The English Geek

Stocking the Shelves

Over the past week, I've had three startlingly personal comments said to me at work. The first was from a man who looks like a cross between Merida's father Angus from the movie Brave and Lisbeth's social worker from Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Maybe because I have helped him before (by recommending some lesser-read but still good fantasy and science fiction titles), he felt totally comfortable commenting on my new black-and-grey floral-print pants. "If you were trying to draw attention to your legs," he said, "you're doing a great job." 

Yes, a little more Dragon Tattoo-ish than I'd like.

Another patron admired my boots. Like...gushed for a couple of minutes. And then she said "My husband thinks that girls in Dr. Martens are hot."

Ummmm. I'm not sure I qualify for the "girl" department anymore, and I, well, I just don't know what to say to that.

Then there was the patron who approached me while I was putting out some books on the New Book display. "I think you should know that I think you are really pretty," she said, "but you also look sad." I wanted to think that was something nice and thoughtful—but it still felt awkward. Maybe because "pretty/sad" is totally not how I dressed that day. Or maybe because I was crouched down to access the very bottom shelf and I was worrying that my shirt might've slid up over the top of my jeans and I was possibly exposing that lovely stretch of back fat that's right over one's butt? I don't know.

Overly personal comments: not my favorite part of working with the public.

One thing I do love about my job, though, is stocking the display shelves. Display shelves (or sometimes tables) hold books that librarians have picked out, the ones we think you'll really like. Usually there is a theme to the display shelves. In my library, for example, we have displays for historical fiction, speculative fiction, gentle reads, science, history, art, and the ever-popular "You Wrote a Book About What?" shelf. There are display shelves for new fiction and non fiction, and each of the librarians has his or her own display shelf.

Filling up the display shelves is one of my favorite parts of my job. Partly it's sort of an ego rush: I still, nearly five years later, get a little happy shiver when I see someone pick up a book from my display. It's an act of faith in a person, when you stop to think about it, trusting them enough to spend all that time with a book they recommend. I only put out books that I really, really liked on my display, and I try to remember the more obscure or slightly odd things I've loved. Like The Changeling of Finnistuath, a book I read when I was teaching—back when my awesome boots were brand new!—and have been haunted by ever since. (Kate Horsley, why haven't you written a new novel in so long? I'd read it, especially if it were set in ancient Celtic times.) Collections of essays. Strong, accessible poetry books. Even a few graphic novels. Of course, lots of Atwood and Hoffman and Kingsolver and LeGuin.

But I also like stocking the other shelves (except for the Gentle Reads one...as I'm not generally a reader of cozy novels nor highly concerned that my books be squeaky-clean, I have a persistent worry, finding Gentle books, that I'm unwittingly corrupting some poor old woman with swear words and naughty bits). Not all the books I put on these shelves are books I've read. Most often, they're books I want to read. (As my current "want to read" list is hovering at about 87 titles, this is a deep resource.) Spreading the books I want to read throughout the library is curiously pleasant. It stills that very old and persistent need to take home every book I find and love. I might not be able to read the books I put on the Social Sciences display shelf today, including The Ragged Edge of the World (about how society encroaches on wilderness), The Winter of our Disconnect (about a family who disconnected from almost everything requiring electricity for a year), The Good Daughter (about the writer Jasmin Darznik, who uncovers her mother's secrets after finding a wedding photograph of her—with a man not Jasmin's father), or The Other Wes Moore (about two men who are named Wes Moore and how different their lives are), but I want to, and it makes me feel like an itch has been scratched, knowing that at least someone else will read them.

"People say life is the thing, but I prefer reading." Someone named Logan Pearsall Smith said that, and sometimes I completely agree with him. I'm not always immersed in a book as in—I'm sitting down and reading something. But I'm always reading something, immersed in the story which I've paused by putting down the book while I live my life. And I do have other interests as well; as much as I love books, I think my life would be less rich without things like, you know, the people I love, and running and hiking and taking pictures and thinking and writing. Then again, that desire to be reading something is always there—and it's more bearable if I know that someone, somewhere in my town, is reading something I recommended. 

What have you read lately that I should recommend to someone else?

PC History

I think I was sixteen the year we got our first PC. ‘87 or ‘88. It had one of those green-tinged enormous monitors with a tiny screen and it used 5.25" floppy discs, which I think would hold about ten WordPerfect documents (because back then everyone used WordPerfect, with the blue screen, remember? and the templates over your F keys?). I’d learned how to save and organize files and how to use WordPerfect in tenth grade (perhaps the only skill from high school I still use, aside from the making of cheese fondue, an abiding love of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course driving), so as soon as it was home and plugged in, I started using it. We kept it in the basement, in the bedroom that used to be my sister Michele’s but which we took to calling the computer room. I wrote hundreds of bad poems on that computer; plenty of proto personal essays, a bunch of short stories, and a few homework assignments. I printed stuff off on the dot matrix printer and then enjoyed ripping off the feeding edges of the paper.

I still have one of those floppy discs in a box somewhere, just for old times’ sake.

I’m pretty sure, though, that my first interaction with a computer came way back in the sixth grade, when my history teacher Mr. Johnson (apparently ahead of his time in the inclusion of technology) taught us how to program simple commands into a mainframe. How did he have a mainframe in a public school in 1984? No clue. But I still remember the satisfying thrill of typing in the code and then seeing the computer do what I told it to do. (Even if I don’t remember the code anymore.)

Right out of high school (actually, before I was even officially done with high school, even though I really was done with high school) I started working at WordPerfect. Everyone I knew was vaguely computer-nerdish. I even went ahead and married a computer nerd.

All of which is to say: I have a hard time envisioning my life without a computer (or two) in it. And it’s also my explanation to the fact that sometimes when I’m working I find myself completely astounded at what people don’t know about using a computer. Basic stuff like accessing files and using email. In my head I’m thinking really? while I’m struggling to keep my face neutral and helpful.

Yesterday I tried to help a library patron, Karl, who told me right up front that he thinks computers are soulless and that is why he’s never learned to use one, but he also wanted to make sure that everything about him, his family, and his property on "that Internets place" was correct. At first I was exceedingly frustrated because he was a rambler and I couldn’t get to the point of what he wanted and because he wanted me to find all of his personal information and verify it all and that’s not how it works. We don’t have enough librarians to provide a personal research assistant to everyone who wants one.

I struggled to keep my neutral, helpful face on.

After teaching Karl how to use the mouse (including how it interacts with the cursor) and finding some useful maps, I told him my time was up and I had to help other people. He sighed and said, "I’m sorry, I know I’ve taken up your time, I just really, really hate computers." And I did something I almost never, ever do at work: I said what I really thought. 

"You’ve really only got two choices here, Karl," I said, kindly as I could. "Whether you like them or not, computers are the way things are now. So you can learn how to use one, or you’ll be limited in which information you can access." I don’t know how he took that; maybe it seemed harsh, but it is also the truth.

I keep thinking about this encounter. I can tell it as a funny story (which I did to Kendell and Jake when I got home). But it’s more than funny. As I listened to this patron and tried to imagine his life, it was like seeing two different layers of reality. As if Karl and I live in completely different worlds even though we live in the same town.

I can hardly imagine my life without a computer. My journal, our pictures, my writing, and of course there’s email and Facebook and my blog. Recipes. Directions. Instructions. How to clean off the big blue monkey someone drew with Sharpie on our vinyl fence once. (Magic Eraser + hair spray.) I listen to music on my computer and watch movies, read the news and find new books to read. Then there’s cell phones, MP3 players, tablets, laptops. Technology seems completely intertwined with modern life.

But Karl reminded me that it doesn’t have to be. He’s not the only person I’ve helped who doesn’t use computers, either. Every time I work in the Internet area I help someone who doesn’t know how to access digital photos other than just looking at them on the little camera screen or that you don’t have to press the Enter key at the end of the line when you’re using a word processor. And once I work through my frustration, annoyance, and surprise, I find myself a bit uncomfortable. Questioning, I suppose, how thoroughly technology is tangled into my existence.

I mean, on one hand, what I told that patron yesterday is true: it is inescapable. The people who need help because they don’t know how to get their resume from their computer at home onto the website of the company they are applying for seem, in my opinion, to not have many options. How do you find a job when you can’t use a computer? It’s a basic reality of our world whether you like it or not.

On the other hand, though. I can’t help thinking: what would it be like? To be off the grid, I mean. Mostly not a presence on the Internet, nowhere to be found online, and if you wanted to talk to me you’d have to call me. Or even stop by my house. Certainly I’d have more time for some things—reading, and even housework—without the tug of technology.

Really: I don’t want to be like Karl. I am grateful that my life brought me plenty of technological experiences so that I can function comfortably in contemporary existence. I don’t take my knowledge for granted nor overlook the fact that it is because of those experiences that I can function, technology-wise. I don’t want to lose out on opportunities because of computer illiteracy.

But I know, deep in my heart, there is something to be said for the simplicity of life that must exist without so much technology so deeply embedded. I know I waste too much time putzing around online. I know my kids do, too. So whenever I encounter someone like Karl, I try to use it as one might an encounter with someone from another planet. What can I learn from this being who lives so differently than I do? And sometimes that knowledge is this: back off, unplug, live more, click less.

{What I Love} no18: the 811s

I have a confession: I hope to never be a children's librarian.

A few weeks ago at work, we had a meeting with the children's librarians and they told us about all the things they do in their division. As I listened, I felt all my energy being sucked out of my body. Just from listening. I am starting to learn a (perhaps ugly?) truth about myself: while I loved my children when they were little and I loved having my own little people around me and doing all of the little-person stuff that comes along with them, and while I love my little nephews and nieces (including those of the "grand" variety) and I love my friends' kids and I can't wait to have grandchildren—I'm not sure I love kids. Does that sound awful? I don't know. I just so much prefer doing library stuff with teenagers and adults. I desperately don't want to spend my twenty working hours at the library planning story time. Or hosting story time.

Except, there is something magical about working on the children's side of the library. The way that children's faces light up with excitement when they find what they were looking for, or the sound of their childish voices which they try to keep at a whisper but it's so very hard when you've just spied the exact flower fairy book you've always wanted to read! And the way that they are not afraid to hide their happiness and enthusiasm. So I'm glad I get to work on the children's side every once in awhile.

Today was one of those once in awhiles, and I had only been at the children's desk for about two minutes when a patron asked me one of my favorite types of questions: "Are there any books of poetry for children?" Are there! why, yes, right over here in the 811s. My personal favorite section of the dewey decimal system, because it's the home of American poetry. Sometimes when I am feeling restless at my reference desk, I wander over to and browse for a few minutes in the 811s. I pick up a book and read a poem and then put it back or, if the poem was extraordinary, I take the book home with me. But it's not only the poetry I love in the poetry section. It's just the sheer proof of many people working on writing poetry. Of presses putting their faith in poems by publishing them. Of the existence, the physical existence, of poems in the world.

But I confess: the 811s on the children's side have a special place in my heart. I love children's poetry. Love the well-written stuff that's inventive and doesn't use forced rhyme or a sing-songy rhythm and assumes kids are smart enough to be delighted by a clever metaphor or an unusual image. I loved reading children's poetry to my kids and hope that memory sticks with them. I love that we have Shel Silverstein and I love that there are dozens and dozens of other children's poets who are also good.

And I love it when someone asks me that question: Where can I find the poems? Because I can always, always show them!

Do you have a favorite dewey decimal number?

{Edited to add: a list of my favorite children's poets}

Karla Kuskin
Eve Merriam
Douglas Florian
Tony Milton (she did the covers for the US versions of the Harry Potter books, too)
Theodore Roethke's Dirty Dinky and Other Poems (although this one is a little dark)
Jack Prelutsky
Paul Janeczko
Rick Walton
Constance Levy
Karen Jo Shapiro

 

on being a Book Expert

Today at work, I helped a dad and his daughter find a book she was looking for. They'd searched the shelf where it was supposed to be but hadn't found it. When I came over, I found it right away. This happens all the time at the library—and it's not even a sixth sense like some people think. It's just that we know the idiosyncrasies of the Dewey Decimal System and where things are likely to be "hiding." Still, it made me smile when, as I walked away, I overheard the dad say "See, that's why she's the Book Expert and we aren't." (I totally heard it capitalized!)

Of course, I'm far from the Book Expert. I still have to fumble a little when patrons ask me for a title suggestion. Sometimes the fumble comes because I'm drawing a blank—I know what book I wantto recommend but the title won't come to my tongue. (Sometimes I can walk to the shelf and find the book faster than I can remember the title or author, as is always the case with, gah, what's his name...Tony Hillerman!, a writer I find readers of all tastes seem to enjoy.) Other times it's because the genre is my weakness. Time traveling romances? Well, there's Diana Gabaldan...and that's as far as my knowledge goes. Luckily we have databases for that sort of thing, but still: I fumble. I'm not yet one of those expert librarians I've seen at work, who can dash off suggestions as fast as you want them for any genre you can name.

And just to keep me from taking that "Book Expert" comment to heart, not a half hour later one of my colleagues was checking out my staff picks shelf (we each have a shelf where we put books we love). "You usually have good stuff on your shelf," he said, "but tonight it's just sort of, ehhhh." (Smilla's Sense of Snow, The Gravedigger's Daughter, and Memoirs of a Geisha were among my offerings.) As "ehhhh" isn't the goal of the staff picks shelf, this response was not my favorite.

You'd think that working in a library would help me feel like the world is made up of readers. Sometimes it does, like on Saturday when I walked up the stairs behind a twelve-ish-year-old girl who was clutching a copy of The Giver and telling her mom how she couldn't wait to read it again. Or tonight, when a different twelve-ish-year-old walked by my desk with a pile of books, telling her mom she'd been simply starving for something good to read. More often than not, though, the library helps to reinforce what the world seems to be telling me: even though they are important to me, books don't matter a whole lot in the world.

I felt this same sort of discouragement when I was teaching. I imagined that if I just pushed the right buttons (shared the best sort of writing), I'd uncover every. single. student's love of reading, even the ones who thought they didn't love reading. Of course, it didn't happen that way—most of them continued on thinking reading is a waste of time just like they did before they started my class, except they'd had more poetry and essays and Ursula Le Guin shoved down their throats.

If I listen hard enough, it feels like the entire universe is, in fact, sending me a message that the things I love most—namely books, and reading them, and the writing of them, and language well-used—are not important. Publishing's budget shrinks and shrinks. As do libraries'. The amount of people reading on a regular basis grows smaller and smaller. The demand for real books declines as that for ebooks rises. Newspapers close up shop, magazines vanish, the demise of the little literary magazine is upon us. Movies and video games and TV and Facebook are where people like to put their energies.

I get discouraged.

Because, honestly. I do check Facebook from time to time, and I watch TV. I've been known to see a movie. But none of those things makes me as happy as I am when I'm curled up somewhere comfy with a book (and perhaps a beverage). It's even better when the house is empty and I've somehow convinced myself to ignore my other responsibilities and simply read without feeling guilty. (That, along with thighs that didn't touch, is one of the things I miss most about childhood, that opportunity to read all day without feeling one titch of guilt.) Reading makes me happier than almost anything else. And I don't understand why other people—seemingly the majority of the human population—don't enjoy it.

But then, sometimes the universe says otherwise. Like the other night, when I watched Rick Harrison—the dude from Pawn Stars—on David Letterman. Letterman asked him how he got so smart and knows so much about history, and his response astounded me. He explained that he'd been sick a lot as a kid, and so he got in the habit of reading. He learned to love to read, and that love helped him learn and led him to his career.

I loved hearing that. Especially since all day my kids and husband had been teasing me with a line from some kids' TV show: "She likes to read. I like to have fun." The world telling you that what you love is pointless and lame is one thing. Your family teasing you with the same idea is something different. I needed that little reminder that it really isn't the entire universe that thinks that.

And, you know? I'm also not the world's best Book Expert. But I do have some skills. On the off chance that you need some recommendations for good poetry to read? I'm totally your librarian. Or dystopian novels. Or even essays. Plus, I did manage to grow up and become something that, when people friend me on Facebook, completely fits their perception of me. I've loved books all my life, and that I found a way to make a career (of sorts) out of that love is a lucky, happy thing. Most of the known universe might think that books are dumb or lame or a waste of time and resources. But there are some of us still out here, reading away, and those are the kindred spirits I'm glad to have around me.

human bomb

Last night at the library, a patron yelled at me and called me stupid because her e-book (the one she'd just spent $47 on) wouldn't download to her flash drive. Sweet! I was proud of myself for biting back all sorts of snarky remarks (such as "just how smart are you for purchasing an e-book for $47?" and "perhaps you should stop buying $47 e-books, save your money, and buy your own computer so you don't have to use the library's," not to mention "admittedly, I can see why you need this book; it is, after all, about building good relationships"; saying something about the awful color of her lipstick would have been beside the point). But I was also filled with rancor. I was jittery. I had a strange sort of energy flowing through me.

When I got home, I wrote a rude blog post about stupid people and their stupid grammar mistakes that they make on their stupid blogs. That strange energy was a wellspring of vitriol, spouting on my unsuspecting blog readers. As if it was your fault (whomever you are reading this blog) that woman called me stupid. I'd like to say I didn't push "Publish" on that post because I had drained my well of annoyance enough to think clearly. Instead, I just didn't finish writing it because I got a metallic headache and a case of the spins that are both lingering this morning.

I am, though, a little bit more thoughtful this morning, and able to resist publishing my grammar snark. Instead I am thinking about anger and meanness. I cannot say my life has been void of these two qualities. In fact, I am certain that I was able to not snap back at that patron last night because dealing with angry, mean people has taught me how to deal with angry, mean people. Being angry and mean back doesn't accomplish much, aside from mutual destruction. But I also know that if I keep quiet long enough, my own anger builds until I, too, lose control. I know I have a talent for mean, cutting remarks; the ability to craft a pointed retort is part of my repertoire of writing skills. If I instead extrude small shrapnels of malevolence, disguised as only semi-rude comments, I don't get to the dirty-bomb point of explosion.

I'm not immune to getting to that point. Remember my Nordstrom Story, when I banged my credit card on the counter in sheer frustration? The most interesting part to me is how I didn't just want that salesgirl to hurry up. I wanted to break her air of studied nonchalance. I wanted her to know I was annoyed. I wanted her to bear the brunt of my annoyance. That fuel, the combined malignancy of anger and meanness, perhaps rises up in all of us. Sometimes we tamp it down; sometimes it explodes.

It's the headache and the spins, though, that leave me wondering most at this vitriolic power we possess. Even writing couldn't drain my negative energy. My body sucked it up and then expressed it the only way it could, physical pain and dizziness. I find myself wondering at the world, how we bump against each other like a handful of marbles in a pouch, chipping away, making smoothness jagged, rebounding from the impacts with one sphere of influence only to unleash the impact onto someone else. How we continue to scar each other out of the impetus of other people scarring us. As if the whole world is an eternal round of repercussion. Perhaps not the cheeriest of Friday-morning topics, but I still have the spins and the headache and the question, which ultimately is this one: how do you discard the spent fuel of someone else's anger?

Snarky as a Shield: A Story

"Listen," she said, first thing after I'd answered the phone in my calm, quiet librarian voice. "You listen. I want something. Something about Franklin D. Roosevelt. The D. stands for Delano in case you can't find it."

I took a deep breath. Reference encounters that start out with a bossy voice and an insult are rarely my favorite. "OK," I said. "What kind of book do you want about FDR? A biography? Or something about his role in history?"

"Did I ever say 'book,' Honey?" she shot back. "I am 92 years old. I don't want any book. I don't have time nor eyes for books. I want a movie. Something I can watch, you know?"

92?  I thought. You sound like you're 32 and the boss of the world. Glad she wasn't asking for a movie about something obscure, I knew I could find what she needed. We have several movies with FDR in them. "Do you want a DVD or a VHS?" I asked as I sorted the possibilities.

And that moment was the one she lost her inner trenchant cat. "I don't understand that question," she said. Said softly, her voice changing into an old woman's. A 92-year-old woman who was a child in the roaring twenties, when radios, hair dryers, and movies with sound were the new technologies. For an instant I thought about how baffling the world might be to her, and wondered how it might be when I  am 92.

"Well, what kind of machine do you watch movies on?" I asked. "A VHS machine? or a DVD machine?"

"I don't know," she said. "Whatever my grandson set up for me. I just put the thing in and push the buttons and then I can watch movies on my TV."

"What shape is the thing you put in your machine? Is it round, flat, and shiny? Or is it a black rectangle?"

"Oh. Why didn't you say it like that in the first place?" she asked, vitriol back. "I have both of those machines, but the round shiny one isn't working so well."

So I gave her a list of call numbers for VHS movies about FDR. Now I have a story to tell about the sweet (deep down, she was sweet) old woman who didn't know her media type. It's a funny story, but it's also vaguely sad. How much the world has changed! Even just since I was born. It makes me wonder, really: what will the world be like in another fifty years? Where will technology take us? How will we live? I hope I will be able to keep up with progress and change, and not let myself get intimidated. I also hope that, when I am 92, someone will help me decipher technology. Even if I do hold up snarkiness as a shield against bafflement.

Movie-Star Doppelganger

I'm not a star-struck kind of person. People like the Kardashians or Paris Hilton baffle me—I can't figure out why they are famous. But I'm not really enamoured of movie stars, either. There are some I admire, of course. But I also don't think they're any more fabulous than the rest of us. (I am sort of star-struck by several authors, but that's a different post.)

When I was in college, one of my professors started the semester by having us answer a survey—random, slightly-quirky questions that would help him get to know us better. One of the questions was "what movie star do you most look like?" I remember that question because it stumped me...I don't think I look like any movie star. I turned to the person behind me and asked her for a suggestion. She thought for a good long while. "I don't remember her name, but she was in that one movie? About the two girls who were friends and met on the beach? When they were kids? And they grow up in the movie? And then at the end the one you look like dies?"

I'm still glad she didn't think I look like Bette Midler.

Ever since that day in class, when I've bumped against a similar question (like, in, say, a meme), I've stuck with that same answer: I guess if I have to pick a movie star I look like, it would be Barbara Hershey. She's my standard movie-star doppelganger.

Yesterday at work, I was helping an older patron find a magazine. When we finally located it, she thanked me and started to walk away. Then she turned back around and said, "I've been thinking this whole time you've been helping me that you look just like a movie star!"

"Oh, that's nice of you to say," I replied, that Barbara-Hershey thing coming to mind.

"I didn't say anything till now, though, because I couldn't quite remember who it was. But just now I finally did!"

"Well, don't keep me in suspense!" I teased her. "Who do you think I look like?" I completely expected her to say Barbara Hershey. (Or, if she was a blogger, maybe she'd say Lucy, whom I think I also sort-of look like.)

"Oh, I'm sure you've heard this before! You look just like. . . Annette Bening!"

Seriously? Nope, I've never heard that before. Never even thought that before! In fact, I had to google some pictures of her just to make sure I had the right image in my head. It made me laugh.

Because I really, really don't look like a movie star, be it Annette or Barbara or even Mary Elizabeth (Mastrantonio, who's the only other dark-haired actress I could think of off the top of my head).

But I am curious: who's your movie doppelganger?

Stuff I Didn't Expect When I Became a Librarian:

• Librarians don't get to read at work. It's true! I thought I could sit at a desk and read books. Not true! I do read about books sometimes. (Thus making my books-I-want-to-read list grow & grow & GROW.)  I write about them. I sometimes get caught up and read a little bit of a book (like the other day, when I read the entire first chapter of a book whose title is escaping me, only to look up fifteen minutes later completely embarrassed that I'd been so intent on that book I didn't notice the time passing) or a poem in the New Yorker.
• Librarians also don't get to be on the top of a hold list, unless no one else (except another librarian) is waiting for the book. This is sometimes frustrating, but then I remember the 8273 other books I want to read, and I get over it.
• Every time my kids see me carrying a stack of books, someone pipes up: "Mom, I can't believe how much you look like a librarian!"
• The frequency with which little old ladies call with questions like "I need the phone number for my Uncle Earl" and "can you find me a recipe for caramel apples that's guaranteed to work?" Sometimes this annoys me (do you not own a phone book?) but then I remind myself that one day, I'll be a little old lady, baffled by whatever technology we have, and perhaps I will have accumulated a bit of good karma by being patient now.
• Strange men developing an affection for me. Well, one in particular. Even when my body language is screaming "I really don't want to talk to you," he continues trying. I have developed a very practiced icy demeanor and the ability to remember something I urgently need to do in a far library corner when he comes in, but I still get sort of a stomach ache when I see him. On the other hand, it was unexpectedly empowering to rebuff his more unwelcome advances and have my stern words actually have an effect on his actions.
• The cleaning requirement. Dusting shelves, OK, I get that. But who knew that librarians also vacuum? And occasionally deal with bodily fluids? The last time I worked, I cleaned the walls of our elevator because, hello: someone had peed in it. Grody.
• How internally frustrated I get over some computer questions. (By "internally" I mean: I try desperately to not let the frustration show on my face.) "I saved this file on my home computer, how can I open it here?" is a perennial favorite, as are the occassional "I need to recreate _______ but I have never used a word processor before, can you show me how?" demands (fill in the blank: birth/baptism/ marriage/death certificate, passport, divorce papers, junk mail flyers). I try to remind myself that not everyone has a computer dude for a husband or long years of working with computers, but still...can't a LITTLE bit of logic be used?
• My disappointment when a beloved book sits forever on my recommended reads shelf (for example, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks has been sitting there, untouched, for over a week!) and, conversely, my wildly-too-large happiness when all of them fly off the shelf. How cool is it that I get to influence what people ready?
• The frequency with which we find stacks & stacks & stacks of CDs piled up in random corners. You'd think people'd be honest about their music piracy and at least check the CDs out before ripping them to their laptops!
• My very favorite question: "I need to read something off of this list for my English class. Can you help me pick one?" Much as I love being a librarian, some part of me still misses working with teenagers. I like helping them find something they'll love to read. My second-favorite question is "Can you recommend some good poetry to me?" but I've only been asked that three times in nearly as many years.
• How rarely I take my own kids to the library. I've got to work on this! It's just so much easier to pick up a few books for them when I'm already there, but I miss the way it used to feel to go to the library.
• I didn't think my list of books-I-want-to-read could get any longer nor my pile of library books any taller. I was wrong on both counts!
• Just how much I would love my job. It's one of the things I am most grateful for right now, and quite a bit of it isn't even about the money. (I really don't make very much anyway.) I love knowing I have a place to go where everyone likes me and no one rolls their eyes at me or tells me dinner is disgusting or goes all passive-aggressive on me. Everyone I work with is civilized and mellow and kind. And honestly: aside from the old guy saying inappropriate things to me, the most stressful part of my job is having to take a cart of books upstairs on the elevator. Who wouldn't love a job like that?

Anticipation of Serendipity

At work today, I helped an older man locate a book he wanted. After our brief conversation—I'd read one of the books he was holding, Bernard Cornwell's Stonehenge, but none of the author's other books—he wandered off through the stacks, whistling very quietly. Perhaps twenty minutes later, I saw him waiting for the elevator. He had an arm's-height pile of books, and just before the elevator doors opened, I saw him glance down at the pile with an expression I know has been on my own face: sheepishness over the amount conquered by the sheer excitement of all that readerly possibility.

 

But it's been a long, long time since I felt the anticipation of serendipity. When I was a kid, browsing my local, small-town library, I'd show up with only a few specific books in mind. Little Women came home with me frequently, as did Hittie's Hundred Years and The Golden Name Day (o how I wish that one wasn't out of print!) and at least one of Noel Streatfeild's Shoes books. One of those goals accomplished, I'd wander the stacks. What compels a person to slide a book off a shelf? It is hard to explain and probably as personal as fingerprints. I think I, subconsciously, look for something—font, image, color combination—that hints at the feminine.

 

I do know what made me, as a kid and a teenager and a young married person, to put a book back on the shelf, never to be checked out by me: military, detective, or mystery story. I liked reading books set in the past, with girl protagonists. I like reading about England and Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and I am certain that part of my non-book education was realizing that books could be set in places other than Great Britain or America. I'd pile up a stack as high as I could carry to the circulation desk and then take my new treasures home.

 

There's just something about a stack of library books (paper soft and dingy from being read so much, crinkle of the plastic cover, faint bookish smell of ink, dust, paper) that evokes the sense of magical anticipation I saw on the library patron's face today. It's a combination: the book in the pile you're reading for the 27th time—with its assurance of pleasurable spots to return to, it is like revisiting a vacation spot over and over — mixed in with a whole bunch you think have potential for becoming the next spot to revisit. Not all of them will, of course; some will start too slow, or not be what you expected; some you just won't get around to before the due date.

 

But that's the thing with the arm-tall book stack: it is magical because it is possibility. It's not just books in a pile, but a symbol for time that will be spent in a comfortable chair with some sort of beverage and possibly food and maybe a quilt and some comfy socks; certainly, there will be pleasure and escape and the thrall of a good story. That's why we bibliophiles glance down at our piles with such affection. That's why libraries felt magical.

 

Childhood and adolescent reading is all sorts of pleasurable because you can read without restraint. Entire afternoons and evenings were spent, simply reading. Reading until your wrist hurt from holding up your head, sheer-abandoned reading. When I was pregnant with my first child, someone told me that I'd have to give up reading, now that I was becoming a mom. I was horrified: of course, a book is never better than a baby, but still! Reading is as attached to my way of living as are things like personal hygiene and breathing. I would find a way to keep reading, but of course my time for it has diminished. No more sheer abandon, no more entire days lost in a story. No more comfy chairs, but reading time parceled out in minutes. Far fewer books in my stack.

 

And a little less magic.

 

Because I don't, anymore, arrive at the library with the same goals. I rarely reread anything, and hardly ever do I pull a book from the shelf simply because I was intrigued by something on the spine. Instead, I arrive with a list: must find these books. The list comes from all sorts of places. Someone tells me I would like a book, or I read about one on someone's blog, or in a newspaper article, or I might discover titles while looking online for other books. What is lost is the time to simply try something new and unknown; I want to spend the reading time I have with a book I am likely to like. There's still, of course, the pleasure of reading. But the anticipation of serendipity is gone.

 

Not that I would change my job for any other, but working at a library somewhat rubs off the library magic. I can't smell that library smell anymore, and, knowing how everything works, I can't feel the reverent mystery I used to. I walk around the library three days a week; my cells have become part of it. The cost for becoming a part of the library is that you become a part of the library; I am one of the people behind the curtain. I make the library magic for others.

 

Maybe, when I am older (as my patron today was older), I will have time for reading serendipity again. Maybe there will be time for revisiting the old, familiar spots. For now, I will find the library magic in other ways. The patron entered the elevator just as my phone rang, and, the memory of his expression firm in my mind, I answered it. It was my coworker, letting me know that the new Best American Essays had just arrived, and did I want to take it home? Maybe a fluke might have eventually brought that book to me, but even serendipity isn't that skilled. Reading, consistently, books I love (yes, I did take home the B. A. E.), is still the best luck of all.

collide

I'm  99% convinced that the only reason the library offered me my job is that I had both an English degree (meaning that, in theory, I could have reasonable conversation about books, literature, writing, and history, even though I did not illustrate that skill during my interview ) and a secondary ed degree (meaning I could work with teens and be knowledgeable about YA lit). That blending of my bookish part and my teaching history continues to crop up in my job in different ways, but my favorite is when one of my old students wanders in, sees me, and gets that vague "I know you from somewhere" look on her face. I try to make my smile say "Yes, I remember you, too, so come over and say hello," and the students usually do.

It's a strange mixing of worlds. Those students knew me when I was caught up in the contradictory way it felt to be a teacher, a mix of heady control (my classroom, my lesson plans and assignments and exam questions, my desk and supplies and whiteboard, my ideas helping to shape people), heartache (I was not ready, emotionally, to stop being a stay-at-home mom when I had to), exhaustion (I lived on 2-4 hours of sleep most days), pleasure (life revolving around novels, writing assignments, and occasional grammar lessons, plus hanging out with other like-minded adults), frustration (grading papers. Grading papers. Grading papers.), and the deep affection I felt for my students (it took me by surprise, how deep that affection was). When I see them now, I am reminded of how it felt to be that version of myself. Their faces always carry the familiar look, a question: you're not teaching anymore? Sometimes I explain, sometimes I don't. It isn't something easily put into words: how I loved teaching, and how it sapped everything out of me; how it dredged up long-forgotten memories, and how it healed them.

They also remind me of that affection I felt for them. You'd think after five years, I would have forgotten. But their names come to mind as easily as if I'd been asking them about their research papers yesterday. Yet, they're not the same. They were high school seniors when I taught them, dipping their toes in adulthood. Now they are grown ups, swimming in the adult world. The girls from my creative writing class, who I loved like younger and much more stable versions of myself. The AP kids who made me laugh and gave me hope. The students from senior English, most of whom went willingly on the (metaphorical) trips I tried to take them on. Dystopias! Feminism! Poetry! Come with me! They appear, they say hello, and I wonder: what, of the things I tried to teach them, has stuck? Did my hours of stress and hope and exhaustion help them at all? This speaks to one of the primal reasons I became a teacher in the first place. I wanted to do for them what no teachers did for me: I wanted to help them direct their choices to take them along an upward path. That is also one of the primal reasons I had for leaving: I didn't feel like I had accomplished that.

Still, they show up, appearing on some random Thursday evening. We talk, they tell me what they are doing with their lives. We laugh. Our lives come back together for a few minutes, and then they move on again. I am left feeling something that, like everything related to teaching, is difficult to put into words. Like the connections we made in the classroom, discussing English stuff, continues to be a viable strand. Like maybe the affection I hold for them is something they still need, and life will let them find it every now and again.

Like maybe they did learn something from me.