We love our Friends...

It's National Friends of the Library Week, so I wanted to let our members know how thankful we are every day of the year for your support. Our Friends group supports the Summer Reading Program by buying books for those who finish their reading goal. They purchase book group kits for local book clubs. They fund programs for adults and children. They've purchased new toys for the Children's Rooms at both libraries. They supported the Family Reading Area, and are contributing to the teen room project. They are endowing a Collection for Excellence for the library through the Greater Everett Community Foundation. They volunteer time during the Mayor's Award, National Library Week, and other special events. I love our Friends, and if you're not a Friend now, please consider joining. We'll take your time or your money, or both. It's easy--just click here.

Librarians in fiction and film

Jo Dereske, author of the Miss Zukas mysteries will be at the Main Library on October 10 at 2 p.m. Miss Zukas is a librarian, as is Dereske--as am I. So that got me thinking about other books with librarians as characters. I've read a few, which I'll get to, but I looked first in Novelist, one of our online databases (and a great source for reading ideas) just to get a sense of how ubiquitous we librarians are in fiction. It turns out that librarians are well represented in fiction.

Although I don't ever expect anyone to come up to the reference desk and say "can you recommend a good book with a librarian as a character?" here's a list of books you might enjoy even if one of the characters wasn't a librarian:
Elizabeth McCracken's The Giant's House, Allen Kurzweil's The Grand Complication, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, Ian Sansom's The Case of the Missing Books, and Richard Powers' The Gold Bug Variations.

When not on the reference desk or between the pages of a book, librarians can also be found in film. But I think that will be another post because this one is getting a bit long.