Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

A thing I run into quite frequently (read: daily) at the library is a fear of genre. It's okay to have your reading preferences; I certainly do. Myself, I don't read a whole lot of mysteries. It doesn't mean I won't, but rather they aren't the books getting my attention. We all are more than allowed to make those choices. But what really gets me is people making those decisions without having ever even put a toe outside their comfort zone, or people making those decisions even when it's an author they're familiar with.

For example, Dean Koontz has his Odd Thomas books, right? One of them came out at a graphic novel and only as a graphic novel. Patrons who reserved it by merit of it being Dean Koontz and Odd Thomas, like you do. An unmeasured percentage of them, once they saw it was a "comic book", said "Oh, I don't want that" with a particular wrinkling of the nose and returned it unopened. Didn't even leave the building with it.

John Grisham has a series based around Theodore Boone, a 13 year old lawyer. Across the libraries in my system, that might be shelved in Young Adult or might be shelved in Juvenile (what we call MG). People come in asking for the new Grisham, or for that Grisham in particular, and when they find out it's "for kids", there's that nose wrinkle again. By the way, J is where we shelve our Harry Potter and Y is where our Hunger Games are, and people will check those out, typically after they've seen the movie. Seeing that currently with the Veronica Roth Divergent books.

We actually have a display right now, of subgenres, inspired by a conversation I had with a patron who was taking out Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, and had never heard of Steampunk. She didn't end up liking it, but I thought it was cool she was interested and willing to give it a try. There are people who come in looking for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and when they discover it's a mystery, some don't take it. There are people who come in looking for Ray Bradbury, or Ursula LeGuin, and are put off when those are in the Fantasy and Science Fiction section.

There are the people who think Fantasy and Science Fiction should be shelved separately, because they aren't the same thing. There are people who are confused (I'm in this camp) by the fact that we shelve vampires, zombies, and Neil Gaiman in the regular fiction.

We have limited space at my library, and the catalogers aren't all familiar with genre. But it genre an all or nothing prospect? I don't think so. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, say, doesn't necessarily belong in the Fantasy/SciFi section, but he could fit there. Ray Bradbury could be comfortably shelved with the "regular" (literary and commercial) fiction. The time travel romances (with or without highlanders, but really, why are there so many Scottish Highland time travel romances? When did that become a Thing?) aren't in the SciFi, nor is H.G. Wells, but we have one Lovecraft there and the other in regular fiction.

I kind of wish my library would actually just Dewey Decimilize the whole damn thing. Just assign each book its number and let people look for it by merit of that, not by the fast-and-loose genre categorizing we're currently doing. You want fiction? It's in the 800's, then look for the author's last name. Done.

Nature red in tooth and.....shell?

So, part of my job "requirement" is to be up on the news, in case patrons talk to us. They don't, much, other than to bitch. But, things happen. So, I saw this headline in The Atlantic: Walk for your lives! Deadly giant snails are invading Texas!  I was intrigued, of course.

Before I clicked on the article, I also (of course) immediately had expectations. Perhaps you've read the delightfully chilling short story by Patricia Highsmith (yes, of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley fame)? "The Quest for Blank Claveringi"? I think I first read it in an Alfred Hitchcock short story collection in 6th or 7th grade. I honestly thought you could read it online, but am having a hard time locating it.

 (Giant African Snail, from Wikimedia Commons)

When Seahorses Attack

Me: Why would you cry at your wedding? Maybe I am a sociopath.

Me: Nobody puts Debra in the corner. Okay, now we have to sing Time of Your Life. From Dirty Dancing, not Green Day. What a different movie that would have been! Where would you even do the lift in that?
Coworker: Nope, I'm done.

Patron: I used to drive for two people, but they've since died.
Me: Yes, that happens. *After she's gone, I turn from the desk to see both my coworkers, red-faced to keep from cracking up.* What?
Coworker: She's all "Those people died" and you're like "Yeah, they do that."

Fiancé *making a character on Dragon's Dogma*: Can I get bushier eyebrows on this? I want like, caterpillars having sex.
Housemate: They don't put that in games anymore.

Overheard from the porch party across the street: "I'm a PUREBRED, man, I can't break the bloodline!"

Again from the party across the street: "Steve, put the Goddamn cigarette away! Put the cigarette away, we're dancing!"

Coworker: Aren't pandas the gentlest of bears?
Me: Maybe the laziest. They don't even have sex right.
Coworker: What?
Me: Pandas in captivity. They don't reproduce right for some reason, so they show the panda porn.
Coworker: Why do you know this? Does Jim know you know this?

Smutception

Look, a Fifty Shades Generator! (totally raunchy and ridiculous and NSFW or whatever the hell. But if you're online at work, I salute and envy you. I can kind of go online at work, but it's mostly to look at stuff on Amazon [for when people are all "I'm looking for a book. I don't remember the title or author. The cover might be blue? It came out last year. Maybe it has 'nights' in the title'?" Some of these I magically know {the above is Blue Nights, by Joan Didion}, but seriously people? If you don't remember anything about it, how the fuck do you know you want to read it? Pick something else! AT RANDOM. It'll be just as good. Or bad. {But that reminds me, I wanted to read Slouching Towards Bethlehem by her. So thanks, guys!}])


(You can rent paperbacks on Amazon? Oh what the hell. Go to the fucking library.)

Atomic Clock: Yet another misleading name

So, my nuclear accidents post got me thinking. Or I never stopped thinking, really, but it's a corollary, honest.

At the library, you wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) the conversations that we had with people, ad nauseum, about what time it really was, whether their computer time was actually up, whether it had actually started yet, etc. etc. So, we got radio controlled atomic clocks. I'm not sure where the radio is, but if the batteries are good, these clocks update themselves. Daylight Saving time, being activated for the first time, whatever. Eastern time of whichever necessary stripe, via cosmic rays. Radio waves. Whatever.

 

(picture from a random Tumblr page that says it's from the Watchmen movie.)

But. I find the name to be a little bit odd (direct corollary to my Words Unsaid post). When I first heard of atomic clocks, I thought of the other atomic clock, the "we're going to blow ourselves to Kingdom Come" atomic clock: the Doomsday Clock. It's also apparently not just nuclear anymore, but also includes that lovely double header of global warming and biologic threats.

The closest the Doomsday Clock has ever been to Midnight (according to their timeline) was in 1953. The United States had developed and tested the Hydrogen bomb, and Soviet Russia was hot on our heels. The furthest the Doomsday Clock has ever been from Midnight is 17 minutes, in 1991. The Cold War was over, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty cut back on both America's and Russia's nuclear arsenals (for which you can read a very interesting chronology of here on FAS.org, which is the Federation of American Scientists.)

I have my own tribute to the end of the Cold War in my house: a piece of the Berlin Wall, which I purchased at Salvation Army for $5. The kicker? The clerk at Salvation Army didn't seem to realize what she was selling me. It was in a glass case, accessible only by employees, marked "All items on this shelf $5". The exchange was brief; she said "May I help you?" and I said "I'd like that piece of the Berlin Wall!" Her eyes glazed. I said "That plastic thing with the rock in it." I gave her my $5 plus tax and left, burdened with a different type of sorrow than that which Soviet Russia wrought.

(Though in a way, it reminded me of the Neil Gaiman short story where the old woman buys the Holy Grail at her local Goodwill or whatever they call them in England.)

No, your library isn't trying to screw you

I'm surprised sometimes at the level of suspicion that some people have.

At my library, the overdue fine for books is 25 cents a day. That is per item, per day. Maximum of $5 for a book. No limit on book checkouts, they go for 3 weeks with no renewals if nobody else is waiting for them. And oh yes, we, the library, did have to pay money in order to get those books from Magical Book Land and place them on our shelves for you, the public, to check out. We, the library, also have to Pay Money for electricity, light bulbs, Internet, computers, printers, paper, phone, and natural gas. We also have to Pay Money for gasoline to put in the tractor that mows the grass and plows the snow and performs other groundskeeping duties.

Sometimes, people take out a lot of books. And they...forget about them. Not for a long time, maybe a week. Not so bad, right? Sometimes fines total out at $3, sometimes $10, that kind of thing. I've seen far larger, and far smaller as well. It's funny, because sometimes somebody will ride me like a rented mule over a seventy five cent fine (that's 3 days, mind you. 3 days. Pocket change. You could find it in the parking lot), and another person will have a fine of $240 for a bajillion late books and just ask me serenely who they make the check out to.

And oh, the comments we get.

"Oh, I guess I'd better just start buying my books. It'll be cheaper." We hear this one a lot. Daily, in fact. That $25.00 hardcover latest James Patterson would have been cheaper to buy than your $1.25 fine? Really?

"I'm paying taxes for this place!" Yeah, so am I. About $120 a year. I own my house in town, you see. Do you know how many books I could buy, new, for $120 a year? Let's be generous and say twelve, at a mix of paperbacks and hardcovers. You know how many books I read a year? Around 100. Sometimes more. Oh yeah, we have DVDs too. One week, no renewal, $1 a day if they're late. You can take 5 at a time. 5 DVDs, depending, is $120. You got your money's worth, I assure you. I've sometimes considered offering people the cash in exchange for a notarized statement saying they won't come back.

"It must be nice to sit around and read all day!" Yeah, it must be nice. Because I don't. I check books out, check books in. I turn the computer monitor back on for people (is it really that hard, not to touch a computer monitor?) I answer the phone and then do Google searches for people for directions, or phone numbers, or to spell words. Or to tell them celebrity birthdates and parents' names. I clean your greasy fingerprints off of CDs and DVDs. I clean mystery crud off of CD and DVD cases. Yeah, we have books on CD as well. They're $120 each for a library copy. Limit of six. Like a book, though, it's three weeks, two renewals, 25 cents a day overdue fine.

"Don't you have a grace period?" Yeah. You checked out your book for a week and have a two week grace period. Seriously. If you can't finish five books in three weeks...don't take five books. If you can't finish one book in 9 weeks (that's what one checkout plus two renewals equals) then maybe you should, in fact, buy it.

"Why can't I take my laptop bag/giant purse/suitcase/duffel bag with me through the library?" Well, people are scumbags and steal our stuff. So, because books and things cost money and not candy, we lose a lot of money yearly from people stealing. So we need to politely treat people with large bags like scumbags who might steal from us. No, we don't want to check your stuff when you're done. Yes, I know your laptop bag contains your laptop and that's why you came here.

I was stealth evangelized by a twelve year old

So, at the library the other day, I helped a younger patron, a boy I'd say was twelve or so. He finished his transaction, efficiently and politely (which is more than I can say for some adults I deal with, certainly), adjusted his HUGE backpack, and rested his hand on the counter briefly. Then he looked at me and said "That's for you" and left.

I looked at the counter, and thought "did that kid just give me ten dollars?", a "lol wut?" moment if ever there was one. Then I picked it up. It was a Billion Dollar Bill.

I was amused, and then confused, as I examined the item further. One of the little seals on the front says "Thou shalt not covet". Ooh, he got me. I wanted money. Then I turned it over. Apparently, I'm going to hell.

Library insanity 3

A patron walked into the library around 6 or 7 in the evening. She came to the desk, looking a little nervous. This nervousness is a normal state for some of our more....interesting...patrons, but this one is normally friendly and confident.

"There's a timer outside", she said. "In the gazebo."
"Time like...on a bomb?" I asked suavely.
"Yeah, you can hear it ticking." She walked over and opened the door. Indeed, you can hear it ticking.
"Modern bombs don't tick," I said (so rarely can I apply this quote in everyday conversation. Most times, nobody even gets it. But that's all right. I know.)
"Should I touch it?" She asked. I weighed the options, quickly. My coworker was out of the room. We aren't allowed to leave the desk unattended. Did I really want to go closer to a potential bomb. Would it really be a bomb? That seemed kind of ridiculous. Luckily, the male patron by the DVDs had started paying attention.
"Oh, that's mine," he said, a little defensively. We both looked at him. "It's for my pot roast."

Oh. Of course.

More Library Insanity

Another snapshot of my day at the library:

Soon after opening on Saturday morning, the phone rang. When we answer the phone, we say the name of the library. The patron on the other end launched into her story without preamble: "I have a wooden end table that we keep a humidifier on and after awhile we moved the humidifier and I guess it leaked at some point because now there are white rings on the table that are the size of the humidifier. What do I do about that?"

I took a moment. "You do know you called the library, right?"

"Yes. I called the bus station first and he gave me the number."

Right. Of course. So I put the patron on hold and consulted the Google, because really, what else was I going to do? I mean, I'm sure there's a Reader's Digest "How to clean anything" style of volume that we have, but sometimes, you look for the fast answer, which will theoretically the most up to date.

Apparently, you can take a hot iron, and a clean t-shirt, and iron for a few seconds at a time to get rid of the white rings. See. You learned something. I did too. The bus station doesn't know how to fix your end table; the library does.

Library Insanity: 2 Vignettes

The library can be busier some days than others. Also more sane than others. These three stories are all from the same day. The picture from the week prior, of one of the library puppets, discarded corpse like on the floor of the children's room.

Library Musing

You haven't truly lived until you've been bitched out by a woman wearing a hat that is a snowman, complete with carrot nose.