"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." -E.B. White




My Victorian Lady-Heroes

From Alison Winter’s Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain: 

“Martineau prided herself on playing ‘reason over passion’ and was touted as one of Britain’s most ‘mannish’ women. She was certainly one of the most public and well traveled.

Barrett thought of herself as driven by feeling, was becoming known in this period as one of the most womanly of writers, and was extremely reclusive” (234).

Basically I love both of these women and feel a great deal of excitement over the fact that they chilled out with each other despite the differences in their personalities. I want to believe that Elizabeth would send Robert out for the night when Harriet came over. They would probably marathon Pride and Prejudice for hours while blogging and feeding Flush popcorn and cookies.

You know Elizabeth would have been posting pictures of Flush on the daily.

Harriett’s not much of an animal person because they’re always messing with her garden and the baby trees Wordsworth gave her (Autobiography, section VI), but she likes Flush as an exception to the rule. And then she’s like, “hey did you read that article in Mother Jones?” and Elizabeth is like, “totally” and it’s the best, ever. 

harriet martineau Elizabeth Barrett Browning bookish

Room of Requirement

Today I was looking for bookends. “Have you checked the secret closet outside, past the stairs, next to the boiler room?” asked Librarian Jason.

“I have not.” I went out the loading dock, followed the ramp down, and then further down dark stairs. Just before the boiler room, a secret outdoor closet. Inside, I found all sort of things, but, most importantly, I found bookends. And! Not only bookends! But bookends in the exact same color scheme as my popular reading collection signage. “You directed me to a Room of Requirement,” I said to Jason.

“Cool,” he said. 

Then, I thought.

Isn’t the library always a Room of Requirement?

It breathes and rearranges, sometimes, not always, producing what you need. Sometimes everything is in the right place. You walk past the same shelf for years before realizing the book you need is sitting there until you need it. Sometimes it’s a

shifty,

fuzzy,

strange sort of place that leads you to this-is-not-what-I-was-looking-for-at-all-until-I-found-it.

librarian library bookish librarian jason it is time for finals I am so sleepy not done with papers going to nashville tomorrow I am doomed

It is after 1am and I do not feel the best about my life. I am 9 pages into an 18 page paper and remain uncertain about this argument. Can I really lay claim to the tragic tradition if I mean to read Eliot’s novels as pessimistic, but possibly triumphant? Hamlet ends sort of optimistically? Fortinbras shows up, and takes the crown without blood on his hands. Sorry your dreams are dead, ladies, but you will live on? Except you, Maggie. Sorry, Maggie.

It is also hard to feel cheerful on airport days; it could be my hundredth airport day and I would still mope. 

ANYWAY. Things are not great, BUT. I walked into my room ten minutes ago to find Watson and Sharpless napping together in the tousled mess of my unmade bed. Look at them! Sharpless likes me, I think (Conor and I got some purrs this weekend!), but has mostly been sitting under my bed when he feels like hanging out. This seems like a promising development in their hilarious friendship. Thanks for staying up with me, babies. I appreciate it. 

bookish watson West Highland Terrier sharpless clh

After spending most of the week in libraries, we drove through a snowy afternoon to look through even more books, eat mustard, and drink beverages by a waterfall. 

(at the Montague Bookmill and the Lady Killigrew Cafe)

clh pioneer valley bookmill pictures of me bookish
Typical week. 

Typical week. 

bookish

bookboundlaurel asked: Hi Silvia, (May I call you Silvia?) I stumbled across your tumblr after seeing your "Blind Date with a Book" featured elsewhere online. I'm so glad I did, because I read here that you are a librarian at a university. I have recently applied to three MLIS programs in hopes of becoming just that! Would you mind sharing a bit about your experience as a student? Did you work on campus in a library, complete internships, etc.? (Also, Watson is absolutely adorable!) Thanks!

Dear Laurel,

My MLIS is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Their distance (LEEP) program is fantastic, but I moved from California to Illinois to attend on-campus, and had the advantage of taking a mix of in-person and online classes.

The coursework from my program was valuable — I despise the phrase, “I bet they didn’t teach you this in library school,” as if to suggest that the time I spent writing collection development policies, HTML, lesson plans, or mock grants would not contribute to my being a good librarian. It absolutely has, and I’m grateful for my graduate experience.

That being said, “I bet they didn’t teach you this in library school” usually comes up when I am:

So, while I don’t want to denigrate coursework, I do acknowledge that much of my librarian education definitely had to happen while in the library. It’s necessarily a combination of theory and practice (praxis!!!).

Throughout junior high and high school, I volunteered for the Children’s Department and the literacy program at the public library. In college, I worked for the library, and had a research assistantship with the English Department. In graduate school, I had an assistantship with Central Reference for the Main Library (now Reference, Research, and Scholarly Services). The assistantship gave me experience with a huge variety of questions, databases, and print resources. I also had the chance to practice teaching library instruction sessions, build research guides, and work in a beautiful space. In addition to the assistantship, I had a practicum for a semester with the English Library (now the Literature and Languages Library) where I got to do some collection development (read: book buying!) and displays.

It was the best and snowiest time.

I will leave you with these two pictures from that time I was in library school. Good luck with everything!

image

image

With love,

Silvia

p.s. Jean-Louise is currently a MLIS student at the University of Illinois, and may have advice about how she chose her program/what it is like right now. I am three years out (whoa).

ask librarian library school bookish

This week Jason and I had the rare treat of doing a story time for a visiting elementary school. He used to be a Children’s Librarian and I spent ages 14-18, 20, and 22-23 volunteering for various children’s departments and collections. We read/read from: 

  • Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Williems 
  • Guess Again! by Adam Rex
  • Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude by Kevin O’Malley
  • Squids Will Be Squids by Jon Scieszka 
  • Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein 
  • Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Williems
  • Baloney (Henri P.) by Jon Scieszka
librarian jason librarian bookish pictures of me
They continued writing to each other, clandestinely, for a year and a half, and then they secretly got married in 1846. Right before the wedding, Robert mailed off to Elizabeth a letter that said: “Words can never tell you, however, — form them, transform them anyway, — how perfectly dear you are to me — perfectly dear to my heart and soul. I look back, and in every one point, every word and gesture, every letter, every silence — you have been entirely perfect to me — I would not change one word, one look. I am all gratitude — and all pride (under the proper feeling which ascribes pride to the right source) all pride that my life has been so crowned by you.” And then, the day after the wedding, she wrote to him: “What could be better than [your] lifting me from the ground and carrying me into life and the sunshine? … All that I am, I owe you — if I enjoy anything now and henceforth, it is through you.” From The Writer’s Almanac, about Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

They continued writing to each other, clandestinely, for a year and a half, and then they secretly got married in 1846. Right before the wedding, Robert mailed off to Elizabeth a letter that said: “Words can never tell you, however, — form them, transform them anyway, — how perfectly dear you are to me — perfectly dear to my heart and soul. I look back, and in every one point, every word and gesture, every letter, every silence — you have been entirely perfect to me — I would not change one word, one look. I am all gratitude — and all pride (under the proper feeling which ascribes pride to the right source) all pride that my life has been so crowned by you.”

And then, the day after the wedding, she wrote to him:

“What could be better than [your] lifting me from the ground and carrying me into life and the sunshine? … All that I am, I owe you — if I enjoy anything now and henceforth, it is through you.”

From The Writer’s Almanac, about Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

the writer's almanac bookish clh

lasombrereraloca asked: Would it be possible for you to post the descriptions you wrote for the Blind Date With a Book and link them to the Amazon page for the corresponding book?

Sure! Here is a selection of titles visible from the pictures, and what I can remember.

ask librarian library bookish book recommendation what should I read? blind date with a book

Inspired by Worthington Libraries: Blind Date with a Book!

We started with ~40 books. Two hours later, all but four had found homes with library patrons (sorry, Flush, Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Persepolis, and The Things They Carried, they don’t know what they’re missing).

Now, to send forth a new fleet of exciting books into student arms. Whew!

librarian bookish guess that book! libraries unm
“This deep relation which music has to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any scene, action, event, or surrounding seems to disclose to us its utmost secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it. This is so truly the case that whoever gives himself up entirely to the impression of a symphony, seems to see all the possible events of life and the world take place in himself; yet if he reflects, he can find no likeness between the music and the things that passed before his mind. For, as we have said, music is distinguished from all the other arts by the fact that it is not a copy of the phenomenon, or, more accurately, of the adequate objectivity of the will, but an immediate copy of the will itself, and therefore complements everything physical in the world and every phenomenon by representing what is metaphysical, the thing in itself.” — The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche

“This deep relation which music has to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any scene, action, event, or surrounding seems to disclose to us its utmost secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it. This is so truly the case that whoever gives himself up entirely to the impression of a symphony, seems to see all the possible events of life and the world take place in himself; yet if he reflects, he can find no likeness between the music and the things that passed before his mind. For, as we have said, music is distinguished from all the other arts by the fact that it is not a copy of the phenomenon, or, more accurately, of the adequate objectivity of the will, but an immediate copy of the will itself, and therefore complements everything physical in the world and every phenomenon by representing what is metaphysical, the thing in itself.”

— The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche

Nietzsche bookish music

The broad range of my notes for work and class. 

THEORY bookish english major watson i love conor because his response to the second picture was but think of the distance you've come from truth now that you've taken a picture and texted it which well is truth

“It’s as readers that we survive or fall in postmodern culture, and it’s as readers that we experience the deepest textual pleasures and cultural illuminations.”

Lentricchia, Frank, and Thomas McLaughlin. Preface. Critical Terms for Literary Study. Eds. Lentricchia and McLaughlin. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. ix-x. Print.

reading literary criticism bookish I took a midterm last week where I had to cite in the MLA style from memory this is me showing off because what else am I going to do with this skill augh I have such doubts about the vale of graduate study hey but I am reading this in the Juilliard library there is that and I believe in reading and libraries of course it is pretty here why can't I italicize on my phone?

One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, “this end is more important than the other.” After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink. Recently, when David Tudor returned from Europe, he brought me a German pencil of modern make. It can carry any size of lead. Pressure on a shaft at the end of the holder frees the lead so that it can be retracted or extended or removed and another put in its place. A sharpener came with the pencil. This sharpener offers not one but several possibilities. That is, one may choose the kind of point he wishes. There is no eraser.

— From John Cage’s “Indeterminacy” lecture, featuring a series of one-minute short stories.

That is, one may choose the kind of point he wishes.

That is, one may choose the kind of point he wishes.

John Cage bookish pencils schoenberg feelings about stationary

“Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it’s the same with people.” — James Salter, Burning the Days

bookish burning the days i have so many feelings james salter clh