Category Archives: reading

My 2019 Reading Favorites

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I read 79 books in 2019, which is lower than last year. Considering that I read a lot of my own books (either in editing or in preparing to write something new in a series) that number is actually more like 67. In looking at my spreadsheet where I track my reading, I see long weeks where I didn’t read anything at all. That’s the tradeoff for me as a writer–either I’m reading or I’m writing, but I’m rarely capable of both at the same time.

But I read a lot of really great books this year, enough that I rated only eight books three stars or fewer. I’m getting better at picking the ones I know I’ll love. I also didn’t read a lot of recently published books, which makes me sad, but since I own almost 1200 books I’ve never read, there are a lot of years to catch up on.

I used to do a complicated “best of” summary, with a bunch of categories, but I’m finding that’s less appealing these days. So here are my favorites for the year, listed alphabetically by author (links to my full reviews below):

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, Fredrik Backman. I picked up several of Backman’s books at the thrift store (I am addicted to thrift store book shopping) and pulled this one at random from the shelf. It’s simply delightful. I love the way it addresses storytelling and fantasy, and the way the various characters’ lives are intertwined fascinated me.

Inkling, Kenneth Oppel. This beautiful middle-grade fantasy hit all the right buttons: excellent characterization and character interaction, a clever plot, and witty dialogue. Add to that just the right balance of humor and seriousness, and you have a winner.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn, Dana Simpson. The introduction by Peter S. Beagle draws a connection between this adorable graphic novel and the work of Bill Watterson, and he’s so right! This reminded me in places of Calvin and Hobbes while still remaining itself. I really need to read more of this series.

The Haunting of Maddy Clare, Simone St. James. This ghost story would be unremarkable if it weren’t for its setting (post-WWI England) and the wonderful characters. It was a four-star read for me until I finished it and realized I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I have a number of St. James’ books lying unread on my shelf, and I need to read more of them soon.

Airs Above the Ground, Mary Stewart. I binge-read most of Stewart’s books this year, and while Nine Coaches Waiting remains my favorite, this was a close second. It’s thrilling and romantic, and Stewart is a master of description.

Exit Strategy, Martha Wells. Despite Martha Wells being one of my favorite authors, I put off reading the Murderbot series until this year. Exit Strategy is a stand-in for the series as a whole, but it was also my favorite of the four novellas–or maybe I just continued liking each of them a little better than the last. In any case, I highly recommend this series!

A few more notable mentions:

My best re-read this year was Flora’s Dare by Ysabeau S. Wilce. I’d forgotten how much I loved the book, which is quirky and irrepressible YA fantasy, and it made me wish for more novel-length fiction in Wilce’s world of Califa.

The best first novel was Mary Stewart’s Madam, Will You Talk? The title is weird and off-putting, and it’s maybe a little strange to celebrate a first novel published in 1955, but it astonishes me how good Stewart was right out of the gate.

I normally also like to celebrate my favorite of the books recommended to me, but this year almost all of my notable books were recommendations. But I want to mention one more book I really enjoyed that was recommended to me, which is Ayesha At Last by Uzma Jalaluddin. I am not a fan of Jane Austen retellings, because I don’t get anything out of them I can’t get by re-reading a Jane Austen novel. But this was only loosely based on Pride and Prejudice, and I found the characters and their relationships fun and refreshing.

I hope 2020 will be another stellar year for reading!

The long journey to THE BOOK OF MAYHEM

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Today (April 16) is release day for book three of The Last Oracle series, The Book of Mayhem (previously titled The Book of Death, more on this name change later). It comes nearly ten months after the second book in the series, The Book of Peril. This is a really long time between releases for me, and led to people wondering why the delay. Here’s the story.

Last year, I was having trouble with the company that published some of my books (the Extraordinaries series and The Last Oracle specifically). Royalties were late, emails I sent were ignored, and I was gradually becoming more concerned about the state of the publisher. In July or August, I submitted two books for them to accept or reject: The View From Castle Always and The Book of Death. While I waited on their decision, my relationship with them continued to deteriorate. I ultimately decided not to publish Castle Always with them, but agreed to review the new contract they claimed would resolve many of the issues.

Unfortunately, the contract didn’t satisfy me, as it contained no clauses that would hold the publisher’s feet to the fire when it came to meeting deadlines. So I told them I would not be publishing The Book of Death through them, but would release it under my own publishing imprint.

But I had a lot of other books I was dealing with, in particular the new Company of Strangers series, and I was still writing The Last Oracle series, and releasing the third book in a series under a new imprint is complicated. You have to make sure people understand it’s still the same series, even though the cover art and design are different, and I didn’t have a new cover artist lined up. (Cover design is not my specialty. I do the covers for Company of Strangers, but those are based on a template a very talented designer produced for me.)

In October, I reconnected with a friend who is also an award-winning cover designer, and having seen her work, I knew I wanted her to take over for The Last Oracle. I’d also decided if things with the publisher weren’t resolved by November 1, I would start proceedings to get the rights back for the five books they’d published. The plan was to start designing the cover for The Book of Death in mid-January, and to rebrand the first two books to match right after that. This was important because The Last Oracle is nine books long (they’re all written!) and I needed to confirm that this designer was on board for the whole series.

November 1 came and went with no change to the problems I had. A few weeks later I started nagging the publisher about rights reversion. I knew several authors had already received theirs, which reassured and worried me: reassured because that suggested they weren’t likely to fight me on it, worried because it confirmed my suspicions that the company was circling the drain and I needed to get out fast.

It took them two months to respond and send me the rights reversion letter. I’m still tangled up with them in terms of back royalties and the insanely complicated situation with the audio rights, but I had control of the two series and I could move forward.

I received the rights reversion around the same time the cover design process started. At this point, I was planning on a late February release for The Book of Death. The designer and I were both so excited–she’s a fan of the series and loved the idea of being involved in its creation. We talked initial plans and she went to work.

And then I didn’t hear from her for a month.

When she finally got back to me, I understood why it had taken so long. We’d originally wanted to do a design without a model on the cover–finding suitable poses for NINE BOOKS is incredibly hard, and I prefer the abstract style anyway, like the US covers for Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series. But the designer takes her work very seriously, and before she started designing, she did research on contemporary fantasy. And what she found was that most covers in that genre feature a model on the cover.

This was a major bump in the road, because the designer wasn’t as experienced with working with human figures, but we were both willing to give it a try. I pushed the release date back a month, and waited again.

This time, when she got back to me, she was discouraged. None of the designs she’d tried worked well, and it was looking like she might not be able to do it at all.

But I really liked her work, and the idea of finding someone else to do the covers–someone who would be around for all nine–was wearying. So we made some new decisions. She would go back to the original idea of an abstract design with a central image, and if she couldn’t make it work within a certain time period, we’d call it quits. I pushed the release date back again and settled in to wait.

But it turned out this was the right decision. She came up with the new design almost immediately, along with rough sketches for the first two books (for branding purposes). The problem was, the cover for The Book of Death looked like a horror novel. It was beautiful, and it was clearly the right approach, but everyone I showed it to agreed it said “horror” instead of “contemporary fantasy.” Which is when I realized the problem wasn’t the design, it was the title. The Book of Death was never not going to sound like horror no matter what we did to the design.

With the new title, The Book of Mayhem, slapped into place, the final cover turned out perfect. The designer used the thorny branch as the focal image (when you read the book, you’ll see why it’s appropriate) and that was it. I had a cover.

At that point, I had to choose whether to release the third book immediately, or wait until I could relaunch the series. When I looked at the calendar and realized how long it had been since The Book of Peril, the choice was clear. And today, the payoff from the ending of The Book of Peril is finally available to readers. I hope The Book of Mayhem is worth the wait.

A Year in Reading: 2018 Wrap-up

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2018 was a good year for me with writing and publishing. I published six books, wrote four (and one that was a failure), did some short fiction, and generally had a great time. I also did more reading than I expected, finishing 100 books! Some of those were my own as I did final read-throughs pre-publication or read back through a series in preparation for writing the next book, but most were new to me. Here are the six that stood out above the rest, in alphabetical order by authors, with links to my full Goodreads reviews:

The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill: This middle-grade fantasy was simply delightful on all levels. By times humorous and deeply moving, it’s the sort of book that satisfies all ages of readers. It was assigned reading for the fantasy workshop I took in April, but it was on my radar before that–and I’m glad the workshop pushed it up on the TBR list. It has so much to say about family, both the ones we’re born into and the ones we make for ourselves, and I found myself in tears more than once.

Crush, Svetlana Chmakova: I’ve been a fan of Chmakova’s graphic novels for years, but I think her Berrybrook Middle School books are her best work yet. In this third volume, gentle giant Jorge, defender of the weak, is caught up in an unexpected crush on Jazmine–but the story goes so far beyond that into issues of honor and respect and body autonomy without being preachy that it blew me away. I recommend the whole series, starting with Awkward and Brave.

‘Salem’s Lot, Stephen King: I am not a reader of horror, and Stephen King’s writing is generally too harsh for my tastes, so I wouldn’t have picked this up if not for the aforementioned fantasy workshop. So I think I loved it more because I was not expecting to love it at all. I read it in two sittings and was never frightened, though it was extremely tense in places. It helped me discover that I only like books about vampires when they’re evil villains; I’d always thought I just didn’t like vampire stories. Probably my love of Dracula should have told me different, huh? But ‘Salem’s Lot was just fantastic.

The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu: Another fantasy workshop book, and here I’m solidly in the minority. Most of the other attendees hated it, but I fell in love with the characters enough that I have no interest in continuing with the series. That really does make sense, I promise. The story ended with everyone happy, but also with hints of how that happiness was going to be destroyed, and I don’t want to see that. The book reads very much like a tapestry, with little gems of stories shining here and there, and it’s also the first epic fantasy I’ve enjoyed in a long time.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: I’d been meaning to read this for a while, ever since my daughter fell in love with it, but it got lost in the pile (I own over 1200 books I haven’t read). Sometime last year my daughter found out I hadn’t read it and was horrified, so I sat down right then and read it. It’s not a typical World War II novel right up front, and it’s an epistolary novel, which I’m a sucker for, so there was very little chance I wouldn’t love it. I didn’t know anything about the Nazi occupation of Guernsey, which made the whole thing feel very fresh, and the romance is adorable.

Nine Coaches Waiting, Mary Stewart: I have a Goodreads friend who loves this book, and it had been years since I read anything by Mary Stewart (and that was the Arthurian saga, not her thrillers). It’s an older book with older sensibilities, but it suited my mood precisely. I was even okay with the instalove, because it made so much sense that the main character would not only fall in love at first sight (essentially) but also that it would turn out to be the real thing. It was beautiful, and I intend to read more Mary Stewart in the coming year.

So that’s my 2018 in books. I’m looking forward to a new year with more books to read and write!

12 Days of Fantasy for Christmas blog tour

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I’m taking part in a FABULOUS fantasy book tour for the first 12 days of December! Each day features a different author, so this is your chance to find new books and win a great prize. See the schedule below, and happy reading!

On Tour with Prism Book Tours

 

12 Days of Fantasy for Christmas
We’re excited to share books from 12 fantasy authors with you this holiday season! Come back here or check out one of the participating blogs each day for a different author. There is also a fabulous Fire Tablet and ebook giveaway! If you love fantasy, you don’t want to miss this!

 

Tour Schedule
December 1st: Sarra Cannon
December 2nd: W.R. Gingell
December 3rd: Nikki Jefford
December 4th: K. D. Jones
December 5th: M. L. LeGette
December 6th: Belle Malory
December 7th: Melissa McShane
December 8th: Sara C. Roethle
December 9th: R.K. Ryals
December 10th: Jennifer Silverwood
December 11th: Melissa Wright
December 13th: Grand Finale
 

Books on Tour



 


 


 

 

Tour Giveaway


1 winner will win a FIRE HD 8 TABLET from Amazon along with the following ebooks:

– TRITON’S CURSE by Sarra Cannon
– MASQUE by W.R. Gingell
– AURORA SKY: VAMPIRE HUNTER by Nikki Jefford
– A WHITE SO RED by K.D. Jones
– THE TALE OF MALLY BIDDLE by M.L. LeGette
– THE TWELFTH KEEPER by Belle Malory
– SERVANT OF THE CROWN by Melissa McShane
– THE XOE MEYERS TRILOGY by Sara C. Roethle
– TEMPEST by R.K. Ryals
– CRAVING BEAUTY be Jennifer Silverwood
– THE DESCENDANTS SERIES by Melissa Wright
– REAWAKENED by Morgan Wylie

Open to US residents or those who are eligible for the Fire Tablet in their area (those who are not, can receive cash value through PayPal)
Ends December 17th

Book Review: THE LADY AND THE FROG

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The Lady and the Frog is a charming tale that riffs off the fairy tale “The Princess and the Frog,” but it’s not a retelling—from the opening scene, it diverges rapidly into a story about magic, curses, and love. I was especially taken with Henry, one of the heroes (one of the strengths of the story is its multiple points of view). He’s honest and forthright, painfully moral in the sense that you really feel how committed he is to maintaining the honor of the woman he loves, and just very sweet. His brother Jack is more lively, and it’s his sense of humor and fun that keeps the book from being moralistic. Evelyn, Henry’s love, is intelligent and has a strong personality, and is a good match for Henry, balancing his more prudish impulses and taking an active role in fighting their enemy. It says something about the strength of their relationship that I never felt impatient with Henry’s belief that even kissing Evelyn would be somehow improper.

Even Cassandra, the “villain,” has a sympathetic side. I liked that despite this, she never got a pass on the evil things she did in pursuit of her (laudable) goal. Her defeat ultimately is a defeat of the real bad guys, the ones who put her in a position to do evil. With Henry, Evelyn, and Jack having to work together to achieve this victory, it made for a satisfying ending.

Though this is a fantasy world not our own, it’s Edwardian-influenced rather than Victorian, which made it refreshingly different. Palmer’s sense of place is strong, and fits well with the story she chose to tell. The plot has some interesting twists and draws on different folklores, weaving them together creatively and bringing the story to an intriguing conclusion. I enjoyed this book very much.

You can buy the book here.

Monday morning reading

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bookstackMonday. I don’t actually dread Mondays. They’re like resetting the switch for the week, getting a fresh start. I like to start Monday with a new book, though this week it’s actually an old book called Ripley Under Water. I found the book The Talented Mr. Ripley in New Orleans and gradually became addicted to the rest of the series. Tom Ripley is not your typical sociopath–he’s a murderer, knows what he’s done is wrong, but resolves not to let those deaths destroy him. And since most of the people he kills are objectionable or even evil, it’s hard not to have sympathy for him. Highsmith’s writing is spare and economical where it needs to be and full of detail where that’s necessary. This is the last book in the series, and I’ll be sad to let it go.

thegodtouchedmanebookcover-1This Monday also marks the beginning of a week of sales for me. The God-Touched Man, sequel to The Smoke-Scented Girl, comes out on Tuesday. It features Piercy Faranter, man about town and secret agent, whose assignment to chaperone a foreign princess turns into a quest to solve a mystery with roots a thousand years deep. Piercy was a fun character to write, and I hope readers will enjoy reading about him.

thesmokescentedgirl smallIn celebration of this release, I’m putting The Smoke-Scented Girl on sale for $0.99 all week. It’s not necessary to read it before The God-Touched Man, but if you haven’t, this is a great opportunity to pick it up for cheap. In The Smoke-Scented Girl, Piercy’s friend Evon is a magician tasked to solve the mystery of spontaneously occurring fires hotter than anyone can make. What he finds is a girl named Kerensa, a thousand-year-old curse, and the legend of four semi-mythical heroes, all of which may be the key to stopping a power-hungry warlord bent on conquering the world.

And the fun doesn’t stop there! Thursday and Friday only, Burning Bright goes on sale for $0.99 on Amazon. You can now also preorder the sequel to Burning Bright, titled Wondering Sight, which is about Burning Bright front coverSophia, the Extraordinary Seer who discovered how the pirates were tracking the Navy ships. Robbed of her professional reputation by the Viscount Lord Endicott, Sophia sets out to prove his criminal activities and redeem herself–but in her quest to destroy him, she finds herself becoming increasingly like him. Wondering Sight will be released on January 19, 2017.

So, it’s Monday. What are you reading today?

Tackle Your TBR Read-a-Thon update

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So far, I’ve made little progress on my stack of books, but I’ve loved what I’ve read:

Welcome to Vietnam, Zack Emerson

Hill 568, Zack Emerson

and a draft of a good friend’s new novel, Desert Rains.

Total books read since 9/14: 3

Total pages read: 640

The first two are part of a wonderful YA series about the Vietnam War that, honestly, I’m surprised Scholastic was willing to publish–it’s as gritty and profane as you’d expect a war story for adults to be. I’m loving it.

Comfort Reading

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It’s time to Tackle Your TBR Pile! http://www.wishfulendings.com/2015/09/tackle-your-tbr-read-thon-its-kick-off.html

I admit it—my TBR pile is enormous. I buy a lot of books I fully intend to read sometime, honestly, or at the very least loan out to people, or keep on hand in case someone needs a book for a school assignment. So why do I so often, when I’m in need of something to read, return to old favorites instead of making a dent in the teetering pile?

Some days, when I’m tired or feeling a little low, reading is the perfect activity. But it’s those days when I’m least capable of tackling something new—when I really need an old favorite that’s worn grooves in my brain over the years. Sometimes it’s books I loved as a teen: Heir of Sea and Fire by Patricia McKillip, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope. Sometimes it’s more recent favorites, like Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (sequel coming out next year!), Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, Sylvester by Georgette Heyer. I can slip into those worlds easily, knowing what to expect and matching the book to my mood. Comforting, and restful.

But there’s more to it than that. I may be reaching for these old friends for comfort, but I’m not the same person I was when I read a book the first time, or even the fifth or the twentieth time. Every time, I see something new, and in that sense even an old favorite is a brand new book. Sometimes that backfires: I’ve gone back to a book only to discover I’ve changed enough that I no longer love it, and that’s a horrible feeling. But mostly I find my comfort reads don’t change much over the years, and I’m grateful for it.

So here’s my challenge: what are your comfort reads? What stories do you come back to even though you’ve got fresh, new, potentially wonderful books at your fingertips? Leave your comments below from now until September 23, and one random commenter will receive their choice of one of my books—Emissary, The Smoke-Scented Girl, or Servant of the Crown. I look forward to seeing your titles—and would love it if some of them are the same as mine.

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Young adult fiction doesn’t equal safe

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A few months ago I published my second book, THE SMOKE-SCENTED GIRL, and immediately noticed something interesting: a number of reviewers seemed to think it was a young adult book. It was a little disconcerting. I wrote it as an adult novel, with adults who have adult concerns–I suppose it could be called New Adult, since the characters are all in their early 20s, but I tend to think of New Adult as applying to contemporary fiction.

So I stepped back and looked at the book from what I hoped was an impartial eye, and found some traits I think might make THE SMOKE-SCENTED GIRL look like YA fiction:

  • There’s no sex or swearing. (I’m pretty sure about the latter. I tend to forget unless I’ve used really strong swears.)
  • The prose is simple.
  • The plot isn’t terribly complicated.
  • Adult readers, based on the response, are comfortable giving it to their teenage children to read.

And this is where it does get complicated. I spent years reviewing and critiquing young adult fiction (a subject for another blog post) and YA fantasy has always been one of my favorite reads. So I’m the last person to be embarrassed about reading, or writing, YA fiction. On the other hand, because I’ve spent so many years in this genre, I also have a good idea of what’s being published in it and what sort of books qualify for the category. My book really, truly doesn’t. YA fiction is not actually defined as “books teens read.” Teens read, and have always read, adult books. They’re assigned adult books in their high school English classes. And I’m not sure anyone’s willing to call A TALE OF TWO CITIES a YA book. I’ll address the difference between “YA books” and “adult books teens happen to read” later.

But it’s that fourth bullet point I want to look at more closely now. One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that many parents who want their children to read, who want to encourage them to read, are lost when it comes to choosing books for their kids. With good reason. They can’t afford to read everything they give their kids. And a lot of these parents are concerned about the content of their kids’ books. So they go looking for ways to pick from among the hundreds of thousands of choices, and one of those ways is to look for the “young adult” tag, however it appears–books in the YA section of the bookstore or library, frequently. Their belief is that YA titles must be acceptable because they aren’t adult novels, with the swearing and sex and violence they contain.

But many parents don’t realize one important fact: YA does not mean “safe.”

The key distinguishing feature between a young adult novel and an adult novel a teen chooses to read is simply that YA books describe the experience of being a teenager. And that experience is not always pretty. Teens these days live in a world of violence, in which profanity is common (visit your local high school if you don’t believe that) and sexual experiences are becoming the norm. Divorce, abuse, rape, mental illness–all serious subjects that many teens deal with on a personal basis. Kids can’t be spared knowing about these things even if they manage to stay aloof from them. And kids need ways to process these experiences. That’s one of the things books do–give us ways to understand the things life throws at us.

Here are a few of the YA books I’ve had to defend to very surprised parents:

THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST, Rick Yancey: Though this is a horror/fantasy novel, and the protagonist Will Henry’s experiences are in no way realistic, dealing as they do with cannibalistic monsters and rotting corpses, Will Henry’s growth as a character comes from discovering who he is when he’s thrown into an adult world that makes no allowances for childhood or innocence.

SAVING FRANCESCA, Melina Marchetta: Harsh swearing and casual references to sex, a no-no for a lot of parents, but this also deals with the serious issue of mental illness and how it can tear a family apart. Francesca’s problems extend well beyond her mother’s mental illness, but this is also about friendship and what it means to no longer be alone.

FIRE AND HEMLOCK, Diana Wynne Jones: Incredibly complicated plot and a semi-appropriate relationship between a teenage girl and an adult man, this is still one of the great works of YA fantasy almost 30 years after its publication. This one isn’t challenged so much for content as for the idea that it’s too hard for a teenager. I’m pretty sure that should be up to the teenager.

THE HUNGER GAMES, Suzanne Collins: No one argues with me that this is YA fiction; the argument I tend to get is that it shouldn’t be read by teens because of extreme violence and “disturbing” images (not that I know what this means). Again, this is a story about fighting an unfair world, and what teen can’t relate to that?

DEERSKIN, Robin McKinley: The rape and incest are the more disturbing for not being described in detail, but I’ve had parents complain because they were familiar with McKinley’s other books and didn’t expect to find this kind of content in a retelling of a fairy tale. Never mind that most fairy tales, in their original versions, are dark and disturbing and terrifying.

I’m opposed to censorship. I’m not opposed to parents trying to make good decisions about their children’s reading. I’m not at all offended by parents thinking THE SMOKE-SCENTED GIRL is a YA book–I’ve given it to my own kids. But choosing a book solely because it’s marketed as young adult and thinking it’s therefore “safe” isn’t the way to achieve that.

What about you? What YA books would you defend as appropriate for teenaged readers despite their content?

 

My Library Adventures

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bookstackI used to work at the public library. When I told people this, they generally reacted with great enthusiasm, especially the readers, since I think there’s a tiny part of every reader’s soul that’s a librarian—“That would be so great, being surrounded by all those books!” When I explained that my job involved taking carts of books out, putting them back on the shelves, then returning for more carts, they became less enthusiastic. That part of my job was hard and sometimes unpleasant; there’s the problem of making room on the shelves that are already packed full, the problem of never having time to actually read the books you were putting away, the problem of constant sore feet and lower back pain. Having great co-workers was essential, because the job itself was often tedious.

As for the myth of the quiet, peaceful library, come around just before story time and see how quiet forty children are when they’re racing around the shelves while their parents ignore them. This happened ALL THE TIME. I saw moms with their heads bent down over their cell phones while their children were sobbing nearby, unattended. The only thing worse was the parents who told their kids to put books back after they’d yanked them off the shelves. As if three-year-olds remember where they got things or know the alphabet. (Fine. Some kids that age know the alphabet. I did. They still have no idea of shelving conventions.) Every one of the shelvers developed a cringe reaction to those words because the least pleasant job of all was going through the shelves looking for books that were out of place.

The real joy of working in a library is not having access to all those books, though that’s a bonus too. It’s seeing the sheer variety of human beings who come through its doors. No one is turned away. Even the grimy, unwashed man we all knew used the library as a shelter didn’t get worse treatment than being gently told he couldn’t sleep in the chairs. I saw people who came solely to use the Internet and others who bought piles of books from the book sale shelves and people who checked out fifty DVDs at a time as well as those who came for books.

And I got to know them. The young man with mental disabilities who came every Wednesday and checked out exactly five DVDs, then had us circle the date on the library calendar handout that they’d be due. The women who always came for story time on the same day and time with kids we knew were too young to appreciate it, just so they could spend time with other moms. The man in the wheelchair who couldn’t reach the floor outlet, who had the biggest power adapter for his computer I’d ever seen. The three boys who used the computers to play Minecraft together, two of whom tormented the third to tears and made me wish I was there as a mom rather than a library worker. The seventy-year-old man who hit on me as I showed him how to use the computer catalog. (That’s funny in hindsight, but at the time was just seriously awkward.)

But there’s one man I’m never going to forget. This encounter happened when I was putting away books in the middle grade section, which was near one bank of computers. I could clearly hear, but not see, a man having a conversation on his phone. (NOTE: Don’t have loud conversations on your phone in the library! Everyone can hear you! There’s a point at which it’s no longer eavesdropping and more a matter of pretending not to be interested in someone’s prostate problem.) He was talking to a potential employer and sounded enthusiastic and articulate. It became clear over the course of the conversation that this man really needed this job and was willing to put forth whatever effort was necessary to get it. Finally, he thanked the employer and hung up, but remained at the computer chair. I was really curious at this point to see who this guy was, so I hurried to finish my cart and then wheeled it out around the shelves so I’d pass him.

This is where I got a real shock. I’d built up this picture of a young man, not dressed up (the job was some kind of physical labor) but not a slob. And he pretty much matched that description. But he was also covered in tattoos. Both arms, down his neck into his shirt, and up into his scalp and under his hair. Intricate, colorful, beautiful tattoos. He looked like the cover of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. And I immediately felt ashamed of myself for being startled and for having that instant’s reaction that someone who looked like him could sound like the stupid picture I’d built up in my head. My second reaction was Is that employer going to think what I did when he sees him? Is he going to forget about the enthusiastic, genuine guy he spoke to? Because I couldn’t imagine I would be the only one who’d have that reaction. And it made me a little sick to think he might lose out on something important because of that.

I’m not sure there’s a moral to that story, except that it taught me to be a little more careful about what I assumed, and because I wished I could have found out what happened with the job. I saw him again about a month later, at the same computer. This time he was there with his wife. We talked for a bit about children, and they both said how nice it was to have some time away from their young kids. They had a babysitter for about an hour and they spent it at the library. For all libraries these days are shifting focus toward their media collections and free Internet access, the public library never stops being a haven, even for non-readers. I think that’s wonderful. (Except for being hit on by the seventy-year-old man. I am never taking my wedding ring off again.)