Review and reading

My review of Quiet, Please, Scott Douglas' memoir of working in a public library, is in today's edition of Solares Hill and on The Citizen website. I liked the book, but not as much as I'd hoped to. But it's still a great behind-the-scenes look at life in the library. And definitely check out Scott's blog. I also FINALLY finished Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else, a historical novel about Nikolas Tesla and a young hotel chambermaid. It's mostly set in the early 1940s in New York though it contains extended flashbacks, mostly to Tesla's life. I liked it a lot and hope we may see Hunt down here for the 2009 Literary Seminar. It's going to be a great one, and there's lots of reading to do. Lots and lots.

And some really great news: We're getting a lot of new titles onto the shelves at the college library, from donations and other sources. Every day I go in and find a new book I just have to read. Since I don't finish a book a day, this is a bit of a problem. But at least they're library books so I have to give them back and they won't add to the book storage issues already occupying my house. (And I always assume people know this but many don't: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A COLLEGE STUDENT TO BORROW BOOKS FROM US!!!!!)

A few notes

After a good start to the year, my reading pace slowed considerably -- but I wanted to make a few notes. 1) I just finished "Quiet, Please" by Scott Douglas, which I'll be reviewing very soon for Solares Hill. I found the book an enjoyable read, though my expectations were raised a little too high because I so like the author's blog, Speak Quietly. Still, good to see young librarians out there telling stories. I'm about halfway through The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt, which I like a lot so far despite the fact that the author seems to be the hot new thing, went to my high school, is a couple years younger than me AND lives in Brooklyn. (Also, check out her website from the link on her name -- it's very cool.) And last weekend, I accompanied a bunch of birders to the Tortugas (for more on that trip, you can read my husband's column in the Citizen) -- the trip reminded me of a book I liked a lot and reviewed for Solares Hill a few years back: "Assassination Vacation" by the multi-talented Sarah Vowell. Vowell writes about being seasick on the trip to see Dr. Mudd's cell at the Tortugas but the really good parts of the book, to me, were about lesser-known assassins, namely the guys who shot McKinley and Garfield.

Let's eat ... food!

Just can't get away from the book reviewing habit -- recently I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan's most recent book, In Defense of Food, at work (yes, it's in the collection of the FKCC Library!) and found it a quick, engaging and interesting read -- so engaging I started taking notes. Next thing I knew, I was reviewing it for Solares Hill and the review appears in the current edition (that link takes  you to a PDF of the entire issue). The review is also available on the Citizen's website, where Solares Hill's book review appears each week, down at the bottom of the page. The book is a great, easily understood and entertaining take on America's dysfunctional attitude toward food. Plus Pollan's up there in my personal nonfiction pantheon -- along with the likes of Calvin Trillin, Ian Frazier, and Tony Horwitz (hmmm ... must add some women to that list*). I'll read almost anything these guys write and it's almost all great. Check it out -- here at the college library, from your local bookstore or from the Monroe County Library system -- they have two copies, in Marathon and Big Pine, both currently checked out. And here's to healthier eating!

*I feel compelled to add here that it's not like I don't read and admire women who write nonfiction -- Joan Acocella, Margaret Talbot, Melissa Fay Greene -- "Praying For Sheetrock" is one of those books that every nonfiction writer should read every year -- and of course my personal pantheon of Annie Dillard and Madeleine Blais -- I just think of them as more literary and less reporterly. I wonder if that's some sort of internalized sexist classification system. Got kind of a love-hate thing with Susan Orlean -- for instance, I thought "The Orchid Thief" was one of the world's great magazine articles, but stretched too thin as a book.

Cool library links of the day

Just like the excellent library-themed wedding invitations, this comes from public librarian-turned-author Scott Douglas, who not only has a great blog but is also a contributor to McSweeney's, with this list of reasons to be -- or not to be -- a librarian. How cool is that? He's also got a book coming out soon -- if we're lucky, the publisher is sending Solares Hill a review copy and I'll get to review it there.

Excellent library links of the day

Today's recommended read is a blog post (take that all you blog haters) about a librarian's wedding and their excellent themed wedding invitations. I'll have to nose around the Internets some more and find the online group for old library equipment fetishists -- I love the old catalogue cabinets and check-out cards and all that stuff. One of the things I love about my new job at the FKCC Library is we stamp books the old-fashioned way. (We also scan them with a bar code reader, no worries.) But this way you know when it's due. And on the celebrity side of breaking library news, the Hollywood Reporter reports that Emilio Estevez is set to star in a movie called "The Public," which he wrote -- it's described as "a social drama set in a public library."