Citali's Library

Have I mentioned I love libraries?

(a joke. That's a joke. I love libraries. I say this all the time.)

Like, a lot. Unironically. Unconditionally.

SO last summer I volunteered at my city library, and to be not cliché, it wasn't exactly life-changing. But it made me think things.

I worked in the children's section, as opposed to adult or circulation. However, they don't let volunteers sit behind the reference desk and answer questions and sign kids up for summer reading. Whether or not it seems logical, you need a master's in library science for that. I also wasn't shelving books, though I feel like I'd be good at that, being a longtime patron of the children's section (the wisdom of years: that the L-M and M-R shelves are where everything that's worth anything is. Pretty much). What I did was everything else. My fellow four volunteers were almost-not-quite found family; I figure that once you pick up speech patterns from someone, you've become at least a level 2 friend (a joke. That's a joke). There was a performance series where we volunteers would help set up stages for puppet shows and jugglers and science shows, then count the attendees—adults and kids—with little clickers. Memorably, we performed in one of them, as part of an opera, albeit a 30-minute one. We stamped summer reading achievement certificates with the librarians' seal of approval. We lugged boxes of the free books given out for summer reading. Memorably, we spent one afternoon session sanitizing laundry baskets full of baby toys (yes, the ones that little kids put in their mouths. It was fantabulous //s).

But what I spent the most time doing, well... it didn't seem like a very library thing to do. For hours of those afternoons, we voided books, removing them from circulation. Some of them were ripped, drooled on, oil-stained. Some were wholesale ripped from their bindings. But others? They looked like they've been gently used, still usable. Nevertheless, they were treated all the same: their barcodes blacked out, their library labels removed. They were Tetris-ed into circulation carts. And thrown (tossed. Stacked. Fine, placed). Into. Dumpsters (garbage! Trash cans! Or at least, bins).

To be fair: 1) Since they were library property, they were government property. And that means that when they're declared void (and when the library/government has to buy new books) they have to go. Otherwise librarians could void books randomly so that they could keep them. Or sell them. 2) I guess libraries have to toss out things sometime. Some of those voided books were pretty nasty. 3) And some of the books in better (read: spotless, imho) condition were Tetris-ed into boxes, not carts, and taped up and shipped off to libraries elsewhere.

However, those didn't really change the fact that, when I came out of my summer of volunteering, I thought ever-so-slightly less of my library.

But after the summer, I spent an unusual amount of time in other people's libraries: schools, other muni libraries. Whether it was spending time in the school library studying and not touching a page of fiction, or meeting up with classmates in the teen section of their municipal library to work on group projects, or even visiting a library comic-con, it made me think things.

In the world we live in, every bit of government spending is being thrown into question. But libraries, public ones, seem like one of the best and at the same time craziest things you can do. My library isn't huge and urban, and yet I have to stop myself and appreciate what my citizenship gets me. A building with books and computers that you can use for massive blocks of time. Museum passes. Books that have come out mere weeks or even days ago. Wi-fi. Readings. Art. Summer reading. The Oxford English dictionary. An online catalog. A juggler. A Triwizard Tournament.

And that's not even counting what other libraries can do. There are libraries that lend out cake pans and shared seeds and sewing machines. 3D printers and virtual reality headsets. Hosting comic-cons.

My library is limited by the rules of a county system—it can never shut down an entire branch and host a comic-con, for example. But it's also empowered by the thousands of books it can hold in collection and retrieve from different libraries around the area. The catalogue might have been a little clunky. But the fact remains that there are so, so many books I can access with my keystrokes, even months before they're published, without the interlibrary loan. And I might have to disinfect a few baby toys. But for all those two- and three-year-olds who get to have those toys for that time while they're getting read to, sure.

I might have huge, grandiose thoughts-with-a-capital-T about libraries and sharing and whether that playtime and storytime with those disinfected toys will change a life or make a future author want to write. But honestly, even with all the slightly problematic destruction of books or the large quantities of baby saliva, libraries are so, so worth it. And I will be supporting them all the way.

Happy reading,
~Citali

Free Comic Book Day

Hey readers,

Sorry about the lack of actual bookish posts lately. Willow and I have just been pretty busy lately, but we're working on bringing all the fangirly things back onto our schedules.

That being said, last week I mentioned the Free Comic Book Day haul I got!
I bought three books: one was a graphic novel called Space Battle Lunchtime and two were more traditional-length comic books, Godshaper and Lumberjanes (both were the first volume).

Godshaper imagines a world where one day, all the "technology that made life easy" just disappeared. In its place, suddenly everyone had a god with them. They weren't gods in the traditional sense, but more like ghostly companions: glowing, colorful, and attached to each person. They were like "personal bank accounts," with affluential people having larger gods. But there are people without gods; they're called Shapers. Ennay's one of them, and he's lived his whole life knowing that everyone needs him to service their growing gods but no one wants him in town. But more importantly, if he wants to have a career as a musician, he needs a god at his side to seem normal.

Godshaper's art is beautiful and colorful, with a super-interesting concept. I'll definitely be following the story as it comes out! The gods and their humans are an interesting metaphor too.

Lumberjanes is a fluffy story about a group of girl friends who venture into the wilderness during summer camp, only to be met by ghostly supernatural occurrences. It's cute, simple, and keeps the ghost-story vibe light, just like a friendly campfire story.

Space Battle Lunchtime is the story of Peony, who bakes for a lowly cafe. But when she's zapped into orbit on a spaceship, she soon discovers she's the newest contestant on an intergalactic cooking show, Space Battle Lunchtime. The graphic novel chronicles her adventures dealing with her fellow contestants, who all think her Earthling lack of knowledge of intergalactic standards is cute and naive. She meets with grudging acceptance and jealous hatred, but it remains to be seen if Peony has a chance to use victory on Space Battle Lunchtime to propel herself to intergalactic pastry stardom!

All of these comics are cute, quirky, and unconventional. I'd definitely recommend them to all ages!

Happy reading!
~Citali

Housekeeping

Hello, lovely readers!

Happy Thursday! As finals approach, we're taking a quick break from our ~regularly scheduled~ well-planned-out post programming to just give a bit of an update on what's going on at the Archives.

• Willow and I did NaNo together this past April Camp NaNo. For the first time, Willow captained our cabin, and for the first time, we both won Camp with our word goals of 10k. (I'm not saying those were related, but those were definitely related). 
• I also did a more loose Camp than I'm used to. Usually, it's a lot easier for me to write during Camp in April and July than it is in November, so I attempt my best writing in April. However, I realized that the story I was writing... wasn't really going a direction that was something I wanted to pursue for more plot events or for revisions. I did get to write 5k on a story that I really love, and that I want to keep writing, though!
• Don't worry, I'm still working on the Reading Without Walls challenge. There will be booklists!
• Free Comic Book Day was celebrated the first Saturday this May! I picked up some indie comics and also a v. cool graphic novel (which will feature in Reading Without Walls #2) for 20% off at my friendly neighborhood indie comic bookstore (which is, in fact, a real thing).
• One of the cornerstones of solarpunk lit for YA is The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson, set in futuristic Brazil. I recently started reading it, and am awed by the worldbuilding. 
• Some posts to come: Reading Without Walls, Camp NaNo reflections, an analysis of grammar in fiction inspired by St.Owl's blog, some thoughts on short stories/novelettes, and some vague ideas-that-aren't-posts-yet about libraries and communities (of course).

With luck, we'll have a proper bookish post next week.

Until then, happy reading!

~Citali

Literary Tourism

Not to beat the dead horse into the ground, but, as you know, I went to England over the summer. When asked why I chose to go to London (because the trip location was my choice), I usually named one of or all of the following reasons:

1. Foreign editions of books that also were readable (because I read only English).
2. No language barrier (although I had rather underconsidered the barrier of accents).
3. Harry Potter

One of which is literary tourism in and of itself. But as we were in England, I found that, voluntarily or involuntarily, I was being a literary tourist beyond buying foreign editions (actually only one foreign edition, which I will come back to later) and visiting the aforementioned dead horse, the Harry Potter studios, which I will stop talking about now.

We went to Stonehenge and the white chalk horses near Bath and visited the British Museum in London. However, I also visited an amazing and amazingly large bookstore in Canterbury, the site of Chauncer's Canterbury Tales (which features pilgrims telling tales to each other on their way to the Canterbury Cathedral).

And amazing sites aside (because they were amazing) I couldn't stop thinking that, canonically, Richard Campbell Gansey III (of The Raven Cycle fame) walked the circle around Stonehenge and saw the white horses and was probably making nerdy notes in a notebook about ley lines the entire time. I picked up a book about ley lines. In a non-Ganseylike way, I felt it was a Ganseylike thing to do (which you'll understand if you've read The Raven King; there's a passage about Gansey thinking that what most people think of as Ganseylike doesn't really get at his essence, just his outside. Ley lines are part of his outside).

Nota bene: I bought a British copy of The Raven Boys, since I don't own a copy and I felt that I'd been thinking about the books an unusual amount (I didn't get any HP editions because I love Mary GrandPré's covers and chapter illustrations, which aren't in the British editions). Reading it, I rediscovered how aggressively car-related it is. Why, you might ask? Because "tyre," "kerb," and "petrol," all aggressively car-related words and aggressively British words, are very prevalent. It's weird to hear characters with American Southern accents "say" "petrol," to my American brain, anyway.

I kept thinking about how Hermione-like I was being as I enthused about YA foreign editions in a Waterstone's. I thought about the Hogwarts Express as we took the train from London.

Literary tourism is about seeing where authors wrote, where filmmakers recreated, and where characters walked, both in-text and out. I'm all for walking the same ground as famous people, but to walk the same ground as fictional people is pretty cool too.

Happy reading!
~Citali

P.S. Here's a John Green.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHfYj48mDCY