Be gone, awful books.
Browsing the shelves at some local libraries can seem like an anthropological expedition, a revealing window into how we once lived. Because libraries lack funds to update their collections, their shelves too often are populated with books that are increasingly outdated, irrelevant — or just downright insane.
Enter two Detroit-area librarians. Frustrated by aging tomes, Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner started Awful Library Books, blog (awfullibrarybooks.word ) that catalogs the worst books found on local shelves.
Among the anachronistic books cited are volumes on Halley’s Comet’s 1986 return, America’s crazy attempt at a moon landing (1969) and the grand strategy of the USSR (which dissolved in 1989). The pair’s favorite, though, is “Dee Snyder’s Teenage Survival Guide,” a book by the lead singer of the ’80s metal band Twisted Sister — a man whose qualifications to guide teenagers through their formative years are dubious.
The two hope the blog does its part to highlight the need for libraries to tweek their shelves — a task that requires proper funding. “Ideally, this site would die a natural death,” Kelly says. Until then, we’re content to kick back and read about “Those Amazing Leeches” — and marvel at the fact that such a book exists in the first place. time.com
First Lines
Get Real, by Donald Westlake
Dortmunder did not like to stand around on street corners. A slope-shouldered, glum-looking individual in clothing that hadn’t been designed by anybody, he knew what he looked like when he stood for a while in one place on a street corner, and what he looked like was a person loitering with intent. The particular intent, as any cop casting an eye over Dortmunder would immediately understand, was beside the point, and could be fine-tuned at the station; the first priority was to get this fellow in charge.
Which was why Dortmunder didn’t like standing around on street corners: he hated to give cops the feeling there was duty to be done. And yet, as obvious as a carbuncle in the pale glare of the weak spring sunshine, the near-beer equivalent of real sunshine as in, say, August, but still plenty bright enough to pick out a questionable detail as large as John Dortmunder, who happened to be waiting, in fact, for a cab.
Amazon’s best of the year (so far)
Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey
Fordlandia, by Greg Grandin
Lost City of Z, by David Grann
Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
The City & the City, by China Mieville
The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton
Crazy for the Storm, by Norman Ollestad
The Gamble, by Thomas Ricks
Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin
Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead
amazon.com
