Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information.
Don’t ever piss one off.
—Spider Robinson, The Callahan Touch, 1993

I read this quote when the book first came out.

And about a decade later… I’m in library school.

Fancy that.

I brought the quote up in a class discussion of the public image of librarians in class last night.

Tam Lin- Pamela Dean (bonus- one of my favorites ever) Faerie myth in college setting

Hex Hall- Rachel Hawkins. Student body includes vampires, werewolves, witches. 

Magic system in urban setting:

Diane Duane’s Young Wizard series. Start with So You Want To Be a Wizard

Sunshine- Robin McKinley. Because I like how she put magic charms into her world, sort of as taboo, but sort of as a given. Also bonus vampire.

Vampires who don’t, ahem, suck. Or sparkle.

The Historian- Elizabeth Kostova. Scared the pants off me in a very good Dracula sort of way.

A Discovery of Witches- Deborah Harkness. Vampires and witches in academia at the doctoral level. I disagree with one major plot point (a romance) but otherwise, love it.

Now I have five bookshelves in my living room! And they have sections:

Mysteries are separated into historical and modern! Poetry has its own shelves! So does science fiction! Cookbooks and foodie memoirs have their own shelf! Things are organized, people!

We will not be discussing the black hole that is the book shelves in my room.

I’m looking forward to all the discussion about databases and sources, and where to find all the information, because then I’ll be on my way to being awe-inspiring like a real librarian and I’ll know everything.

Last week, class discussion centered on ready reference (things you can look up right at the reference desk, because someone has a question) and how to handle the kinds of people who are likely to approach the desk. And roving reference, where librarians move through the library, offering help if it’s needed.

And about halfway through the class, it started to sound really familiar. Kind of like being a personal trainer.

Be approachable. Because someone who’s an expert can be kind of intimidating to a novice. Whether you’re behind a big old reference desk with your hair in a bun, or wearing a black uniform with the club logo on it, your appearance says Expert Who Knows Everything. Not knowing things, and having to ask, takes courage. So be friendly, so they’ll ask questions.

Keep an eye on body language, to monitor if someone is getting up the nerve to ask a question.

In the gym, I learned the sort of lost-look aimless wandering. Same in the library, a little wide eyed, a little bit hesitant.

Watch body language as you answer, to gauge how much information they really want... Even though you Know All The Neat Things, don’t go off on tangents if their eyes glaze! Yeaaah, totally guilty of this one on theories of Pilates and balance training. 

and whether they’re asking the question they really want to ask, or you need to guide them a little. “How do I use this machine?” or “Where do I find the history section?” could be the first in a series of questions that will hone down to what they really want to know about getting stronger or working on a research paper.

Encourage them- if they have a wrong idea, don’t snap, but guide them to something better. I think I heard this one in every personal training staff development seminar, and especially in yoga training classes: Use positive language, try not to say “no!” or “don’t do it that way,” but say “here’s a way to do it even faster/better/more effectively.” And a corollary to it is what one personal trainer called “Don’t kill their puppy.” You’ll get people who are attached to one way of doing things: they love their elliptical workout, or the hip adduction machine, and it’s not really the best exercise for them. Don’t look all stern and say WRONG!!! Instead, respect where they are, and what they like… then suggest an addition, instead of taking something away.

And then there’s the temperature. Most vampire characters I’ve read have chilly skin, icy skin, cold skin… lacking a pulse and ordinary circulation, that’s understandable.

Am I practical to the point of unromantic, for wondering about the logistics.?

Icy cold undead feet in the bed! 

No thank you! My feet are cold enough!

And then, there’s a romance in The Iron King  where the cold-blooded paramour is not a bloodsucker but… still! I don’t get the snuggling up to something that might give you freezer burn.

Then again, this is all moot, because I don’t consider brooding an aphrodisiac.

And there will be orientation meetings where they tell me things!

And I still don’t have a new laptop I like! So much research, and nothing’s grabbed me. PC, definitely, but which is the perfect combination of light, affordable and reliable…

I still need to learn PowerPoint. Ack!

But– I will have bookshelves soon! And going laptop pondering/shopping this weekend will hopefully get me settled on something.

And, thanks to The Poet’s House, I’m learning how to shelve things! So… that’s library experience! 

That was my attempt to put everything I can’t resist into one book title.

It doesn’t exist. I think I’m probably glad.

But I cannot resist books that combine any of the following elements:

1. Historical fiction set from the Regency era on through the Victorian era. Bonus points for any combination of Almack’s, hansom cabs and witty banter.
2. Foodie lit. Fiction? Nonfiction? Professional or home kitchen? Doesn’t matter. Cuisine? Doesn’t matter. If you get meditative while chopping carrots or kneading dough, or swear at your sous chef, I’m reading it.
3. Solving crimes with science. Mass spectrometers! Fingerprints! Psychological profiling! I’m not picky about the time period, actually. The Alienist, by Caleb Carr, touched on nascent ideas of psychology, and it was fascinating.
4. Folklore/magic If your magic system is well-constructed and obeys internal logic, I’ll read it. Bonus points for drawing on folkloric elements: fairy tales, myths, legends. Double bonus points for an urban, or modern setting on this one.

Polly Shulman

325 pages. Library book.

I loved this book even more than I expected I would. Which is saying a lot, because it’s in several of my sweet spots at once. It’s YA fantasy, woven with elements of fairy tales. I got a giggle out of the fact that the protagonist’s name is Elizabeth, she doesn’t like nicknames, and for a portion of the book she utterly lacks a sense of direction. You might say, I identify with her.

The Grimm Legacy is set in New York city. It’s set in a library! And not just any library. The New York Circulating Materials Repository is a library of things: china tea sets, antique buttons, costumes. And yes, some books. I wish my studies at Pratt would let me into special collections like this library has: The Grimm Collection of fairy tale relics (includes lots of shoes) and the Wells collection has science fiction objects.

The ensemble cast was plenty of fun, as well. Elizabeth’s fellow pages seem like real teenagers with good depth of character. Polly Shulman develops their friendships well, letting them play off each other. And be slow to trust each other, especially given ominous things happening in the library to drive the plot. Although it’s primarily the teens’ story, I wanted to get to know more about the different librarians supervising them. (Yes, I wish they were my coworkers.

At a few points in this artifact-laden adventure tale, I caught a distinct resemblance to Warehouse 13′s first season. Esoteric historical objects stored and cataloged by eccentrics with a pithy sense of humor. The combination is perfectly in my sweet spot.

I’m also a sucker for modern retellings of fairy tales. Or in this case, a synthesis of dozens of fairy tale elements.

Some things I have learned:

It is a cold, cold walk from the subway to The Poet’s House, which is at just about the south-west-est end of downtown Manhattan.

The Poets’ House has lovely, big windows, so even on a wintry day, it gets bathed in light. Like an aerie. There are comfy chairs, too. I foresee doing some school reading curled up in one.

I think I have read a good amount of poetry. The shelves at the Poets’ House told me otherwise. Poets I hadn’t read! Poets I had read, but books I hadn’t! Poets I’ve never heard of! Poetry in languages I don’t speak. It was simultaneously humbling and intriguing. And sometimes bizarre. There’s a book of sonnets written in the persona of George W. Bush! It exists!

I kind of want to walk around the shelves with a little notebook to jot down books and poets that look interesting. But that would get cumbersome, as mostly I had armloads of books. I did see some spines of volumes I have on my own shelves. And I smiled at them. “Hi there, Thomas Lux! Hey there, Billy Collins… wait, did I miss two new collections?”

Most of what I did today was work on the new books they’d gotten in, and hunt through the shelves for duplicates. This is easier to do with individual poets than anthologies. The anthology shelving system is complex, and I’m pretty sure there’s a learning curve for everyone.

It was my first encounter with doing Real Library Things, and it leaves me optimistic. Nice people, a really lovely space, surrounded by poetry. And there’s something zen about shelving. This whole library science thing is feeling like a pretty good idea.

I also haven’t finished the books I acquired this year, from BEA, or from Edinburgh. 

Genres I couldn’t get enough of this year: Foodie lit and memoir! Supernatural mystery things! Historical fiction! (And yes, Regency romance.) None of these are surprising.

Some books I really, really liked, in no particular order:

Season To Taste- Molly Birnbaum. Finished 6/24. ??? pages. My first read on a Kindle. Fascinating foodie memoir, about a would-be chef who loses her sense of smell, then has to figure out the new normal.

Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore- Stella Duffy

Creating a Meal You’ll Love- Mark Chimsky-Lustig. Food essays? Why, yes! 

The Night Circus- Erin Morgenstern. Finished 6/17. BEA book. 384 pages. Gorgeous!

In A Treacherous Court- Michelle Diener. ARC from Simon and Schuster/ Gallery Books. 301 pages. Historical fiction set in Tudor England with painters, spies, intrigue and romance. LOVED IT.

The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. 

The Shattering- Karen Healey. 320 pages. Finished 7/20. Oh. MY GOD! Fantasy adventure, set in New Zealand. Grabbed me from page 1 and I devoured it. Loved it. May be one of my best of 2011.