lower east side librarian

Per my post on LCSH Watch 2009, Week 51, I discovered this book via its subject heading, FEMALE JUVENILE DELINQUENTS—FICTION. If I were assigning subject headings, I wouldn't necessarily have picked that one, though. I might have gone with one of the cataloger's other choices PROBLEM FAMILIES -- ENGLAND -- NOTTINGHAM -- FICTION, but more to the point, CHILDREN OF DRUG ADDICTS. Essentially, I would have been more loving to the book's protagonist, Kerrie-Ann (Kez) Hill, whom we follow from the age of five to eighteen. She does a lot of illegal things and more than her share of drugs, but I don't see her as a delinquent, and neither does author Nicola Monaghan.

I was a little creeped out by Harris's dedication, "For all those readers who want every last sip of Sookie." I wonder if she really thinks of her fans as vampires? Let me be clear that I like Sookie, but I'm not a fanatic about it. What I am a fanatic about is reading. I like to be thorough, so when I learned of this collection of short stories that complements or fills in the Sookie Stackhouse series, I requested it from the library right away.

I read this book while in the process of packing up the apartment I lived in for the last ten years. I needed something that was...easy. Industrial Magic, like it's prequel went down easy. I still find narrator Paige Winterbourne a little middle-aged for a 23-year-old, but the story is damned absorbing.

I think Marisa Meltzer is brave for writing this book. There are probably a lot of women out there that know its primary sources as well as she does and who will think she left out x or misinterpreted y. I am not one of those women, though. I have expertise in the zine side of riot grrrl, but know very little about the bands, so I was psyched to read this short, personable history with a certain amount of memoir thrown in.

I wasn't expecting to like The Namesake very much. I wasn't crazy about her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, and the description wasn't particularly enticing. So why did I even read it? Maybe just because Lahiri is a Barnard alumna? Or because I'd saved it in my library account to read list, and it was the only thing I didn't have to go over to Columbia to borrow? Who knows? Regardless, I'm glad I did.

Girl with "raw talent" gets rescued by black-skinned blue-eyed from "primitive" Trinidad and discovers America in 1963.

The author quotes former ALA president Patricia Wilson Berger in her epigraph "Show me a computer expert who gives a damn, and I'll show you a librarian." I wouldn't say all librarians give a damn or that no non-librarian computer geeks don't, but I do think that sentiment is an appropriate way to launch into Johnson's 250 page mash note to librarians. What she likes about us is what I like about us—that we are dedicated to our user population and to our professional ethics. That unlike many other experts, our mission involves educating people and providing access to self-education tools without being snotty about it. At least to your face.

As it turns out, although it was the computer expertiness of librarians that made Johnson notice us, many of the librarians and library projects she profiles in this book are stronger in "give a damn."

Before I really get started, I need to contemplate for a moment that Johnson got interested in librarians, because in researching her previous book The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiff, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries she fell in love with librarians through their obituaries. She is a loving and generous writer, but we have to admit a little quirky, right?

If you're paying much closer attention to my reviews than I think you are, you will recall that I gave a thumbs up to Anchee Min's coming of age in China during the Cultural Revolution story, Wild Ginger, back in July ought eight. Red Azalea covers similar territory, but this time it's openly autobiographical.

Alzheimer's Disease is horrible and scary and horrible. It's I think a little less horrible and scary and horrible as depicted in this novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova. The narrator is an extremely intelligent and even-tempered Harvard professor with early onset Alzheimer's. While reading the page turner in about a day, I was often moved to tears. The originality of the premise—the telling of the story from the point of view of the patient—and the convincingness with which Genova depicts it are unmistakable. However, do you see a however coming?