Librarians Rule!

A short while ago, Denise tweeted (www.twitter.com/DPLNH) about the short shrift given to librarians in Katherine Howe's new novel The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. I agreed. We in the book-ish profession often have lots to protest about our stereotyped (scowling, sshhh-ing) portrayal in print and the media. Interestingly, the next two books I read both had library-related comments which I loved:

In the charming new British mystery, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, featuring an 11-year old amateur sleuth investigating a murder on her family's estate, our heroine Flavia de Luce bicycles to her village library to do some detective work and finds it closed. She muses: "As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No...eight days a week." Thumbs-up Flavia!!

My next book was the LeCarre-ish spy novel The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer. The CIA protagonist, Milo Weaver, tries to keep his wife, a librarian, from finding out too much about his "Company" work. His boss counsels him, "Librarians," Grainger sniffed... "You should have listened to me. There are absolutely no odds in marrying smart women." This one made me chuckle!