Staff Picks or What to Read Next

The library staff has an ongoing display of our favorite books for readers to choose from, because finding the next good book to read is always a challenge and a familiar question at the library. In fact, when librarians go anywhere and admit to being a librarian, that is among the first questions we get.
"Can you recommend a good book?"
To which we answer, "it depends, what do you like to read?"
The other common question is, "I thought libraries and librarians were unnecessary now that everything is on the internet."
The answer to that is, "Why, no, we're still here."

My favorites from the shelves above are 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid' by Bill Bryson, the author's really funny memoir of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa. We recommend this title often and almost everyone reports back that they loved it. 'The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry' by Gabrielle Zevin is a short, sweet love story about a bookstore owner. Each chapter begins with a quote from a short story which will lead you to more good authors to read.  Spencer Quinn's series about Chet the Dog are excellent for dog lovers and mystery lover and are very funny, as told by the dog Chet. Follow Chet on Facebook for more canine hijinks and fun.

In this shot above, my pick is 'Merry Hall' by Beverley Nichols, a 1950's memoir by an avid English gardener who buys an old manor house and revives its garden with the help of his skilled, but opinionated gardener. Lovers of P.G. Wodehouse will like the whole series.

'Packing for Mars' by Mary Roach is the very funny and determined science writer's research into what it will take to put a person on Mars. Ms. Roach tries the zero-gravity experience at NASA with predictably nauseating results and stores her own urine in the frig to her husband's disgust. She discusses the realities of what a body must endure for such a long space voyage. 'Pompeii' by Robert Harris is a terrific book of historical fiction about the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. You will notice another Bill Bryson book: 'A Walk in the Woods.' This is laugh-out-loud funny and the audio version is terrific. Be prepared to be caught laughing while you commute and listen to it. Speaking of humor, but of a slightly more farcical, hyperbolic (I'm trying not to say raunchier) type, Carl Hiaasen is a friend of Dave Barry, enough said if you like the really crazy humor coming from Florida's journalists-turned-novel-writers, which I do. And you will notice another book about a bookstore owner, 'Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore' for fans of 'A.J. Fikry' (see above) but with a slightly techy/fantasy/futuristic plot twist.
Happy Reading.

Sure Bets for Readers

What to Read: Sure Bets (originally posted March 27, 2013) 

or how does the librarian know what her patrons want to read next?

'Sure bets' according to librarian Joyce Saricks in her 'At Leisure' column in the December 1, 2012 Booklist are,
'titles and sometimes authors that appeal to a wide range of readers, that fly off displays, and that we turn to when our minds go blank and we can't think of anything to suggest to a waiting reader. These aren't current best-sellers but, rather, older titles we treasure.'

However you define it, every reference librarian likes to have certain books to recommend for each type of reader that will be available on the shelf. That's why bestsellers don't fit into this category very well. If a patron NEEDS a book to read RIGHT NOW, recommending a book with a weeks-long waiting list is probably not a helpful suggestion.

Of the books and authors Ms. Saricks recommends, I agree that for fun non-fiction, Mary Roach and Bill Bryson might work for readers who like science (Roach's 'Packing for Mars' is very funny and informative) and who like just plain laugh-out-loud writing (Bryson's 'A Walk in the Woods' has been very well-received by many patrons I have recommended it to.)

Here are some 'sure bets' I have recommended and heard back from readers who enjoyed them:

For readers who want an action/adventure type of mystery, Stuard Woods' Florida-based mysteries deliver a good page-turning experience with a tough-guy edge and a little sex but not too much gore.

For readers who like dark mysteries, try Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch police procedurals set in Los Angeles. Readers who liked the TV series 'The Wire' would be a good fit for this author.

For readers who want cozy, reassuring, character-based novels, our Library Director has had success recommending Mary Ann Shaffer's 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel pie Society'. Unfortunately the author died before the book was published so this is a stand-alone title. But if readers like this historical cozy, they might enjoy Adriana Trigiani's 'Big Stone Gap' series based in West Virginia.

Trigiani falls almost in the 'chic lit' category but without the shopping aspect. For more good writing in the chic lit genre, try anything by Jennifer Weiner.

Some readers are WWII fans, for them recommend 'Unbroken, a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption' by Lauren Hillenbrand.

My favorite genre is cozy mystery, so if I find a fellow cozy fan who has not yet discovered Alexander McCall Smith's 'Number One Ladies Detective Agency' series, I can feel confident that reader is going to have a lot of good reading ahead of her.

Putting the right book in the right hands at the right time that suits the reader's mood just that that moment is a great feeling. What are some of your sure bets?

How do you call your children home for dinner?

Because I'm leaving for a few days to see my grown children who live out-of-state, I thought I would post a few old blog posts. My children and I talk and text by cell phone, we use 'Facetime' (video by cell phone or computer), we share online calendars, and follow each other on 'Facebook' and 'Twitter', but I just can't remember how I got them to come home for dinner when they were young. Probably a prearranged time and/or the old land-line telephone. But here's how it was when my friends and I were growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Excerpt from an old post about Bill Bryson's books  
http://bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com/2007/02/more-on-bill-bryson.html

"My online book group just finished reading and discussing Bryson's latest book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a memoir. Everyone in this group is part of the baby boomer generation, born in the early fifties. His recollections of growing up in the fifties in DesMoines, Iowa rang a bell for all of us. Literally, we had quite a discussion of what kind of bells and whistles our parents used to get us home by dinner after a day of unsupervised outdoor play in the neighborhood.
Here are some of our memories:
" kids [were more] independent and less scheduled. My father had an old US Army gong, probably WWI vintage, God knows where he got it, that he used to clang to get us all home for dinner. It was kind of embarrassing."
"My father (ex-marine) had a bosun's pipe, a form of whistle, that was very distinctive and also very embarassing! By age 10 or 11 my friends and I had a "roaming radius" of about a mile and a half in any direction from our houses, by foot or by bike."
"My mother had a two-tone whistle she did – and she could do it today and we would all come running. Our next door neighbor had a simple whistle which she blew in different codes depending on which kid she wanted. We all knew each others parent calls – and we all knew who needed to go home. "
" in Gladwyne our lunch and dinner call was the firehouse siren at noon and 6 pm. In Ardmore, we had to be home by the time the church bells finished ringing at 6 pm."
"We had an honest to god boater's FOG HORN to bring us home! It looked like a New Year's horn only was made of metal that my mother painted blue and made a much louder noise! One toot - time to come home. Two toots - hurry Three toots all at once - emergency, get home at once. I think my brother has the fog horn but I can't imagine any kid being far enough away to need one now."
That's the problem, no one would need any of these bells, whistles, horns or church bells these days. Kids are scheduled, tracked and on the electronic leash known as a cell
phone."

Confession: that was my father who had the Army gong and the bosun's whistle family lived nearby, but we knew the difference and it was only years later that I met the bosun's whistle person and realized we had lived near each other. We must have all been like well-trained dogs, just a-waitin' that sound to call us home. And of course, at the end of dinner, our ears were perked for the sound of the ice-cream truck bell. And school was controlled by bells that told us when to go from class to class. I think some schools have dispensed with the bell system. Why am I feeling like Andy Rooney now? Are my eyebrows growing?

My Year of Reading 2013, July - December

As promised in the last post, My Year of Reading 2013, here is a list of my favorite books read in 2013 from July through December.
July was a good reading month with several favorites. Silent Voices, a Vera Stanhope mystery by Ann Cleeves, a British mystery series that always delivers,  is a bit of a departure from the usual 'cozy' style mysteries that I read for pure comfort and escapism. The hard-drinking, brooding Vera Stanhope character and her homicide cases and the cold, Northumberland landscape are portrayed true to the books in the PBS series Vera.
Also in July, I enjoyed Sue Grafton's Kinsey and Me, which includes some previously unpublished short stories and autobiographical essays. My review can be read on the blog here.
For August, let's pick some Jersey shore beach reading: Mad Mouse by Chris Grabenstein, which finds Iraq war veteran John Cepak solving  a murder on the amusement ride at a fictional Jersey shore town that sounds a lot like Seaside Heights. Read any of these mysteries based 'down the shore' as we allegedly say in 'Joisey' for a fun escape to the boardwalk.  Stephanie's review of summer reading including the John Cepak series can be read here.
From the dark, brooding U.K. mysteries to the light, sunny American ones, September's pick is humorous essays by Quinn Cummings, Pet Sounds, stories about her household devoted to nurturing eccentric pets that pet lovers everywhere will appreciate. Read my review here and be sure to read Ms. Cummings Notes from the Underwire if you enjoy here comic style.
In October, I discovered a new mystery series: Sydney Chamber and the Shadow of Death, the Grantchester mysteries by James Runcie. This series of two so far is set in an English village near Cambridge in the early 1950's. The review and related recommendations can be read here. A book that goes well with the Grantchester mysteries, a memoir set in 1950's U.K.: Sunlight on the Lawn, the third in the 'Merry Hall' series, is my other pick for October. Recommended for gardening enthusiasts and possible even the legions of Downton Abbey addicts looking for period pieces about living in grand houses in England of bygone days.

In November, the publishing world came forth with something I've been waiting for forty years to read: a new Bertie and Jeeves adventure. True, it's not by the master himself, P.G. Wodehouse, but Sebastian Faulks was picked by the great man's heirs to carry on the tradition and I think he did a really good job with Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. All of Plum's fans will want to read this and I hope you agree it's great to be back in the world of Bertie's bumbling and Jeeves saving the day with his fish-powered brain. Terrific.

Finally, in December I generally read nothing but very light, escapist, funny mysteries. So I revisited the 'Peculiar Crimes Unit' series and it didn't disappoint. The Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler has the usual crazy mix of London history and eccentric police detectives from the PCU. I just reviewed that right after Christmas right before tidying up my book journal for another year.
Happy reading in 2014 everyone!

My Year of Reading 2013

My book journal lists 70 books read in 2013. Here are my favorites from January to June. The second half of the year will appear in the next post.

January: The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje was quirky and nostalgic and beautifully written. I recommended it to the library Friday book group where feelings were decidedly mixed about this semi-autobiographical novel by the author of The English Patient. If you liked Ondaatje's autobiography, Running in the Family, definitely read The Cat's Table. Here is my blog post review of The Cat's Table.
My other January favorite was Safehouse, the first stand-alone novel by Chris Ewan, author of 'The Good Thief's Guide to...' mystery series. Mr. Ewan may feel as though I am stalking him as my posts and tweets and Facebook likes of his work are piling up and he often politely responds. But when you need a diverting, page-turning, entertaining, funny mystery or a good spy yarn to read or to recommend to a patron, you can rely on Chris Ewan's writing. Read my review of the spy thriller Safe House here.

Continuing with the English spy/thriller genre in February,  Secret Asset by Stella Rimington about Liz Carlyle, an MI5 agent, is my top pick. I would recommend it to fans of the British spy genre and to fans of the TV show Covert Affairs, which is about a young American woman/CIA agent.

March has two favorites, both falling in the quirky/one-of-a-kind category. The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. In fact, I reviewed them together under the heading Two Quirky Books. Both books featured old men who are old enough to defy convention and expectations, a cliche perhaps, but well-done with humor and mysterious plots that move at a good clip.

April's favorite was Dave Barry's Insane City. Laugh out loud funny, of course, and, I should mention, kind of 'course' too in places. Be warned, his descriptions of South Florida thugs are pretty disgusting, but funny, disgustingly funny.

May's choice is When the Devil Drives, by Christopher Brookmyre, a noir thriller set in Glasgow, Scotland. My review of the author's first book in the series, Where the Bodies are Buried , can be read here.

In June, I discovered the Walt Longmire western mysteries by Craig Johnson. Cold Dish was my first read and favorite of the month. Read my review of the series and TV show here.

Blog favorites: 'The Psychopath Test'

The recent May 18, 2013 release of the 'DSM - 5', the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, has been met with some controversy. To read more about the new DSM - 5, read Lizzie Crocker's article in the Daily Beast. In general the criticism is that the listed diagnoses have changed, either been eliminated or added; and the widely held belief that normal human behavior is being assigned a mental health diagnosis. Whether you agree, disagree, don't care or don't know, as a reference librarian I find it fascinating that any new addition of a reference book can stir up readers' feelings to such a degree. When we receive the latest edition of most books in our reference collection, the event is marked only by the reference staff logging it in and shelving it. All this led me to reposting my review of a very funny non-fiction title that does discuss the medicalization of normalcy.

Are You a Psychopath? Take this Test

The Psychopath Test, a journey through the madness industry by Jon Ronson starts with the author, a journalist, being asked to find out who anonymously sent a cryptic self-published book to many psychiatrists worldwide, which then leads him somehow, circuitously to a Scientologist who gets him into Broadmoor Prison to interview a criminally insane inmate who claims he's not insane. Scientologists famously do not believe in psychiatry so they advocate for the prisoner. The author then goes on to learn about the Hare Psychopathy Checklist at a workshop lead by the list's creator Bob Hare himself. Armed with his newly acquired psychopath-spotting ability, the author goes all over the world for a year or so interviewing both diagnosed and suspected psychopaths and mental health professionals while dipping into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders and exploring the latest top psychiatric diagnoses like bipolar disorder in children. The irony of his research is that Ronson presents himself as an anxious neurotic; he worries a lot about being tracked down by some of the killers he meets and he worries about whether he might have some psychopathic tendencies, constantly referring back to the checklist to self-diagnose.  The book is about at least two topics: psychopaths, or course, but also how mental illness came to be diagnosed by checklists in the DSM and the subsequent increase in number of diagnoses of mental disorders and the increased development of drugs to treat them. That is an ambitiously broad range of topics to cover in only 275 pages. What is  psychopathy? How do we diagnose it? Why has there been an increase in the number of mental illnesses listed in the DSM which seem increasingly close to a normal state?  Are there more psychopaths in positions of great power, like CEO's of corporations?  Ronson raises a lot of questions, so if you are interested in related titles, you could read the following books: (call #'s follow the title)

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (Ref 616.89 Dia)
The books of psychiatrist Oliver Sacks
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, which is not about psychiatry or madness, but about medicine's use of checklists.(610.28 Gaw)
Opening Skinner's box: great psychological experiments of the twentieth century by Lauren Slater (150.72 SLA)

Related websites:


Laura Miller's review in Salon
Robert Hare's website 

original posted by Anne
http://bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com/2011/06/are-you-psychopath-take-this-test.html

The Cat's Table

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje (2011)

In 1954 eleven year old Michael boards the ship Oronsay for a three week voyage from his native Ceylon to England to be reunited with his mother. Michael and two other young boys roam the boat unsupervised in search of adventures and run into trouble and mysteries almost daily. This could be described as a coming of age novel with many autobiographical elements, but it's also about the role of memory and friendship in life. What happens to those people we meet for a period of time, who influence us, and then disappear back into their lives never, or rarely, to be seen again? How did they change us?
Sometimes this novel seems to depict the high-spirited youth of the three boys realistically. Other times, the story veers off into practically unrelated stories, flashbacks and flash-forwards - which will bother some readers. Overall, Michael as an adult, tells the story of his voyage by looking back with wonder and appreciation and sometimes regret. The mysteries of the other passengers remain unsolved for the most part. The voyage on the Oronsay and the eccentric people Michael met on board, the freedom he experienced, change him. The book is a slice of life, not a neatly wrapped story.
Recommended for readers who enjoy travel writing, memoirs, poetically written novels. If you liked Ondaatje's real memoir, 'Running in the Family', read this.

Related websites:
New York Times review of the Cat's Table
Reading Group Guides review of the Cat's Table

Hot Books

Here are some titles which our ebook provider tells us are "hot" at the moment - just what you needed on a 90 degree day.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich
Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead
Summer Days by Susan Mallery
The Amateur by Edward Klein
The Red House by Mark Haddon
For children - The Alchemyst by Michael Scott


The library has also been doing a brisk business in old fashioned printed library books. Here are the ten most circulated 10 novels from the past 3 months:


Calico Joe by John Grisham
Stay Close by Harlan Coben
Victims by Jonathan Kellerman
The Drop by Michael Connelly
Kill Alex Cross by James Patterson
"V" is For Vengeance by Sue Grafton
Beastly Things by Donna Leon
Bring Up the Bodies by Hillary Mantel
Private Games by James Patterson
The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler
Zero Day by David Baldacci

Nonfiction books that were giving even the most popular novels a run for their money:

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner
Unbroken: a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

If You Like Agatha Christie Mysteries: more authors to try

One of this blog's most popular posts is "If You Like Agatha Christie mysteries, try these authors", so for you Christie and cozy mystery fans, here are more authors  to try:

Martha Grimes - English pub name series featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Jury. Read the early ones in the series.
Simon Brett - the Fethering series, set in a village in England, is very light, but the plots are convincingly complicated and well-paced.
Carola Dunn - Daisy Dalrymple series, Daisy is a liberated woman jounalist and sleuth in 1920's England.
Nancy Atherton -  the premise of the Aunt Dimity series, that Lori Shepherd's dead aunt communicates through her journal to help Lori solve crimes, is silly, but the mysteries are good anyway if you can get past the ghost-written journal.
Rhys Bowen - the Evan Evans series set in Wales is mostly enjoyable because of the beautiful setting, although the writing and mysteries are satisfying also.
Hazel Holt - Mrs. Mallory series, English village sleuth in classic cozy format.
My favorite: M.C. Beaton - the Hamish MacBeth series and the Agatha Raisin series. The earlier titles tend to be better in my opinion;  the later ones are a fix for devoted fans only. Hamish is the clever, but lazy, Highland village constable;  Agatha is the cranky middle-aged Cotswold's detective.

Pictures of Mt.Carmel Parade 2010

View our Picasa album of pictures taken at this year's Mt. Carmel Parade
http://picasaweb.google.com/bhplreference/20100716MtCarmelFest


 

Read more information about this unique festival which ends tonight with a huge fireworks display at the fair on the grounds of Mount Carmel Hall in Berkeley Heights, NJ.

Festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel 2010

It's the time of year when people start trying to find information about the Festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a week-long fair with carnival rides, games and food: starting with a parade and ending the week with a late-night fireworks display. For information call (908) 464-6964 to hear a recording which gives this year's dates as July 11 - 16. You can also leave a message.

Descriptions of the festival can be found in our blog posts from previous years which have links to articles and videos of the fireworks:
Festival of Mount Carmel, Berkelely Heights, NJ 07922

Photo: Procession arriving at the Church of the Little Flower, July 2009

A Brief History of the Library

A timeline of the creation of the Berkeley Heights Public Library has been posted on a special blog page, click here. The blog has several special pages which can be viewed by clicking on the links just below the title banner. We hope you enjoy the story of your library so far.

Must-Have Books

This post is in honor of the books that I bought just because I can't count on the library's copy surviving dog-bite, immersion in bathtubs, and other occupational hazards of a library book.

Castles in the Air is the book I trot out every time we have any kind of "staff picks" display. In 1994 Judy Corbett and her then-boyfriend-now-husband decided to buy a ruined Tudor castle in Wales called Gwydir and restored it while operating it as a bed and breakfast. Corbett tells stories that make you want to invite her over to dinner and listen to her for hours (like the really creepy one about one of the resident ghosts, or the funny story involving Prince Charles).

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand. Yes, there was a movie, but it skipped all the fascinating details about horse racing and the Great Depression, and the lives of Seabiscuit's jockey and owner. The rivalry between War Admiral, Seabiscuit and their owners will suck you in.

Fiction I can't part with includes the previously blogged The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (because you always need a book about a teenager and her cousins on their own in rural England when World War III breaks out) and Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy, in which an untrained teenaged necromancer goes into the land of the dead to retrieve her father.

Do you have any books you must own even if you never get around to re-reading them?

The Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen in Rhyme

Using mnemonics as an aid for learning vast quantities of information is often employed in medical education. Taking it a step further, the author of the textbook Cope's Early Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen, later turned his book into 88 pages of doggerel which explains how to diagnose and treat patients with belly pain: The Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen in Rhyme by 'Zeta,' (aka: Sir Zachary Cope.) This small volume has been sitting on my bookshelves at home for many years and what made me think about it is it turns up in Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone which I am currently reading. Zeta's little book is quoted by the fictional Dr. Ghosh and listed in Verghese's bibliography. Is it hard to imagine gut pain being funny? Consider this advice to the physician:

'The abdomen is like a stage

Enclosed within a fleshy cage,

The symptoms are the actors who

Act often with consumate art

The major or the minor part;

Nor do they usually say

Who is the author of the play.

That is for you to try and guess,

A problem which, I must confess

Is made less easy from the fact

You seldom see the opening act,

And by the time that you arrive

The victim my be just alive.'

'The leading or principal symptoms are four,...

Distension, rigidity, vomiting, pain.'

(as seen in the illustration by Peter Collingwood)

OK, not ROTFL, but maybe easier to remember than a regular textbook.

Time Management in Libraries: some thoughts on continuing education classes

Anyone who has ever attended Continuing Education (CE) classes knows that sitting in a chilly meeting room, drinking coffee that tastes like styrofoam, while watching a Power Point slide show, which duplicates the handout slide-for-slide, are the order of the day. A popular CE topic is time management. Obviously, time would be better managed if the presenters just put the slide show on their website, but the irony seems to elude the presenters. Regarding the frustrations of CE, we present this letter sent to us by a frazzled librarian somewhere in Libraryland:


'Greetings and Salutations Fellow Librarians,
Inspired by the Regional Symposium on Time Management which I attend annually, I submit the following ideas for your consideration.
Has everyone seen the TV ad for the search engine Bing that shows people madly babbling tidbits of unrelated factoids? The ad appeals to the overwhelmed in all of us. The phrase “information overload” is decades old, but the situation only got worse with the advent of the internet. Time, they say, waits for no man, but what it does do is get cluttered up with too much to do and too much information. Since every malady should have a remedy, here is a plan to solve the problem of how to fully acknowledge the many worthy causes which we just don’t have time for and how to manage other demands on our time and attention. Clearly autumn is overburdened with serious causes and holidays, so I propose that we move several fall events to February which has a dearth of activities, followed closely by the month of March. Using the ever-popular multi-tasking approach, we could even double-up some holidays. For example, Valentine’s Day and Banned Books Week (last week of September) are perfect together. Just think of the possibilities. Give your significant other Lady Chatterley’s Lover or some other racy banned book instead of those fattening chocolates, dying roses and expensive jewelry. Not only will it be a lasting tribute to your love, it may easily outlast your love, as your S.O. may realize what an unromantic cheapskate you are.

Library Card Sign Up Month (September) could coincide with Saint Patrick’s Day. Libraries would set up tables in bars and sign up unsuspecting revelers by intimating that they may win all the green beer they can drink if only they get a library card. You could even have green library cards with scratch and sniff beer smell as a little marketing gimmick. Will those beer-swilling bar patrons become best seller-swilling library patrons? Who cares, your library membership stats will shoot up.
But wait, there’s more! This multi-tasking/ schedule-rearranging approach to the information-glut can also be enhanced by using the web 2.0 mashup time-management tool, which no one really understands, but has something to do with elevating ones anxiety level by simultaneously blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, RSS reader-ing, texting, IM’ing and so on ad nauseum. When I say ad nauseum, take that literally. Take one aspirin and call me in the morning. Not by cell phone. Not email. Not texting. No tweets please. In fact, just take the pill and leave me alone because you can find this Time Management Power Point presentation posted on my website: Marian the Librarian Tells It Like It Is.

Yours in eternal bibliotherapy,

A librarian squished flat on the Information Highway

Is There a Librarian in the House?

People don't become librarians for the fame, fortune or excitement, but there's a little Walter Mitty in all of us...
Marian the Librarian is flying to a librarian convention, nodding off in her middle seat, which she has thoughtfully not tipped back to avoid annoying the passengers behind her, and trying not to snore or drool or touch either arm rest lest she infringe on her seatmates' personal space, she hears the P.A. announcement,
"Is there a librarian on board? we have a slight emergency in Business Class requiring immediate biblio assistance."
Marian jerks awake instantly, eye's pop open, she nods apologetically to the passenger in the aisle seat and indicates she needs to get by. Grabbing her bookbag from under the seat, she hurries up the aisle to the Flight Attendant and whispers,
"I'm a librarian. How can I help?"
"There's a passenger in extreme distress, hyperventilating over a book he's reading and looking pale and clammy, almost like he's in shock," the FA explains as she leads Marion through Business Class to a seat where, indeed, a male passenger, middle-aged, well-dressed, is breathing unevenly with his hands gripping the latest Dan Brown best seller tightly.
"Oh dear, that's the third case I've seen this week. Deadly Prose Syndrome with Implausable Plot Complications. We have to act quickly."
Marian carefully pries the stricken man's fingers from the Lost Symbol and places it in a sick bag for disposal.
"I'm afraid the only treatment for this patron, er patient, is an immediate infusion of The Classics or failing that, any book with sufficient character development, three-syllable words and dependent clauses to act as an antidote. I think this will work."
Marian riffles through her black bag and pulls out Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and places it gently in the man's hands.
"That should do it. I may have to read it aloud to him at first but then his ability to read on his own should kick in and he'll be right as rain."

Reference Questions Librarians Hate

This blog often has posts that recount our interesting daily reference questions. Many people don't realize that they can ask their local librarian to help find information so we like to advertise that fact. What has not been posted are the dismal failures. So in the interest of full disclosure, here are some recent stumpers submitted to the reference librarians.

How to make charts using linear programming? OK, I give up. We searched JerseyClicks and the library catalog and the internet. The patron's table was littered with math and business books we hauled out. But nothing was quite right. In cases like this, I wish I could text or twitter the professor who assigned this problem and say something really scathing like - "huh?"


A patron wanted the Silver Banquet which evaluates railroad memorabilia. It didn't show up in any N.J. library according to JerseyCat. WorldCat showed very few library holdings for it. Googling didn't turn up any copies we could get our hands on. I'm posting this long after the question reared its puzzling head. Anyway, another "huh?" In these cases we often try to do a bait and switch - well we don't have that, but how about this? But when a patron has her heart set on a particular thing that Uncle Fred said was the best, that's it. No bait and switch works. We don't argue with the wisdom of Uncle Fred.


A few commonly asked questions which just don't seem to lend themselves to easy answers are as follows:


Ratings for NJ private schools. The book, Private Secondary Schools describes, but does not rate them.


Ratings of things not rated by Consumer Reports are especially frustrating. Not that CR should rate NJ prep schools, but we can dream, can't we?


Catcher in the Rye on audio? Nope, does not exist. J.D. Salinger will not allow his classic book to be recorded.


A book whose title includes the acronym HIAA which lists costs of medical procedures? We found physician fee schedules , but even the local health sciences library did not have such a book.


Is Sony Reader compatible with Netlibrary? No, the former is text, the latter is audio mostly and they don't play well together.


Specifics from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. We found recovery.gov, but it's big, it's complicated and it's a work in progress. Please don't make us look through it.

What's With the Bathtubs, Cialis?

Regular readers of this blog know that we get some pretty odd questions at the Reference Desk, but we try to find the answers regardless of what the question is or why the person wants to know.
Today's question: what's with the people in the bathtubs at the end of every Cialis TV ad? Googling the phrase "bathtubs Cialis" turns up 2,570,000 hits - which made us realize that many people are concerned about this issue. Some of the comments online were quite creative in trying to find a reason for the bathtubs image, but we wanted the real reason from the horses mouth. So I called the helpline of Lilly, the drug company that makes Cialis. I stated the question explaining that I am a librarian and people really want to know the answer. Without skipping a beat, the operator answered,

"It's up to the interpretation of the viewer."

Period. End of story, though not unkindly. I asked her if she gets this question often since her answer was so quick and do I dare say, firm?

"Sometimes," she politely said.

I asked if Lilly would ever let the ad's creative person be interviewed or release a statement about the bathtub meaning and she said again,

"It's up to the interpretation of the viewer."

I pleaded a bit more for enlightenment, but feeling that no more information was forthcoming and wanting to end the conversation on an up note, we thanked each other and hung up.

So there you have it.

Anyone's guess is as good as anyone elses in this case. Like art, it's open to interpretation is the company's claim.

Vacation Reading continued

To continue yesterday's post about what I read while on vacation, I stopped reading Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (for now) once I was on Terra Firma again and had access to the pile of books on my bedside table which I had not packed.
First up: The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue, the story of six year old Henry Day who runs away from home and is replaced by a hobgoblin or changeling. The childlike changelings live in the woods and wait for their chance to kidnap a small child and replace him with one of their tribe. The kidnapped child then becomes a changeling and has to wait many years to find the opportunity to get back into the human world. Meanwhile, the parents with the replacement child do not notice, or refuse to acknowledge, that their child seems somehow different. In Henry's case, the new Henry comes with an incredible musical talent that the original Henry lacked. The book alternates between the human world and the immortal, feral world of the changelings.

Somehow this summary does not do the book justice; it's one of those books which is hard to describe. If you are thinking, 'no, not interested in such a weird topic,' I would advise you to read some other reviews and most of all to give the book a try. If you liked The Time Traveler's Wife (the book, not the movie which has been soundly panned by all) the element of being outside of one's life waiting to get back in is similar. Or it would interest readers who like elements of the mystical underside of everyday life, vampire fans, perhaps, or readers of fantasy. Although I don't like vampire books or fantasy much, so the book would seem to fall between the genre cracks. Whatever niche this book is assigned, it is well worth reading.

Wikipedia's article on Yeat's poem, the Stolen Child, which inspired author Keith Donohue

more Stolen Child Reviews on BookBrowse

What I Read on My Vacation

Remember when the teacher asked you to write about what you read during summer vacation? If we told the truth: 'I read nothing but Nancy Drew and comic books all summer,' we knew that wouldn't go over so well. Here's the truth about what I read on my week off. No newspapers for starters and when I got home the news was the same as when I left. Supposedly August is a slow news month: Congress goes on vacation and so do many of the reporters who cover Congress. So even if a tree fell in the forest, there would be no reporter around to tell us about it. I didn't watch TV news either and rarely went on a computer. Those townhall meetings: missed it. Whew! I noticed that people in the airports played with their cell phones rather than reading paperbacks or newspapers or magazines. Clickety clack, many many tweets and text messages flew through cyberspace, but only two people reading the old-fashioned way. One man, bald, two earrings in one ear, mismatched plaid shorts and plaid shirt, was reading - a crochet pattern. He was crotcheting at an impressive pace.
Back to my summer reading list: Me Tanner, You Jane, an Evan Tanner novel (c 1970) by Lawrence Block. I like Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries, but this one, featuring a James Bond kind of spy in Africa, felt dated and I wouldn't recommend it unless you like very light, old-fashioned spy thrillers.
On the plane, I read Michael Crichton's Next (2006) which is about genetic engineering gone awry. Like all Crichton's books, it was a real page-turner and he was in top form in this one. Funny in a scary, sardonic way with lots of information about how academia and the government and drug companies can patent genes which has some interesting implications.
I finished that book before my vacation was over and my daughter gave me two books to take back home (to the family archives, I guess I have the most shelf space) including Michael Connelly's City of Bones, which I had already read and recommend if you like dark police procedurals. The other book in my purse on the way home was Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, which I think I read way back when all the baby boomers were reading his books, but I wasn't sure. Somehow it just didn't suit flying to EWR by way of Allentown, Pa because of the weather. Although maybe Vonnegut would have found some weird irony in that. I didn't. I was just hoping the pilot really could find an airport amongst the green fields of Pa. He did. Finally. We clapped.