Month: February 2019

My dearest Miss Jane Austen,

As much as I must stick to formality I wish I could call you as I do in my head as simply “Jane”. But decorum dictates that I address you, as the younger daughter, as “Miss Jane Austen” instead of simply “Miss Austen”. I have imagined many conversations that we might have engaged in on many a dreary afternoon. Conversations on the merits of women and the ill-temperedness of men. Conversations of heartbreak and love. But none of this is really the purpose of my letter. I wish to both thank and scold you.

You have raised my standards to impossible heights. For what man can hope to be a Knightly? Who can hope to find a “Bingley”? And what of the charming and witty Tilney?

Darcy never particularly appealed to me but mostly because it took him so long to do anything. Knightly was steadily there. Bingley was openly fascinated and in love. Tilney flirted and teased from the start. But I will give you that you wrote Darcy perfectly for Lizzie. But I digress.

I feel the need to scold you for giving me these thoughts and wishes. These men may have very real character flaws but they still ended up in perfectly happy marriages. You’ve made me wistful for the charmed life these characters lead. And yet, as a 21st century woman, I am not at all fascinated by chamber pots, pumping my own water, or the lack of internet.

More than scold you, and even that I do in the most kind of ways, I wish to thank you. You have perfectly set my heart at ease. For though I often use your books for escape, I find myself in many of your female characters.

Most people would believe me to be an Emma. Self assured. Proud. In control. Wanting to tell others what they should do for romance while staying far from it myself.

But I find myself drawn to her relationship with her friends. They see how silly she can be and yet they forgive and love her. Knightly can scold her and yet she can bear it well. She cares deeply.

I have always had a fondness for Katherine Morland. Her love of novels. Her silly nature. Her naive understanding of the world.

And yet the Tilney’s adore her. She stands up under great scrutiny. She learns things the hard way but the point is she learns! Mr. Tilney loves her in spite of her silliness. He loves her for her naivete! I can relate to wanting that.

Look at Anne Elliot! Ignored by her family but coming alive around others! Look at who she can be with the military men and the Musgroves! She is proven worthy of love!

Look at how she blooms in the time away from her family! She shows, in her interactions with Harville, that she is clever and can hold her own. Though her family may not recognize her value, as shown through her Father and sisters, everyone else thinks her capable and important. I love her.

Elinor and Marianne Dashwood make beautifully splendid juxtaposition. I immediately relate to Marianne. Passionate and wanting everyone around me to feel that same passion. Refusing to be silenced! And yet, she finds that under the quiet care of a patient and loving man her edges are smoothed and her world is righted.

Elinor finds that emotion is not always a bad thing. She brings rightness to the world around her. By her presence there is peace in their cottage. I wish to be both of these women.

And now for Lizzie and Jane. You named her after yourself. I wonder if this is because you wish you could have her life? Did you write yourself a happy ending? I’m not sure, but I love Jane. Her ability to see good in all people. I love Lizzie. Her devotion to her family and her ability to see past her mother’s silliness. She has to endure a lot to finally realize she was wrong, but when she realizes it, she admits it.

I wish I was the perfect conglomeration of all these women. They are not the best of women but I think they reveal something about the heart of a woman. That she is fierce, loyal, and important. That there is beauty to be found in the quietest of us, Anne, and the loudest of us, Emma and Lizzie. So thank you My dearest Miss Jane Austen. You have added beauty to my world and given me women to aspire to be.

-B

Dear YA Fiction,

I’m breaking up with you.

At least emotionally I am.

You ride on the wave of teen angst and drama.

You show happily ever afters.

You show hard things that work out.

You show dreams coming true.

My reality was much different.

I was raised by you. My idea of love, friendship, and college. My ideas of life were shaped by the things I read.

Looking back at my Teen years you did me very few favors. You hurt me more than anything else. The hours I spent crying over the broken heart of a character. The hours I spent crying because someone was abandoned in a book were real. I felt your pain. I felt your betrayals. I felt the joy when things worked out. I loved getting to feel those things but I’ve grown up now.

I know real life is much different. I know things don’t always work out. I know that the ending of the story isn’t always “happily ever after”.

I also know that when I look at the Teen fiction currently being published I am disappointed. You major in Girl characters, which is beautiful, but what am I supposed to hand the Teen boy coming into my library who doesn’t want to read their 15^th book in a row with a female main character. You major in drama and relationships. What am I supposed to hand the boy who has read the Michael Vey series and the Pendragon series? They don’t want another book with a romantic relationship.

What about the girl who doesn’t believe in happily ever afters? Her life has shown her that those don’t exist. I can hand her “The Hate U Give” and “The Compound” but what then? What can I hand her when she’s tired of Rom Coms and Chick lit?

I love that we have more diverse books but Diversity shouldn’t mean that we stop writing anything for your already loyal and devoted readers. I look through the YA reviews online and I wonder where I’ll find books for these kids. Where will I find things to interest them? I can steer them towards Classics and Adult Literature but there is something beautiful about YA Lit and you are in a position to lose a lot of your readers.

I had a kid come in and want something funny. He was a Teen now. He loved the iFunny series by James Patterson but he was ready for something Teen related. What can I hand him? Where are the Teen books that make you laugh? Where are the Teen books that are lighthearted but not Rom Coms?

I love you YA Lit but you’ve lost me emotionally. My emotions are overdrawn. Don’t forget about me. Don’t forget about the kids who want something different. Don’t stop writing books for us because we are striving for Diversity. Diversity doesn’t mean we stop writing books that will appeal to this group. Diversity means we add, not subtract. I believe in you YA Fiction. You can do this.

-B

I love books! I read 156 of them last year and I don’t regret a second of any of that reading!

Missed most of the conversation at a family get together because I was reading= totally worth it.

A friend wants to hang out but I’m only 100 pages from the end of my book= sorry friend. Another time.

Real. Life. Issues. ….. If you’re a bookworm.

I love being on Goodreads.com and being able to look back at all the books I read last year. In doing this I realized there has been a significant change in my reading habits since I began this profession of “Librarian”.

I’ve always loved different cultures and people who are different than myself but I have seen a significant uptick in the amount of diverse books I’m reading. I’m not just referring to diversity of skin color, but diversity of style, character, setting, mental illness, socioeconomic status, and culture.

When I was in High School I read Chick-Lit. Aka sappy sweet romances that often, upon closer inspection, have no bearing on real life. I was quite proud of myself for moving beyond that this year.

So I present to you- my favorite Teen books that I read last year.

FANTASY- A riveting tale of adventure, mischief, and self-awareness. The current runs through the entire universe. And everyone is given a “gift”. The main character is riddled with chronic pain ( I have my own theories as to why her “current gift” has manifested this way). Can she find a way past her pain and free herself from her brother’s tyrannical grip?

INDIAN CULTURE- Absolutely adorable! Dimple doesn’t know she is being set up for an arranged marriage by her family. Rishi does. As Rishi approaches Dimple to declare how excited he is about their impending nuptials, Dimple does what any sane girl would do- throws her coffee on him and runs away. This fun tale shows the beauty of Indian culture and shows that maybe, just maybe, our parents occasionally do have our best interests at heart.

LOW INCOME- Awkward girl who no one likes. Korean boy who has the only empty seat on the bus. 80s. Need I say more? Eleanor and Park have no reason to be friends, no reason to like each other. So why does Eleanor start looking forward to her mornings on the bus with Park? Is it just to escape her evil stepfather? And why does Park start to look forward to seeing Eleanor every morning on the bus? So what if she smells like vanilla? She only has like two different shirts. And yet, there’s just something about her.

MENTAL ILLNESS- I went into this looking for an adorable book that would bring some of the life of fandoms into literature. What I got instead was a punch to the gut. Eliza isn’t just the author of a famous web comic, a secret she guards with her life, she’s also the one battling the monsters of anxiety that knock at her door continually. Can she find a way to tell the world that she’s really the author? Can she find a way to keep her demons at bay?

SET IN BUSHWICK – I’m not ashamed to say that I am a Pride and Prejudice junkie! I love Austen and most every retelling of Austen I have ever read. That being said, I didn’t have high hopes for this book. I enjoyed the sneak peak I read on Epicreads.com but I didn’t have the highest hopes. Man was I wrong. Ibi Zoboi brings to life the complexity of neighborhoods that are changing, pride in who you are and where you come from, and the importance of looking past first impressions.

FANTASY- I love fairy tales. I was excited about this retelling but I was expecting to hate the Sea Witch. You’re supposed to right! We’ve all seen the Disney version and we know Ursula is evil! So why did I love this book! The main character was so. much. more. than. evil. I loved the depth and complexity. Set in Scandinavia it was a brand new world to come to life! I loved how it switched between narrators and you saw the fullness of everyone’s depth.

MENTAL ILLNESS- Absolutely beautiful. John Green has done it again. Never have I read a book that dealt with the reality of severe anxiety in such a beautiful and complex way. He didn’t oversimplify things. He didn’t downplay things. He didn’t make her purely a victim. It was beautiful.

THRILLER- I don’t usually like thrillers. I feel things deeply and this book was a thriller. So why did I read it? A teen’s recommendation of course! One of my regulars suggested this to me so I read it on a whim. What I got was a psychological thriller with twists, turns, lack of sleep, questions, and crazy dreams. It was amazing!

So there you go. My top recommendations from 2018 of favorite books. Read some. Tell me some of your favorites!

Keep Sparkling!

-B

To toss or not to toss, that is the question!

Libraries tend to be the dumping ground for a lot of people. The teacher is retiring and decides to donate all of her classroom decorations going back to the 70s to the Children’s Department. Someone’s children are growing up and they have toys they don’t want anymore….. that are broken. You have a doll collection going back to the 60s that you want to let us display but then also want us to store for you until you decide you want to look at it again 3 years later.

The Public Library is just that- public. And if you ask any Librarian they will probably tell you that their library is underfunded. Most librarians in the U.S. make less an hour than fast food workers.

If they can’t pay the librarians very much, they also can’t fund all of the thousands of programs and ideas the librarians have. So donations are appreciated! So much! Donations can be such a blessing!

But they can also be a curse. We can receive a lot of sub-par things. We never want to make our patrons feel as if we don’t appreciate them but sometimes the things that are donated aren’t worth keeping. Just because it has sentimental value to you, doesn’t mean it’s a good quality object. Just because your kid loved this toy that is super loud and has to have 17 D batteries to run and sits at 4 feet tall, doesn’t mean it’s a feasible toy to keep in the library space.

So donate away! We appreciate it! Give us things! BUT don’t be upset when you come back three years later and ask to see that yellow lamp covered in a paisley lampshade that you had since you were a little girl but you donated it to us….. and it’s gone. We may have upcycled it. We may have used it for an event and then stuck it in storage. We may have decided we didn’t have room for it and given it to the local thriftstore.

We appreciate your donations but we really only have so much space. My motto tends to be- If we haven’t used it in the last three years, toss it.

We recently went through a construction process in our children’s department and we went through EVERYTHING we had and purged. We had a giant pile at the end! We had heads for kids to wear to act out The 3 Little Pigs but we haven’t used them in over 5 years. They were cute. They were Paper Mache. They were donated by a teacher. But we just didn’t have the space anymore. And honestly, we didn’t need to feel guilty about getting rid of them!

If you’re a librarian who needs to purge and get rid of things that have been donated, don’t feel guilty. Understand that you are doing your best and, ultimately, you are the one who knows what your department needs, not the patron. The patron doesn’t always know best. The patron doesn’t organize and run your programs. The patron shows up for the program- you do all the work. So give yourself permission to purge. Give yourself permission to breathe. You do a lot for your patrons. Purge your workspace for you.

Keep Sparkling

-B