Random Observations on My Summer Project

 

The Project

    The origin of this project lay with my sincere wish to do a podcast about every single one of Anne Perry's books. It's my project to read them all in the next year or so, but there are over 120 of them, and I hope one more on the way. I don't know how much work she got done before her death this past April, hopefully enough for the publisher to push the book out anyway. But although I want to do the podcast (there are several in Spanish, so I don't know what that means), I won't let it stop me from blogging about the books. I can't afford to purchase all her books, but I have read all of the regular Monk and Pitt novels, well read or listened to the audiobook recordings. I have not read any of the Christmas novels, the WWI novels, or the Elena Standish novels. So those will be a pleasant thing when I get there.

    Since Anne passed away at the beginning of spring soccer season, and I was on tight deadline for my own novella, I pushed the reading of her books off to the summer. Once I was clear of the novella, I reserved one of her books, and I thought, one of Agatha Christie's just to compare the two writers. That was the week before Memorial Day. And then, since I was already reading that much I went ahead and picked up the Michael Connelly as well, to fill in the time while everyone scattered to the winds that weekend. I read all of them, and I ordered three more, which came in the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. It was then that I looked up how many days there were between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I found out there were 99. 

    100 books seemed a bit much, even for me, but what about half that number? And if I read them all, then what, if anything should I do about it? Like many people, I need a mechanism to hold myself accountable for my promises, which is why I decided to blog them. You can read my announcement post here.

Documenting Library Books

    When I actually did the write up on the books, I had not intended to talk about the physical books themselves, but the first couple of reviews I felt were a little too short to be interesting blog posts. That is when I decided to talk about how much money my library card had saved me. You see, my library hopes to build a new building. Just getting a project of that size off of the ground is a huge undertaking. And though when I joined the library board, library usage had been flagging for a long time, making me wonder if it were possible to convince my community to build a new building, the pandemic seemed to do just that for libraries all across Illinois, something I found out by interacting with other library trustees and employees at various dinners and conferences I have access to now that I am an elected official. 

    It is the worry of all of us, novelists and librarian alike, that the world will move on from reading, wanting instead our information in a different form. But libraries are more than books, and books are more than books. A literate society is necessary for democracy to function well. I don't mean literate in the sense that one appreciates Shakespeare, Milton and Poe. I mean literate in the sense that we can read and understand the choices in front of us. 

    Books give us plenty of practice reading, and libraries are depositories of books. More than just novels, the give us access to non fiction and research. They let us all explore topics in more depth than are easily found on Google. Increasingly, libraries want to serve their community by providing places to meet about things like knitting, sewing, board games, old fashioned movies, cooking and a host of other cultural choices for anyone who wants to explore to find. They are valuable. 

    So here I have this overly ambitious project, where I can document in real time, just how valuable my library has been to me over this summer. But while I have been busy using my library, it has become increasing political and ugly around me. 

    As we speak, where I am at in Lake County Il, a number of local libraries have received bomb threats. It would be easy to think that this world no longer wants the good things that libraries have to offer. But I think we just have not been out there, spreading the word about what good work we do. For every one dollar of taxes that goes into a library, several studies have shown that four dollars in local tax revenue are generated in return. So, even if you aren't a reader, (and if you're still reading this blog at this point, then you really need to reconsider that opinion that you aren't a reader) your local library is out there, lending books, giving access to research, teaching people how to use Microsoft products, write resumes, and pick up that second language they need to assimilate into this country. It's giving access to maker spaces, so your local mom can design T-shirts, vases, and champagne glasses to earn a few extra bucks. Your local knitter whose grandkids have spurned their knitting knowledge are teaching college aged people little tricks to make their rows neater, or how to read that pattern. And the library is preserving books on the history of knit stitches, quilting patterns, old time fruit jams, and other such things that industrialization threaten to leave in the dust. 

    All the while, your local eatery is making bank in the summer, when the kids come to the library to keep up their reading skills during summer break, feeding them ice cream treats their parents or grandparents promise them as a reward for behaving nicely and reading those books. In fact, one of the major economic benefits of having a local library is the local tourism tax dollars that are collected from people visiting business they pass on the way to the library. In most places, for every one tax dollar put into a library, one tax dollar is collected in local tourism. So I'm not just saving money, I'm saving enough money and spending enough money locally to make my library worth it. 

    I could, and probably will write a blog post twice as long about the good reading does. So my friends and neighbors, read more books. Check them out at your local library today. And like me, you can save a bunch money. 

   Once of the most fascinating things about this project was documenting the books I checked out. I am embarrassed to say, I returned the first several books before I thought of photographing them. And then, when I photographed the Agatha Christie leatherette editions, it took a hot minute to realize that I might confuse the photos, since only the spines were different. But, the books themselves, several of which had been written in, were interesting. Now if you will excuse me, I have a pile of books to return to the library. 

I'll be back with book reviews here soon. Reading and writing a review on one every couple of day for 100 days is a bit exhausting. And frequently, I would have more to say about the book itself, but I only had time to scratch the surface. So stay tuned. Up next, The Blood of Elves, by Andrzej Sapkowski  and then I will continue on with my Anne Perry and Agatha Christie read throughs. And I'll be looking for first time mystery novelists to mix it up along the way. 

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