Mr. President, How about the Library!

OK, this isn't my original thought but when one of my favorite bloggers, retired library director Will Manley, brought it up on his website the other day I immediately fist pumped, "right on!" Sounds to me like he's kind of where I am with our president right about now - trying desperately to hang onto a thread of hope that he'll become the man we thought he was. http://bit.ly/o4nVmS

It's all about perception after all. Rather than go get his summer reading from the charming little Martha's Vineyard bookstore, how about taking Michelle and the girls to the public library. I happen to know that the Mass. library system is much less sophisticated than ours and could certainly use the great PR. Such a small thing, but wouldn't it remind folks that they don't need to BUY their books. When I mentioned this to Don the other night he absolutely forced me to go to the computer to fire off an email to the White House. Which I did.

Last night I had a great talk with my sister Cynthia in Massachusetts - she who keeps me informed about the dearth of materials in Mass. libraries. We got on a tear comparing notes on what we'd been reading lately. When I mentioned that I was getting ready to begin Lucky Jim, she went crazy. Said it was one of her favorite books of all time. Who knew? I told her that I probably wouldn't have even thought about it if I hadn't been following the National Book Critics' summer blogging contest about the best academic comedy ever.
  http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/

While many of the entrants mentioned my all-time favorite, Richard Russo's Straight Man, the hands down winner was Kingsley Amis's Jim. I'll let you know what I think if I can ever find time to sit down and savor a book from start to finish!

So Cynthia got this great idea which actually played right into a similar thought that Don has had for me to promote books and my blog. She opined about how much fun it would be to have a radio show - I'm thinking Click and Clack - where we just hang out for 15 minutes or half an hour and chat about books off the cuff. We would take calls from the audience of course. I'd LOVE it. Having done my thing on WGCU last year, I must admit that it's much easier chatting in a studio on a radio show than it is to be on TV. I'm already thinking of a name for our show. We could begin it using You Tube and our computers. Maybe Skype? Nancy Pearl does it - why can't I?