August 27, 2009

The Mem Keeps Coming

Sometimes one thing leads to another, or else it just leads to the same thing over and over again. The latter in this case, which is the case of children’s author Mem Fox, beginning with her book finding its way into my house quite indirectly. From reader comments, I discover that everybody loves Mem Fox, and get some further Mem recommendations. The next week at the Library Story Time (which was incredible, incidently, are we ever lucky to have the Toronto Public Library system available to us!), the librarian pulls out Fox’s latest Hello Baby, as well as Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. (They are so good!) And then today I walked into a bookshop near my house and found a copy of Mem Fox’s Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever. Naturally, I bought it. Tomorrow I expect I’ll run into Mem Fox in the grocery store, never mind that she lives in Australia…

August 15, 2009

The Incident Report by Martha Baillie

Something happens when you work in libraries for too long, even part-time. I learned this the day a patron came to the circulation desk asking to borrow a stapler, and I had to explain why this was against our policy: “If we gave it out to you, then we’d have to give them out to everyone.” It was a sorry power trip, from up there on my desk-high perch, and I even felt like kind of a hero. Averting mass stapler lending, which really means holding off CHAOS in the library, the foundation of our society. Where would we be without me?

But I was not the worst case. One librarian where I worked had seen fit to apply labels to every object at the circ desk and the place where that object was to rest. “Pencils” said one tin, “erasers” said another. “Paper Cutter” lived in the “Paper Cutter” place. “Coats” on the closet. This was the Dewey Decimal System gone mad!! I wrote “Floor” on a post-it note, and placed it underfoot. My colleagues, being librarians, failed to see the humour.

But I love it. I don’t think I’ve always been like this, but after a cumulative five years of library work, my own books (and CDs) are always in alpha order. Out at the library, I am always made steady by the sureness of call numbers– that everything will be where it is supposed to. I used to relish shelf-reading, and not just because I got to browse the stacks, but whenever I found a volume out of place and put it back where it belonged, I’d performed a task even more worthwhile than keeping would-be stapler lendees tamed. I love libraries. I love cataloguing. May the god of order forever reign.

At the Toronto Public Library, as I now know, employees are instructed to log incidents which take place on their shifts. Martha Baillie’s novel The Incident Report is made up of such logs, Miriam, her protagonist, seeing fit to order her life to fit the confines of these reports. Perhaps a way to order chaos indeed, as her job sees her engaging in bizarre (and sometimes dangerous) interactions with those on the fringes of society. Her incident reports “resembling a pack of cards” stacked in a desk drawer, containing records of what you might expect (and what you couldn’t possibly imagine but some of which probably comes from truth [Baillie is a librarian in the Toronto Public system]), but also episodes from her personal life (which include a man she meets while sitting on a park bench during her lunch break), and from her history (usually about her father, and a tragedy in her past).

Miriam’s strait-laced recounting of library incidents is very often amusing, but also poignant, this underlined by Baillie’s exquisite prose. The every-day becomes captured for its singular moments, its eccentric characters, and the library as a marvelous backdrop. Baillie goes further, however, with excellent plotting, this potentially gimmicky book distinctly a novel, with romance, mystery, suspense, darkness, and tragedy (oh god, the gasp I uttered near the end, I could not believe it, I wanted to turn back the pages and have it happen a different way, but alas, there is only going forward).

This is a clever little book, but not too clever, for it is mostly beautiful. Rich with literary allusions that aren’t the point, but still round out the universe. And rich too with story, which goes to show that you can make stories happen anywhere.

August 7, 2009

Now reading/not reading/etc.

I am now reading Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, and I’m loving it, loving it, loving it. The “book reports” it contains remarkable, not just because Lizzie Skurnick indulges in good nostalgia, but because of the subtext she unearths the second time around– her treatment of classics, including Daughters of Eve, Harriet the Spy, Nothing’s Fair in Fifth Grade, and The Cat Ate My Gymsuit demonstrate something wildly substantial (and subversive) going on in YA literature back in the day.

I’ve not managed to read through a single magazine/periodical since my daughter was born, and so I’ve got a stack beside me on my desk right now and no clue when I’m going to get to them. (FYI: my “desk” is now an end-table beside my gliding chair in the living room, which actually works out quite handily.) There are so many books and so little time that periodicals hardly seem to factor into the equation. I should probably make a new blog label called “Not Reading” and then I could write about it all the time.

Last Friday I had to spent two hours waiting at the Passport Canada office, and they’d probably never seen anyone happier to wait. Mostly because I HAD A BOOK IN MY BAG and BABY WAS ASLEEP IN HER PRAM. Baby stayed asleep for two hours (and then, having exhausted her patience/goodness resource, proceeded to be horrible for the rest of the day, so much so that I was destroyed by evening, but alas) so that I had more uninterrupted reading than I’d had in 2.5 months. It was extraordinary, particularly as I was reading the marvelous Between Interruptions: 30 Women Tell the Truth About Motherhood. Only problem with that being that the book was so engaging, I felt like I’d lived the lives of 31 mothers that day, which probably contributed to my destroyment by 5 pm.

Anyway, speaking of waiting, Rona Maynard on waiting-room lit and Marilynne Robinson’s Home. Rebecca Rosenblum’s submission tips for aspiring writers is also worth a read. The great Lauren Groff, illuminatingly, on rejection notices. What’s wrong with charity book shops? is an interesting (though not conclusive) response to questions raised in the thought-provoking article “Selling Civilization” from Canadian Notes and Queries.

Now, must wake baby, feed baby, change baby. For we’re off to a program at the library that promises songs, and stories and “tickle rhymes” for all. (I’m not sure if it’s sad or amazing that this is my life now.)

July 30, 2009

Bookish books in the post

I only just noticed that the two books I received in the post today both have books on their covers. On the left, we have The Incident Report by Martha Baillie, a library-set novel. I’d actually requested it from the library, which was fitting, I thought, but when I found I was 146 on the holds list, I decided to buy the book instead. I discovered this book via Melanie’s review— it’s structured as a collection of incident reports logged by employees at a public library. As a former library employee myself, I can vouch that these might be as bizarre as you like, and wonder if the fiction will be as wild as fact is. The other book is Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick, whose Fine Lines column I absolutely adore. As she does in the column, Skurnick rereads “teen classics” in this new book (with guests columnists including Meg Cabot, Laura Lippman and Jennifer Weiner). The reviews are hilarious, insightful and bring back long misplaced memories.

I think that both of these books are going to prove delightful in their own particular ways.

July 16, 2009

Good Text

From the Descant blog, Katie Franklin on her feminist erotic bookclub and desire for books: “In The Pleasure of the Text Roland Barthes insists, “the text is a fetish object, and the fetish desires me” (Barthes 27). As a librarian I see how the public forms relationships with their books. Patrons come in exacerbated if the paperback they’ve put on hold hasn’t come in yet: “What do you mean my book hasn’t come in? I need it now!” Such outbursts of desire, which may seem more natural in the bedroom, are often common expressions at the circulation desk of the library. However, I don’t blame them for their yearnings. Everyone is entitled to some good text.”

July 9, 2009

Awful Library Books

My friend K. (of the unfortunately now-defunct Pop-Triad) sent me a link to my favourite website of the day, Awful Library Books, which includes texts such as the one whose cover is seen here. The site features books that might be listed as “required weeding” from American public libraries, and I enjoy the bloggers’ commentary as well (“I think the guy in a wheelchair is saying to the woman, “Do I really have to dress like Mr. Rogers?”). You’re also invited to send your own submissions.

July 8, 2009

Harriet joins the library

Yesterday, at the tender age of six weeks, Harriet became a card-carrying member of the Toronto Public Library. She slept through the ceremony, but did seem to enjoy reading Eco Babies Are Green last evening, and seemed incredibly impressed and grateful when I explained to her how lucky we are to live in a city whose fantastic library resources are available to everybody for free. She also liked the Raffi CD we borrowed (and did you know that he is Victoria College’s most illustrious drop-out?).

May 9, 2009

Thatcher knew the type

“Thatcher knew the type. They broke spines, they dog-eared pages, they scribbled obscene comments in the margins and squashed bugs between the covers, they branded the text with coffee rings, flicked ashes in the binding, wiped freshly excavated ear wax on the end papers, used rusty bobby pins and strips of bacon for bookmarks. Small potatoes, he realized, petty vandalism, but not unconnected to great offences. Thatcher had a panoramic vision when it came to crime, a comprehensive view that took in the roots of evil as well as the fruit. All thanks to the firm, guiding hand of his mother, a long-suffering librarian who filled him in like the empty pages of a notepad, sparing no detail. A child who forgets to return a library book, she had warned, may well grow up to be the kind of person who “forgets” to take a knife out of someone’s back…” –Terry Griggs, “Tag” from Quickening

April 22, 2009

Further excitement

My new issue of The New Quarterly has finally arrived! Honestly, never has there ever been an issue of a lit. journal I’ve so wanted to devour– Elizabeth Hay interviewed, Rebecca Rosenblum on Sassy, even Kim Jernigan’s Editor’s Letter is delightful. And speaking of Rosenblums, this particular one has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for her story “Linh Lai” (published in TNQ). I was also excited to see my favourite poet Jennica Harper up for a poetry award. Further excitement: Margaret Atwood’s Adopt a Word to Create a Story story has been revealed. It’s called “Persiflage in the Library” and it’s very cute (read it here).

April 10, 2009

"On" for just two dollars

Today at my local Toronto Public Library Branch (big ups the Spadina Road massive!) I purchased the word “on” for a new short story by Margaret Atwood. This is part of the Adopt a Word to Create a Story fundraising drive ongoing at TPL branches throughout April. For $2 per word, the story will unfold and be revealed in full at each branch and online on April 22nd. What a fabulous initiative!