Fiction

This might kill my chances of ever working in a public library, but I just can't get myself to read much fiction anymore.  This isn't something new for me; in high school, I remember telling a teacher (to his amusement) that I only read non-fiction, because I had no time for fiction.  Weirdly, that's still true.  With the exception of Dorothy L. Sayers’ mysteries, I haven't really and truly enjoyed much fiction in my adult life.  I've read a lot of it -- things that I've picked up myself and books my English-major ex-husband had -- but my habit of not quite finishing a book or skipping around in it prevailed.  I'm still doing that.  When I got two Jonathan Franzen books cheap at the library book sale -- The Corrections and Freedom -- I thought, "Finally, I'll sit down and read these."  But I haven't.  I wasn't very impressed with The Corrections.  It got better as it went along, but the parents at the beginning reminded me so much of the Dursleys (from Harry Potter) that I actually found them funny.  I don't think that was the author's intent.  I liked Freedom more, as I skipped around in it, but I don't think I'll ever have the time to really read it.  Probably the author would say that you can't really know a book until you actually read it.  Probably he's right. 

Part of my problem is that I have very little tolerance for things like romance novels or "women's fiction."  I didn't make it past the second page of The Choice by Nicholas Sparks.  While I've tried to keep up with what's happening in fiction so I can build a small collection at our school library, I do that "keeping up" mainly by reading reviews.  Another part of my problem is that there's very little fiction out there that relates to real life, or at least my real life.  Some people would say that's the point; after all, the best-selling fiction is romance (at least as e-books).  But I wish there were space between the nouveau-Roth writing of Franzen and the blandness of Sparks to put a novel written with the "mature" (you know what that means) reader in mind.  Novels that addressed faith but weren't of the "Amish" variety.  Or novels that tackled the downright weirdness of life but knew that weirdness doesn't necessarily mean O'Connor characters.  (Real people are weird enough.)  Or novels that realized that most people don't have that many partners in the space of a lifetime, let alone 300 pages.  So far I haven't found any novels like that.

But if I did, I still probably wouldn't have time to read them.

Library, Become What You Are

The title of this post is a play on Pope John Paul II's exhortation, "Family, become what you are!"  In other words, what we are called to be is a great thing, and the seeds of that great thing are within the institution itself.

You can't go two links into the blogosphere these days without encountering someone bemoaning the fate of libraries.  "Everything is online," "Reference is dead," "Budgets are slashed," "Dewey is outdated" ...  Sometimes I find it very discouraging to hear how librarians talk about their profession.  Yes, times are tough, and a little over a year ago, I was one of the jobless.  So I don't take the doom-and-gloom lightly.  But here are some thoughts from another perspective:

1. Libraries are not football stadiums.  Our buildings are never going to be filled with cheering throngs, no matter how many "gaming @the library" nights we have.  Ours is not a glamorous profession, and it never will be.  So what?  Lots of professions aren't glamorous -- think plumbers -- but they sure are necessary.

2. Libraries are not bookstores.  Libraries carry more than what's new plus a smattering of classics.  Almost all libraries -- good ones, and even some not-very-good ones -- have a wide range of books, both new and older.  We have the big picture in mind when it comes to books, and we think in terms of decades, not just the best-seller list.  That keeps libraries relevant even when bookstores are closing.

3. Books are not dead.  Yes, e-books are more popular all the time.  Did we mean what we said with all those "Read" posters?  Or was it, Just read in a format that allows me to keep my job?  Snarkiness aside, the oohs and aahs over e-readers are often followed by "but I still love reading paper books too."  E-books have a place, and libraries need to very quickly figure out how to integrate e-books with their traditional collections.  Collecting and lending are some of what we do best; now we just have to do it with different formats.

4. Dewey is not dead.  (Well, he is, but DDC isn't.)  Libraries are not the only places that organize information.  Everyone organizes -- bookstores and Walmart and Google.  Libraries (at least in theory) are just better at it than everyone else.  Yes, better.  Have you ever been looking for something in a bookstore and been able to browse a list of their subject headings?  Are you able to find whatever you need in Walmart by those titles at the top of the aisles?  Or do you need to hunt down an employee and ask for help?  Do library catalog searches return as many results as Google searches?

The one thing that libraries do best is organize.  Somewhere along the way we've forgotten that we developed (and continue to develop) the tools that organize collections better than anyone else.  Picture the New York Public Library as a bookstore: could it function -- with customers having any chance of finding anything on their own -- with the usual bookstore organization system?  We are throwing away our birthright for a mess ...   A good catalog, done well, is superior to any type of tagging, even though that has its own value.  But too few librarians have been taught how to catalog or why it's important.  (And I'll include myself in there somewhat too.)

5. The degree is not worthless.  I'm amazed at the number of library school graduates who denigrate their education.  Assuming you paid for it, and probably paid quite a bit for it, and you're trying to get a job by having earned the degree, what good can come of telling the world how easy and worthless it was?  I only have one graduate degree, so I don't know what other fields require, but I actually did work for my degree. Yes, it's not physics.  But everyone knows that.  And yes, there were things I learned on the job that I never learned when getting my degree.  But without my degree, I couldn't do the job I do today.

Half a top-ten list.  I'll finish there and call it a night.

Life's a Beach

That picture is supposed to be my beach bag, with a copy of American Libraries and my sunscreen sticking out. But the sun was so bright, that I really couldn't see the picture as I took it. So it doesn't have the greatest composition.

We had a great time at the beach, even though our time there was very short. My life lately has been too much like the University of Chicago -- where fun goes to die -- just work, chores, work, chores, etc., and I finally got tired of that and decided to plan a very last-minute trip for my rare three-day weekend. The trip didn't take up the whole weekend, and I spent one afternoon here at home planting flowers and weeding in the yard. That was fun, too, and it was great to just relax and not have to worry about getting to work.

I hadn't been to a beach, or even had a swimsuit on, for probably 25 years at least. I can't swim, so there's not much reason for me to visit the water. Or so I thought. Lying on the sand, listening to the waves, and walking along the shore, feeling the sand between my toes and the water splashing my legs, was so incredibly relaxing and refreshing, that I'm determined to go back, if not to the same place, then at least to similar smaller beaches, and to spend more time outdoors whenever possible.

Time

Well, the summer is more than a third over, and all of those "Where has the time gone?" questions are popping up. I had a noble goal of attempting to practice before work -- at the very least, two days a week -- with more practice on the other days after work, and that combination has rarely happened. It's not that I'm sleeping in; with the exception of a couple of days of oversleeping, I've been getting up at the usual time. But household duties are greater (morning is my usual "chore" time), and there always seems to be some errand to run after work. After that is supper, and pretty soon it's too late to do anything except go to bed.

So I struggle along. I'm trying to learn more music than I need right now -- Christmas music, for one thing, as well as some of the more difficult pieces I had put off earlier. I'm determined to play more Bach, but learning it takes so much time, and daily practice is almost a necessity with Bach. And if I practice something (say Christmas music) for a few days, but then miss practicing it for a week to work on music I need for the service coming that weekend, then all that earlier practice is almost wasted, because I have to go back and relearn everything. The cycle is unending, and it's very hard to keep up.