Free for All

by Don Borchert

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Not long ago, the public library was a place for the bookish, the eggheaded, and the studious--often seeking refuge from a loud, irrational, crude, outside world. Today, libraries have become free-for-all entertainment complexes filled with rowdy teens, deviants, drugs, and even sex toys. Lockdowns and chaperones are often necessary. What happened? Don Borchert was a short-order cook, door-to-door salesman, telemarketer, and Christmas-tree-chopper before landing a job in a California library. He never could have predicted his encounters with the colorful kooks, touching adolescents, threatening bullies, and tricksters who fill the pages of this hilarious memoir. Borchert offers readers a ringside seat for the unlikely spectacle of mayhem and absurdity that is business as usual at the public library--cops bust drug dealers who've set up shop in the men's restroom, a burka-wearing employee suffers a curse-ridden nervous breakdown, and a lonely, neglected kid who grew up in the library and still sends postcards to his surrogate parents--the librarians. In fact, from the first page of this comic debut to the last, you'll learn everything about the world of the modern-day library that you never expected.
  • ISBN10 1905264127
  • ISBN13 9781905264124
  • Publish Date 13 November 2007
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 19 October 2013
  • Publish Country GB
  • Imprint Virgin Books
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 240
  • Language English