Things Librarians Think About

Okay, here's a question:

If a person was born in New Zealand, grew up there, married and had kids in the country, and then, after almost thirty years as a New Zealander, moved to Australia where they bought a house, got a job, paid Australian taxes, etc...

If, after moving to Australia they started writing books, which they published through Australian publishing firms and sold largely in Australian bookshops and news agencies...

Would that person be a New Zealand author or an Australian author? And, if you were to have a book display that showcased Australian and New Zealand authors, and you were going to set up this display by having the Australian authors in one area and the New Zealand authors in another area, where would you put the books by that author?

On a related point, if they wrote children's books, and you were going to put together a display of Australian children's books, would you include their works?

Euro-English

I love it when people in Europe translate their own stuff into English.

This was on the skike home page, to answer the question "Where can I skike?" (a subsection under the question "what is to skike?"):

"In Cities not only on asphalt, also on cobblestones. Along stairs and non tightened ground stretch. Out in the open country on forrest ways - if it is allowed. Basically you can learn it allone. Just study the users manual and attached video, what comes along with every skike, carefully and follow the instructions."

"Non tightened ground stretch." You see, you just don't get descriptions like that from native English speakers. Let's not mention the spelling; it will spoil the fun.

I'm thinking of buying the red ones - purely because of the description:

"red - for all who are self confidentand who are able to harmonize eleganze and harmony!"...

Problematic People

I had a "problematic" client at the desk this week. He had a problem, you see, and he had come to the desk with a particular solution in mind.

It wasn't the only solution. It wasn't the best solution. It wasn't even a particularly good solution. In fact, it was a terrible solution, due largely to the fact that it was impossible.

However, it was the solution he wanted, and the only one he was willing to accept. He made it perfectly clear that he thought poorly of us for being unable to offer him this solution, and he looked down upon all other proffered solutions with scorn and derision, declaring that they, too, were problems.

The problem, as he saw it, was the fact that we offered a book in electronic format when he would have preferred it to be in print. His solution was for us to magically create a print version for him, so that he could read it more conveniently.

I think he believed this was as simple as pressing "print" on the electronic book and having the entire thing shoot out of a printer for his reading pleasure. My attempts to explain the issues involving copyright and paper consumption fell on deaf ears. He was much more interested in expressing his disbelief that anyone would even want to look at an electronic book. My attempts to explain the benefits for distance education students left him similarly unimpressed.

I think the real problem was the fact that he didn't know how to work the thing - and he didn't want to. The fact that he would have to in order to read the book? Well, that was tantamount to a personal affront.

The really interesting thing about this client (to me) wasn't the fact that he would rather deal with a print book than learn how to use something electronic - you get that sort of thing all the time. It was the fact that he was a fairly young French guy, and I found these things made him more annoying.

His youth made me feel as if he simply wasn't trying hard enough. I felt like saying "Dude, you're what? Thirty-five? Learn a new trick." While, at the same time, his French accent, used with such grumpy tones, just made him sound petulant. By the time I had finished trying to serve him, I felt like slapping him.

I didn't slap him, of course. I tried to keep smiling and sounding like a nice professional librarian. I think it's important for people to know that their librarians might be smiling, but there's a good chance they still want to hit you over the head with a blunt object. It might encourage a firmer grip on reality.

Finish What You Started - Fatal Remedies

Heh, I actually have managed to finish a few things I was partway through since commencing Operation Finish What you Started - I've just been too lazy to write the reviews I said I would.

So, anyway, here's one (brief, rambling and/or OTT though it may be):

Fatal Remedies, by Donna Leon.

I first encountered Donna Leon's Brunetti series when I was on vacation in Tasmania. I had made the unusual decision of not taking any books with me, but buying them from second hand shops and leaving them wherever I happened to finish them. The whole point of the exercise was to pick up something I wouldn't normally carry around with me - something written by an author I hadn't read before, and in a genre I don't usually choose.

The first one I happened to pick up was the second Brunetti book, Death in a Strange Country. It was a police procedural (a genre I don't usually read), by Donna Leon (whom I had never read) and it was one dollar from a thrift store (my kind of price).

I found myself quite taken with the story and the character of Commissario Guido Brunetti. I left the book in a bed-and-breakfast, as I had intended, but I found myself wanting more of the same, so I abandoned my plan to pick a work from a different genre and author, and deliberately set out to find another book from the same series. I ended up finding Aqua Alta in a second hand bookshop. It was $6.50, which was a bit more than I had intended to invest in this project, but it was a good read which got me to the end of my holidays.

When I got home, I decided to borrow another Brunetti book from the public library. I was slightly hampered by the fact that I didn't actually have time to go to the library in person, but I asked my mother to pick up something the next time she went in.

The result was Fatal Remedies. I don't know if it was because I was so swamped at work that when I went home I barely had the brain power to read magazines, or if it was because I was surrounded by so many other things to read and watch (during the holiday I also made the choice to abstain from television the entire time, and entertain myself with books and "the great outdoors"), but I found I was reading the book in fits, and quite often putting it down and forgetting to pick it up again.

As a result, the story didn't grab me quite as much as the other books. I don't know if it wasn't as gripping a story, or if I just didn't give myself the chance to be "gripped". It was interesting - and more of an exploration of Brunetti's character than the previous books - but it didn't seem quite as solid as Death in a Strange Country.

The story involved an act of vandalism on the part of Brunetti's wife, Paola - done as a political/social statement about sex-tourism. This act was potentially embarrassing for the commissario, but it got worse when the target of his wife's vandalism was found dead with a hate-note implying that the murder was also to do with the sex-tourism trade.

Of course, it would be a very boring police-procedural if things were quite so cut-and-dried. There are a few twists and turns along the way - all just barely bordering on the believable (but then, so were the other books). The end of the book wrapped up the case, but left the characters with some unresolved issues.

That's probably one of the more interesting things about Leon's books - the case itself is solved, but there are threads left unresolved. At the back of your mind, you know you will probably never hear about them again. The next book isn't likely to pick up those threads and resolve them for you. It still makes you feel as though there's something more to be read - like those formal gardens that have "rooms", where you can see the hint of something else through a passage way or past a hedge.

I haven't read another book in the series, yet. I probably will, though - just not when I have a hundred other things to do.

Public Libraries and "other" languages

I went to my local public library the other day, and on a whim I went over to the "foreign languages" section to see if they had any Russian children's books that might be nice and simple for picking up some vocabulary (in case you weren't aware, I'm currently learning Russian and Estonian).

I was intrigued to note that there weren't very many books in the Russian section at all. In fact, one person could borrow the entire stock of books on the shelf and still have "room" to borrow a couple of books from the rest of the library.

Now, even if the other two branches had the same number of books on their shelves, when you consider the fact that the books were a mix of fiction, non-fiction, adult and children's books...

Well, let's just say the average Russian living in this town has very little reading material. I don't know exactly how many Russians we have (I personally know three, and they don't seem to know each other so either the Russian community here isn't very close-nit or there are enough for them to get their "fellow countrymen" fix without knowing every single Russian in town), but I'll wager there are enough of them to warrant a slightly better selection of books.

Let's put it this way: I borrowed a cook book. Just one. It was the only Russian cook book there, so no one else gets to make Russian pastries until such time as I could be bothered returning it.

And, yes, I know how the system works. The State Library has a collection of books in foreign languages, which it circulates to the local public libraries on request. All you have to do to get more Russian books is ask. However, you kind of have to know what to ask for. You can't just rock up to the library, see a book on the shelf you haven't read before and think: "Oh, yeah, I may as well try it". Is that not one of the great joys of a library?

I was thinking there needs to be a better system (that's my 'thing' these days: "we need a better system"). Perhaps, when someone signs up for a library card, they could have the option of marking their "home language" on their form. For every person who has that home language, the library ensures they have at least five "new" fiction books and five "new" non-fiction books cycle through the library branches each month. That way, theoretically, each registered library user would have a reasonably large selection to choose from.

Say, for example, there were 25 registered Russian readers in town - that would make 250 Russian books on the shelves). Would that make an untenable number of foreign language books? Yes, probably, but if you consider the fact that we have three branches in this town, and all of the books would rotate between those branches for a period of approximately three months before going back to the State Library to be sent to another town, then it seems a bit more reasonable. Also, there's no reason why they can't bring back the same books every couple of years, as long as they aren't all the same books.

And, yes, that may get a bit ludicrous when you put together all of the languages spoken by different people around town... but dammit, what are libraries for, if not to fulfil our unreasonable expectations?

Doodles and ditties

The Wheels of Chance, by H. G. Wells

This is a book review I wrote for a staff news letter some months back. I thought I'd pull it out and give it a bit of an airing over here.

A couple of months ago I was listening to a documentary on Radio National in which they read several passages from The Wheels of Chance, by H.G. Wells. As a teenager I had read several of Wells' science fiction novels, including The Island of Dr Moreau, which was written in the same year as The Wheels of Chance, but I had never bothered to look at his non-science fiction novels.

I was pleased to find a copy of this book was sitting on our shelves, so I checked it out… then promptly forgot to read it. I noticed it sitting on my desk the other day and decided I had better take it home – and I'm so very glad I did. Right from the opening chapter this book had me absolutely charmed. It's now one of my favourite books, and I'll be keeping an eye out for a copy of my own from now on.

The book was written in 1895 and is a contemporary novel – perhaps set a couple of years before the book was published. The story involves Mr Hoopdriver (his given name was never made clear) – a twenty-three year old draper's assistant who decides to spend his yearly two-week holiday cycling around the south of England. He has only recently bought a second hand bicycle, and he still isn't entirely sure how to ride the thing, but he has bought the clothes and accessories to be a cyclist and he is determined to enjoy himself.

Hoopdriver is something of a comical figure, and he takes more than one fall in the course of this short book, but he is also heroic in his way. On the first day of his journey he encounters another cyclist, the Young Lady in Grey, who flummoxes him by wearing "rationals" (bloomers), sending him crashing to the pavement. Throughout the book he crosses paths with this Young Lady in Grey and her ne'er-do-well companion, eventually coming to her rescue and spending a few days as her "brother" before his adventure comes to an end.

The book could be considered a social commentary, as well as a comedy, as it touches on a lot of aspects of English culture at the time. However, where other social commentaries might use a sharp, incisive humour to make their points, The Wheels of Chance treats its subjects with a loving touch, remaining gentle and charming throughout.

This is a book set in a time when safety bicycles (those with two wheels the same size, as opposed to "ordinary bicycles", which we think of as "penny farthings") were making travel possible for the common man and "untrammelled" woman. The freedom of movement they brought to women and the lower classes coincided with and contributed to the early feminist movement and the waning days of the traditional class system in England.

This book was published a year after Susan B. Anthony's famous statement celebrating the bicycle, calling the image of a young lady on a bicycle "the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood". This statement clearly influence Wells as he was writing this novel, as one of the characters is an authoress who has written a book called A Soul Untrammelled. Wells does seem to be laughing a little at the concept, but his humour is directed more at the young girl who has taken all her ideas of life from novels than the feminist literature itself.

Jesse, the Young Woman in Grey, has an idea of becoming a "Free Woman" and "Living Her Own Life", like the heroines in the popular novels. In the course of the book, she discovers that "freedom" usually costs something after all (money, for instance). Hoopdriver revels in the fact that a young man in a cycling suit could be a duke as well as a draper, and takes the opportunity to pretend to be someone else for a while. He eventually discovers that the man he actually is just might be good enough after all.

It's not a high romance, it's not a grand adventure, it's not a side-splitting comedy and it's not an incisive social commentary. And, yet, it is a romance, an adventure, a comedy and a social commentary. It is, as the subtitle says, an Idyll, and it is a very pleasant read.