Book Review: The Thread that Binds by Cedar McCloud

At the Eternal Library, books are more than the paper, ink, and thread they're made from--they're full of spirits. Only a handful of people will ever be invited to the Bindery to learn the craft of Illumination: the magical creation of intricate illustrated manuscripts, bound with a secret that will make them last forever.

Tabby is a dreamwalker, a witch who escapes into the stories of sleep to avoid a birth family that's never loved em enough. Amane is a cartomancer, a medium who speaks for the Unseen, but doesn't know how to speak her own needs. Rhiannon is a psychic, an archivist who can See into the past, but only has eyes on the future.

Their stories intertwine as they discover the secrets of Illumination, the Library's archives, and those of their mentors--the three of whom are competing to be the next Head Librarian, the Speaker for all the books. How do you know who's truly worth being part of your family? Sometimes we must forge connections in order to heal; other times, those bonds must be broken...

I bought this ebook from Nook/Barnes & Noble when they were having a sale. You know I'm a sucker for any kind of book about a library and/or books, and this one sounded really interesting. I read it for the Trans Rights Readathon. 

The world this story is set in is a queernorm one, with LGBTQ+-ness being completely normal and most people not having a gender at all. Eir/em pronouns are used for a lot of characters, which takes a bit of getting used to. Just about every letter in the acronym is represented, including aroace rep. The worldbuilding is very well done, with fairytales and folklore from the countries being a theme. The world felt real and lived-in, and I really want to visit the Eternal Library. The magic system is varied and interesting, and the idea of magical books is so cool. You know I enjoyed all the bookbinding etc. stuff. 

Trust, healing, and relationships (especially found family) are big themes in this book. While it deals with some heavy topics, it still feels somewhat cozy. Overall I really enjoyed this book, and would definitely read more books by this author, especially if they were set in the same world.

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Spice score: 0.5 out of 5 chilies 🌶 (just kissing)
Read in: March 29
From: Barnes & Noble/Nook  

Representation: just about every letter in the QuILTBAG, nonbinary, asexual, aroace, polyamory, Black characters, queerplatonic relationship, racial and body diversity

Trigger warnings: domestic abuse, abusive parents, controlling parents, emotional manipulation, magical torture, that's all I can think of. Cedar McCloud has a list of trigger warnings in the beginning of the book

Book Reviews: The Library of Ever books by Zeno Alexander

I bought The Library of Ever and Rebel in the Library of Ever from Book Outlet before I learned of their antisemitism (Book Outlet, not the books). They are fantasy middle grade books about a magical Library and Lenora's learning to be a librarian in it and completing the tasks ahead of her. 

 

With her parents off traveling the globe, Lenora is bored, bored, bored—until she discovers a secret doorway into the ultimate library. Mazelike and reality-bending, the library contains all the universe’s wisdom. Every book ever written, and every fact ever known, can be found within its walls. And Lenora becomes its newly appointed Fourth Assistant Apprentice Librarian.

She rockets to the stars, travels to a future filled with robots, and faces down a dark nothingness that wants to destroy all knowledge. To save the library, Lenora will have to test her limits and uncover secrets hidden among its shelves. 

Obviously I loved this. Magic library outside of space and time? Sign me up! (Literally. Can I work there?) Some quibbles: having Lenora be a "poor little rich girl" at the mercy of her neglectful nanny does not inspire you to like her or make her relatable. Obviously neglectful/absent parents are a staple of children's literature, as only then can the adventures begin, but why make her rich? It adds nothing to the story, and it doesn't make sense with her helpfulness and responsibility, as rich kids don't learn those traits, nor is it really expected of them until they're older. I also didn't like the library staff ranking and how it was applied. There's no such thing as assistant apprentice librarians, and children cannot be librarians. This feeds into the "everyone who works in a library is a librarian" myth, which is not true. You have to have an MLIS/MLS to be a librarian. Lenora gets her status upgraded magically every time she successfully helps a patron, which, I get it, magic library, but it also rankled my librarian nerves. Also, she keeps getting yanked around to different library desks as soon as she answers a patron question, which makes no sense. Why don't they have more library staff? What rankled my librarian nerves even more was how little training Lenora got. She was placed at a desk and told how to greet patrons and then told to help them, but not how. That is not how it works!! Why does she only interact with one other librarian (the awesome Malachi) and can't work with or ask any other librarian for help or information? Our part-time and new librarians (all college-educated adults) had to shadow current librarians at the reference desk for a few sessions and undergo training in order to staff the reference desk by themselves, and they just stick a 10 year old at a desk and tell her to say "how may I help you?"?? Irresponsible. To be fair, a lot of children's adventure stories don't really have any training; the kids just promise to do something (as Lenora does) and boom, they are the wizard or king or questers or whatever. Despite my librarian rants, I did love this story, and I want to spend more time in the Library of Ever.  4.5 out of 5 stars, keeping.  Trigger warnings (that I remember): adults and robots attempt/threaten to harm a child, fantasy violence, ants, unscientific space and time travel, incorrect library staff procedures and hiring

 

Lenora returns to the magical Library—which holds every book ever known on its shelves. But she discovers the Library is under new management, its incredible rooms and corridors turned dark and sinister.

She quickly connects with a secret resistance that’s trying to free knowledge from the shadows threatening it. Her new friends introduce her to an ancient lost city, hang-gliding, and mathematical beings larger than the universe itself. And they help her face the mysterious Board of new leaders—who are leading the Library into darkness.

Now it’s up to Lenora to prove that knowledge is always more powerful than ignorance and fear.

This book is set not long after the first one, although of course the Library of Ever is outside of time and space. It picks up the thread of the Forces of Darkness (i.e. censorship) trying to misinform patrons and fight the Library and centers it as the main plot point and issue of this book. This time, the Forces of Darkness have infiltrated the Board (which is in charge of the Library), removing books and firing librarians. The tone of the book is therefore darker and more suspenseful than the first, and Lenora's fight to help patrons and defeat the Forces of Darkness feels scary and real. We are in the midst of a rise in book-banning and censorship, and it often feels like the Forces of Darkness will win. We need to fight for libraries and the right to read and remember that "knowledge is a light." Like the first book, we meet more fascinating beings and concepts and learn lots of new things. I found the sub-library of forgotten works to be fascinating and sad. May all works and knowledge come to light. 4.5 out of 5 stars, keeping.  Trigger warnings (that I remember): adults and monsters attempt/threaten to harm children, fear and (child-level) horror, censorship, book-banning, misinformation, theft, despair

 

There are two books in this series, and I need more. Zeno Alexander appears to be a fictional person and pen name a la Lemony Snicket. I highly recommend these books to anyone who loves libraries and magic.

See my aesthetics moodboard for the duology!

Book Review: Fundraising for the Dead by Sheila Connolly

At The Society for the Preservation of Pennsylvania Antiques, fundraiser Eleanor "Nell" Pratt solicits donations--and sometimes solves crimes. When a collection of George Washington's letters is lost on the same day that an archivist is found dead, it seems strange that the Society president isn't pushing for an investigation. Nell goes digging herself, and soon uncovers a long, rich history of crime.

This was one of the "pocket books" paperbacks in my work's library book sale, and I read it at the reference desk and then put it back rather than buying it. lol  It was obviously the library/archives/museum element that drew me in, as I work in a library with archives. This was a very interesting, well-written mystery that really made the time fly at the reference desk.

Fundraising does not interest me as a profession, but Nell is also a former English major and therefore hangs out in the stacks and archives as much as she can. She knows a lot about the Society and how it works so she can write and speak knowledgeably about it, and this knowledge and her professional relationships with Society staff and donors puts her in the perfect position to investigate the mystery of the disappearing items. A middle-aged Society board member whose ancestors' archival collection is in the archives starts making noise about not being able to find some letters between George Washington and her ancestor. In order to soothe her, Nell visits the cataloger in charge of logging the archival collections into the computer system. He's a nerdy, shy, antisocial dude who wouldn't say boo to a goose, but he likes Nell. He tells her a lot of items have gone missing, and it's all valuable stuff. Connolly really nailed the whole "put it down somewhere it's not supposed to be and it's gone" aspect of archives and libraries; that is a real problem, and it makes the situation tricky since someone could have just misshelved the items and they don't want to raise a false alarm. Nell decides to deal with it after a big fundraising dinner the Society is throwing that evening. She goes to work the next morning and finds the cataloger dead. Nell goes to the Society's President, who she has been dating on the down-low, about the missing items and he gives her excuses and platitudes but does nothing. She and the legacy board member start to suspect the President, and launch an investigation of their own, alongside the board member's cousin who works in the FBI. All in all, a very absorbing story! 

This is the first book in the "Museum Mystery" series, of which there are several. Sheila Connolly has written lots of different mystery series, and judging by this book, she's good at them. I'd be down to read the rest, but who knows when, as I have tons of my own books to read. I'm not sure whether this counts as a cozy mystery, as there isn't much coziness, but it's not gritty or anything either. The setting is cozy mystery-friendly/adjacent. Anyway, I definitely recommend this book and series. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: April 27
From: the library
Status: returned to the library

See my aesthetics moodboard for this series

Representation: middle-aged characters (40s-60s), which seems more common in mysteries series than other genres, but idk if that counts. Also female character-heavy. 1 Black very minor female character

Cover notes: I like the look and vibe. It's very library-y. It is not, however, accurate to the murder in the book.

Trigger warnings: murder, death, dead bodies, blood, attempted murder, a person in locked in a basement wine cellar and left to die by suffocation (they are found in time), a character seduces others to get information out of them without their knowledge and then dumps them, characters bug someone and listen in illegally and without their knowledge or consent, gun mentions, police and FBI, theft of historical archival items, selling aforementioned on the black market

Rest of May books - children's books

Continuing my Narnia reread, I read The Horse and His Boy, which is one of the most unique books of the series. Two enslaved Talking Horses and their runaway child charges escape from Calormen (Arabian Nights land) to go to Narnia, braving the bustling capital city, royal entanglements, and mysterious lions. All the other books are set in Narnia and partially in England, so the change is refreshing. We see the story through the eyes of Shasta, a Northern (white) boy who decides to run away with Bree (Talking Horse) when his adoptive father decides to sell him to Bree's master. I would have liked to equally hear the story from Aravis, the Calormene noble girl escaping an arranged marriage with her Talking Horse Hwin. But of course the whole point of this book is that brown people can't be trusted, except for One Good Brown Person. Fascinating setting, even if the males in this story act stupidly. The kids stumble onto conspiracies which are interesting and dangerous. I liked this book despite the racism, and I liked Aravis' classism being pointed out and comeuppance given. 4.5 stars, permanent collection. Trigger warning: racism, racist stereotypes and caricatures, misogyny, slavery, war, child soldiers, children with weapons, physical violence, child abuse mentions, children hit by adults, a slave is whipped, a lion claws a child, sexism, classism, entitlement, child marriage, arranged marriage

Next was Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré by Anika Aldamuy Denise and illustrated by Paola Escobar, which I bought from Book Outlet. This is a picture book biography of Puerto Rican librarian Pura Belpré, who brought Spanish stories and bilingual storytelling to the latine children who attended the New York Public Library. The American Library Association has a Pura Belpré award for excellent latine children's books, such as this one (note the silver medal). This is a beautiful semi-bilingual book with bright, lovely illustrations, and I enjoyed reading it. My mom, who was born in New York and grew up in the sixties and seventies, was delighted to learn about Belpré. I really look up to Belpré, as a latina librarian. Representation is so important, and I laud those who paved the way. 4.5 stars, keeping.

Pet peeves at work

I wrote this ages ago, well before the pandemic. I haven't worked in person in a regular way at the library for well over a year. We're supposed to start working in-person again in September, which I'm both looking forward to and dreading. Anyway, enjoy.

• when I'm sitting at the reference desk and someone asks for another librarian 
• what am I, chopped liver?!?
• when no one takes me seriously, including students, because I look like a student
• when someone I've been helping with research in the archives asks another librarian for help
• and they totally know I could help them so it's clear they don't want me
• and my colleague doesn't know I've helped them previously so *she* dives into the archives to look for stuff that I totally could've looked for and found 
• and that's very nice of her but it feels like she's doing my job for me, plus I feel guilty since she's already so busy
• and I'm mad at the scholar for going over my head
• especially since it's something they never even asked me for help with!!!
• when people expect me to have an encyclopedic knowledge of eeeeeeeverything in the library. like lol yeah right
• but it bugs me because I also kind of feel like I should know everything we have
• when instructors ask us to do a library visit/instruction session with their class the week of, or, God forbid, the day before their class meets, especially during the busy season
• like yes, we were just totally sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for you, this won't inconvenience us at all
• when people dump their crap donate items to us that we totally already have 1000 copies of, but by all means, give us your old junk
• when people assume they can just waltz into the special collections and riffle through our archival holdings themselves. Oh did you go to library school? No? Then you can't. 
• relatedly: when patrons want to access something in the archives and the other librarians just... let them into the off-limits-to-patrons room without even checking with me!!!
• when people LICK THEIR FINGERS to turn pages, especially of archival items!!! *shudder*
• when people bring food and drinks into the special collections reading room even though I specifically told them not to. You're not special and our rules do apply to you.
• gods just remembering that time a girl put a FRESH PEELED COCONUT on an ARCHIVAL BOX and it left a WET STAIN on it still gives me rage of the librarian variety. I'm having angina just thinking about it
• when I have to be at work for something first thing in the morning right after I've worked a night shift
• when people studying in the library don't throw away their trash or clean up crumbs, etc. ESTE NO ES UN HOTEL!
• when people studying in the library don't turn off the lamps they've been using when they leave and then I have to because no one else cares
• when someone comes to talk to me at the reference desk but they stand at the side of the desk instead of coming to the front of the desk in front of me like a normal person, even though there's no one there. like wtf???
• when my coworkers send out passive aggressive emails that are totally aimed at me
• when people are suuuuper slow to leave at closing time. Like I've already rung the buzzer and flicked the lights on and off and told you personally that we're closing. This isn't a store or restaurant where they close the doors but let you hang out for longer, just LEAVE already. 
• shoutout to the patron who kept trying to have a conversation with me ten minutes after closing time in the face of my repeatedly telling her we were closed and she had to leave 
• 
• also shoutout to the patron, who when I straight up told him we were closing and he needed to leave, asked me if he could have a couple minutes more. *John Mulaney voice and face* NO!
• when people ask me "are you busy?" at the reference desk. Yes, I am busy, I have specifically chosen to work here on this very public desk in the library labeled "REFERENCE DESK" where other librarians have helped you before/which is where your instructor told you to go get research help on my own personal project, it's not like the main/most important thing in the library is helping patrons or anything, I'm definitely going to turn you away
• like honestly I'm just social media-ing in the times between helping people 
• forreal dude just roll up and ask me your question
• when I see a student hovering near the desk while I'm already helping someone and I say "do you have a quick question?" and the student says "yes, I need help with [finding sources for their paper, something that is going to take at least fifteen minutes and for which they are definitely going to have to wait for me to be finished with the student I'm currently helping, obviously, don't play]"
• when a student asks me if we have a certain book. I realize this is very standard in libraries, but these are Gen Z students who absolutely know how to use the internet, there is no way they don't know about the library catalog because we make all freshmen do a library scavenger hunt and/or we've personally demonstrated how to look up books and articles in their classes, just go to the library website and click on Library Catalog, my dude
• I don't typically mind this but it's annoying when I'm helping someone else with a real research question
• when students walk allll the way from the back of the room where the printers are to the reference desk at the front of the room to ask for help with some tech problem when they could have just asked the computer lab worker, who is situated at the middle of the room in an obvious separate desk, for help
• when I catch students getting physical in the study rooms. Gross. Like hello, these are STUDY rooms, do not "get a room" here. ESTE NO ES UN HOTEL! 
• the same goes for couples getting cozy on our giant bean bag. Like do you want to have to tell the admin assistant you got body fluids on the bean bag? Because I'm not going to be the one to do that, lovebirds.
• when students are loud
• when the printers don't work
• when the student workers get too comfortable and treat their shifts like a social hour or study time only. You're here to work, so even if there's not a whole lot for you to do, look around and see if anyone at the printers looks like they need help, computer worker
• when people (especially student workers, who should know better) listen to music or videos without headphones, or when they have the headphones but the audio is WAY TOO LOUD and the sound is still very audible
• when the wifi doesn't work, which is MOST OF THE TIME!!! This is a UNIVERSITY and a UNIVERSITY LIBRARY besides!! Students come here to study!! Like WTF!!!
• when I contact IT about this and they're like hurr durr we can't do anything
• when it's too cold or hot
• and we don't even have control over the temperature in our own library!!! Freaking physical plant department does, and of course they can't be arsed
• when people ask me for stuff with a very "you're The Help and I'm your boss" kind of energy
• you know, like this is The Devil Wears Prada and they're Meryl Streep and I'm Anne Hathaway. Just like spiritually/mentally flinging their designer coat into my face
• Like obviously I'm going to help you! That is my job! I just don't like them putting on classist airs about it
• obviously all of the typical librarian and archivist pet peeves apply too 
• when people ask me for things they've already asked me for, especially if it's something I had to work to get, such as a thesis from an obscure part of the archives area. Like did you not read the email I sent you? We've been over this? Hello?
• when people come talk to me for no reason (depends on my mood). If it's not information based, I don't know how to handle conversations, and you're wasting my time and the time of anyone waiting for me to be available for questions.
• I'm especially thinking of white baby boomer men. White baby boomer men are soooo annoying because they think they are so charming and funny, and they usually aren't. I hate the stupid jokes they make. I'm a huge target for them at that front-facing desk, as any young woman in the service industries knows.
• when someone incredibly technologically ignorant is trying to do something at the computers and keeps asking me questions about the simplest things. I know it's not their fault but it's still annoying to me. Like ma'am, you should know how to how to use email if you're in college/applying for a job. I especially dislike when they ask me for help every 30-60 seconds and make me get up from my desk every time instead of just admitting they're going to need my help for every single step of the way and can I please sit with them and help them. Like let's be real here.

Books roundup: April & May books

April's book (I am not reading much these days) was The Library Card by Jerry Spinelli, which I got from a thrift store since I loved his Maniac Magee. Instead of a novel, it's a series of short stories about children/teens who have their lives changed by a magical library card that seems to follow them around, and by the public library or a bookmobile. Two of the teens (boys) are troubled, while one girl makes an unlikely friend, and another learns that her television addiction is keeping her from living life. The TV story was my least favorite. The adult up-in-arms anxiety about television rotting kids' minds or holding them in thrall is so outdated, even in the mid-nineties when Spinelli wrote this book. TV has been around since the late 1940s, for pete's sake. The internet/world wide web (since it's the nineties) should be the focus of that concern, if you must have one. Books are healthier for children to engage with than television, overall, but I'd rather have kids watching good television shows than reading crap like Twilight. Adults are always scared of the newest media, but the TV isn't even new anymore. It's silly and a waste of time to write stories like this. Your life isn't going to end because you watch a lot of TV. Just make sure your kids aren't watching trash and they'll be fine. 3.5 out of 5 stars, with half a star off because of the sadness and TV-scare nonsense. Giving away.  Trigger warnings for this book: violence, teen character beats up a child and breaks things, a character attempts to hold up a vehicle and threatens to hurt others with a knife, mental illness, character has history of self harm and has visible scars on her arms, anger issues, homelessness, shoplifting, vandalism

May's book was a small illustrated hardcover book called The Wandering Goose: A Modern Fable of How Love Goes by Heather L. Earnardt, with lovely illustrations by Frida Clements. This read, which I purchased at the dollar store, is very short. It's a philosophical kind of fable on love and the loss of love. A bug and a goose fall in love, but the goose has to leave to follow his wanderer's heart. I'm 99% sure that the bug and the goose represent the author and a significant other she had. The illustrations and prose are very lovely, but the ending is very abrupt and unsatisfying; it just ends with the bug's heartbreak. I was literally like, that's it? Usually when a character's heart gets broken, I want to read about them reuniting with their lost love, or finding a new love that is better than the one that broke their heart, or picking up the pieces and learning to become a strong independent bug who don't need no goose, but we don't get any of that. I will be giving this one away. 3.5 out of 5 stars. Trigger warnings for this book: none that I can think of, besides the oddness of a bug and a goose falling in love. Don't geese eat bugs?

Elders of the Internet

Love it! Nick Offerman is the best.

Book review: Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern

I bought Summer Hours at the Robbers Library because of the cover. I am a simple woman; if any book is about libraries, bookstores, librarians, or old books, I immediately want to buy it. Barnes & Noble had a buy 2, get 1 free deal going on, so what more did I need?

Requisite Amazon summary:

People are drawn to libraries for all kinds of reasons. Most come for the books themselves, of course; some come to borrow companionship. For head librarian Kit, the public library in Riverton, New Hampshire, offers what she craves most: peace. Here, no one expects Kit to talk about the calamitous events that catapulted her out of what she thought was a settled, suburban life. She can simply submerge herself in her beloved books and try to forget her problems.
But that changes when fifteen-year-old, home-schooled Sunny gets arrested for shoplifting a dictionary. The judge throws the book at Sunny—literally—assigning her to do community service at the library for the summer. Bright, curious, and eager to connect with someone other than her off-the-grid hippie parents, Sunny coaxes Kit out of her self-imposed isolation. They’re joined by Rusty, a Wall Street high-flyer suddenly crashed to earth.
In this little library that has become the heart of this small town, Kit, Sunny, and Rusty are drawn to each other, and to a cast of other offbeat regulars. As they come to terms with how their lives have unraveled, they also discover how they might knit them together again and finally reclaim their stories.

I expected this book to be heartwarming, a love letter to public libraries and their ability to transform people and build communities, and it was, but... it was really sad? Kit, the reference librarian, has fled from a tragic betrayal; Sunny's parents are anarchist vegan hippies who lie to and neglect her; and Rusty lost everything in the 2008 stock market crash and is desperately trying to see if this Riverton is the one that holds his grandmother's forgotten bank account. I could have handled the latter two storylines fine, but Kit's was too sad. I especially didn't like how the people who failed Kit didn't get a comeuppance.

The main story, the Riverton Library, is set in 2008 and told fairly straightforward. It is interspersed with Kit's journaling of what happened to her as well as Sunny's memories of her family life. Kit's journal entries are told chronologically, if I'm remembering correctly, and Sunny's memories jump back and forth in time. The book actually opens with the first of Kit's journal entries, although we don't know it yet. That first chapter is a recounting of Kit's sexual exploits, a jarring beginning that does not vibe with the rest of the book. I think the book should have started with Sunny's recounting of her juvie trial, not Kit's college love life. It makes the book seem atonal, since we keep going between the rather peaceful but economically troubled library/town life and the disturbing, painful and angry accounts of Kit's pre-Riverton life. The book ends with all of the primary characters opening up and letting each other in, and finally seeing Riverton as their home.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes books about libraries and doesn't mind sad/disturbing stories.

Score: 3.9 out of 5 stars
Read in: late July
From: Barnes & Noble
Format: paperback
Status: tentatively keeping

Book review: Murder at the Library of Congress by Margaret Truman

I was browsing the free books racks at the library yet again when this book caught my eye. Obviously I am interested in anything having to do with the Library of Congress. Murder at the Library of Congress is one of Margaret Truman's Capital Crimes series of mysteries, presumably set in Washington DC. The book's summary, from Amazon:

In the depths of the U.S. Library of Congress toil thousands of researchers, chasing down obsessions, breakthroughs, and new contributions to human wisdom. But when amateur D.C. sleuth Annabel Reed-Smith enters this stately American institution, she discovers a hornet’s nest of intrigue and murder.
After a renowned scholar is bludgeoned to death among the scholarly stacks, an ambitious TV reporter links the case to the heist of a Spanish painting from a Miami museum and a killing in Mexico City. Annabel suspects that buried in the Library are secrets some people will do anything to keep silent–the secret of a rich man’s ambition, a researcher’s disappearance, and a mysterious diary of Christopher Columbus’s journey written five hundred years ago.

Anyway, the book sounded interesting enough, so I gave it a try. I liked the descriptions of the Library of Congress. It is my dream to visit it someday, and I'm somewhat bitter that no one in my family thought of taking me there on my 3 trips to Washington DC as a child/teen. It sounded like Ms. Truman did a good job of bringing the LoC and its myriad rooms and researchers to life, and it made me really want to visit ASAP. I also liked the Columbus/Mesoamerican angle, as that is my heritage. The protagonist, Annabel, owns a gallery of pre-Columbian art and is researching the possible diaries of Bartolome de las Casas, an actually real person I am shocked to learn exists and had a very interesting life. This book says he was on the ships with Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus in English) and wrote diaries about his experiences, but there is no mention of that in his Wikipedia article, so Truman probably made it up.

This mystery was ok, but the writing was pretty bad and cliche. The dialogue was wooden and unnatural, I had that started-a-series-in-the-middle feeling of confusion, and the women characters sounded like a mediocre male writer had written them. Lots of telling but not showing. There was more character development in the Wikipedia article I linked to above. In an attempt to flesh out the characters, there was this whole thing about Annabel's older husband needing a total knee replacement that he kept putting off because of male stubbornness and illogicalness, and in the end he had the surgery  anyway. Why. No one cares. The first/main victim was an egotistical, sexist jerk who deserved to be killed. I felt bad for the archival equipment what was used for the murder weapon, though. *archivist feels*

There were some subplots who only served to obfuscate the main one. I really felt that the angle of a possible hidden treasure map on the back of an old painting was promising and interesting, but I don't think it went anywhere, because I don't remember what happened. It was attached to the second most important plot, that of the guy who stole the painting in Miami. Again, no one cared. There was another subplot about one of the female workers at the LoC having a stalker and getting heavy breathing calls. It ended up having nothing to do with the murder, and it was "resolved" by a higher up having the offending employee (who outranked her) apologize to her! Like WTF!! That's not how you handle sexual harassment in the workplace!!!

 The ending was pretty abrupt. The killer revealed herself in a really stupid way. Publisher's Weekly agrees with me: "A clue to the murderer is tipped clumsily; the discovery of the killer's identity comes as something of an anticlimax..." (on the Amazon page linked to above). The body count was maybe about 3 people? idk, I wasn't invested. They called churros a DONUT, you guys. A @#%*ING DONUT!!!! Every time I think about it I am filled with Mexican rage. Ese culerismo, te digo.

I'd say read this only if you're going to be trapped somewhere, like on a plane, and the only other books are the Fifty Shades of Gray series or equivalent.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars
Read in: late January-early February
From: free books rack at the library
Format: paperback
Status: put back on the free books rack at the library

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

This movie won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. It is now one of my all-time favorite movies. Utterly lovely and wonderful. (I didn't get the pun in the main character's name until just now.)

My first reader's advisory reference interview!

I've been volunteering at my local library this summer shelving books, and while I've answered patrons' questions about things like the age level of books and where to find books about America/the States/etc., I had my first real... I'm not sure what to call it, hence the long title. It's sort of a reference interview, I think, but the person asked me to recommend a book, so reader's advisory? I've learned the terms in library school but not quite what counts as which. Anyway.
I had some books in my hand and was frowning at a shelf trying to find the right place to shelve the book when this girl, about eleven or twelve, who had also been looking intently at the shelf asked me, "Do you know any good books? I'm looking for a good book to read."
Aha! I thought, this is exactly what we've been prepared for in our classes. "What sort of books do you like to read?" I asked her.
"I like Artemis Fowl, mythology, stuff like that. Adventure books!" she answered, smiling in that excited way children do.
"Well, let's see..." I perused the bookshelf, muttering, "Adventure books..." until I found something. "Have you read The City of Ember?"
"No, I haven't. Is it good?"
"Yeah, I really liked this one. Ember, the city, is the only bright spot in a world of darkness, and two kids have to figure out how to save it."
"Ooh, that sounds good! [...] Do you know if this book is good?" She held up The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke.
"Ooh yeah. I haven't read that one myself but I've heard it's really good. I've read some other books by her and I really liked those."
"Me too, I read Inkheart by her and really liked it, and Inkheart 2."
"Me too! I liked those."

I helped a child find a good book by putting my librarian training to use! *happy dance* I hope she likes it.