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.
Apart from the location, Friends of the Library and Volunteers this books shows, in a quite humourous way, how universal the library experience can be. I had a good giggle and regularly nodded in wry acknowledgement.
Full of snippets of what life can be like behind the desk and insights into what people really do in libraries it's a great fun read. Despite the tag line I didn't find it shocking at all.
I also agree with the end of the introduction:
"Support your local library.
Get a library card.
Pay your goddam fines. Man up for Christ's sake. Be a little responsible.
And if there's any shushing to be done, let it be done by a professional.
Me."
Reading updates
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15 May, 2009:
Reviewed