can read here).

Those of us who work in libraries are no strangers to the use of the library as sexual space. Many a library worker can tell you a story of coitus interruptus or of finding post-coital evidence while straightening books the stacks. Adler also sees the library itself as a sensual and seductive place

The library is an erotically charged space. Some might even regard the pleasurable experience of browsing and losing and finding oneself in the stacks as an exercise in sadomasochism. The classificatory apparatuses in the library, with their disciplinary divisions and regularizing and shaming techniques, often bar opportunities for cross-disciplinary play, prohibit the intermingling of bodies, and cut the perverse from the normal (as if such an act was actually possible). In the library space, submission to and enactment of technologies of control facilitate and inhibit promiscuousness in browsing, perverse reading, and bodily pleasures.

I am always interested in what people have to say about book banning. Adler quotes President Dwight D. Eisenhower who had this to say about it in 1953

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they never existed. Don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book. 

Be like Ike.