America's Librarian Nancy Pearl Does What She Does Best

I'm so sorry to keep doing this to you but I have another recommendation that doesn't come out until Sept. Blame the Library Love Fest gang at Harper Collins. Last week I spent two and a half glorious hours in the company of over eighteen hundred avid, reading librarians in a webinar hosted by Virginia Stanley and her crew. They have been keeping me sane for months with their weekly video chats, touting the latest, greatest books coming down the pike. 

One of them is "The Writer's Library" by readers' advisor extraordinaire, Nancy Pearl, and her friend, playwright Jeff Schwager. Nancy plugged in via Skype to regale us with the

story of the road trip across America that she and Jeff took in order to meet and interview their favorite authors in their home spaces. The result is a joy for all of us who worship writers and will give you a "must read" list that will take years to work through. 

Imagine sitting at the kitchen counter listening to Ayelet Waldman and her husband Michael Chabon reminisce about their first reading experiences, riffing off each other, filling in each other's blanks. Or think about joining Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford in his Maine writing cabin, a haven that looks out over the water, while he explains that he was a kid who was always in trouble - his best buddy ended up in jail. He was in his forties before he discovered he was dyslexic. His teachers just opined that he didn't "apply" himself. Wonder what they think now?

Nancy and Jeff caught up with Louise Erdrich at her bookstore, Birchbark Books, in Minneapolis. https://birchbarkbooks.com/ where she told them, music to our ears, that the library was her destination of choice. The large family was relatively poor so owning books was not an option. Still, she began reading by the age of four and was in the first class at Dartmouth that included women. 

I loved how so many of the authors Nancy and Jeff interviewed talked about what fun it was to see the cards in the back of library books with the names of everyone in town who had checked out and read that book. I remember this vividly myself as one of the quirks of small town life. 

Amor Towles entertained the two in a Victorian townhouse in Gramercy Park, his office graced by three walls of floor to ceiling shelves which includes an impressive number of first editions, we're told. Somehow that's just what I expected from the former lawyer whose debut novel, "The Rules of Civility," knocked out reviewers and then was followed by the incredible "A Gentleman in Moscow."

Book lovers will appreciate the unbridled enthusiasm that Nancy and Jeff exude when they talk about their favorite reading experiences. The depth and breadth of their knowledge is amazing so that they totally hold their own with their renowned subjects, to the point where they all spontaneously quote first lines from novels and long sections of poetry. It's great fun to learn how many of the writers, brought up in wildly differing circumstances, share the same childhood favorites that brought them to literature.

At the end of each interview is a list - oh how we love our lists - of the specific titles mentioned by the authors that had special meaning for them, informed their writing style, or is read year after year as proof of the book's staying power. This collection is a must read for all of you who suffer gladly from book lust!