John the Librarian

Book Review: Nighttime Is My Time by Mary Higgins Clark

I got really into the TV show American Chopper some years back. I don’t have any interest in motorcycles and I couldn’t care less about the family drama between the stars of that show. But I loved watching it. I loved watching genuinely skilled people create their visions.

I love watching master craftspeople at work.

There’s joy in witnessing that level of skill. This is why I love shows about carpentry, home renovation, car mods, tattooing. It’s one of the many reasons why I love music, dance, theater, and athletics. It doesn’t matter if any of these interest me personally, I’m fascinated watching people who love doing them. Any human endeavor which requires skill to do well, is worth witnessing.

Reading Nighttime Is My Time by Mary Higgins Clark reminds me of watching American Chopper. She crafts her stories. Her control of plot and pacing and structure, how she manipulates the reader to place suspicion on different characters at different times, her myriad misdirections, how she builds the tension. She shows her work and gives us a ring-side seat to her creative process.

I enjoy witnessing her craft.

That being said, Nighttime Is My Time isn’t a very good book. I listened to the audiobook and the narration by Jan Maxwell is excellent. But the book itself drove me a bit nuts.

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Checking My Privilege: A Reading List

It’s important to me to have my perspectives, assumptions, and biases challenged in healthy ways. I seek out opportunities to learn how other people experience and view the world. This is an ongoing process. I believe it makes me a better person, more kind and compassionate, makes me stronger.

It’s my passion for understanding human nature as fully as I can. It’s my passion for serving my community—all members and all needs. Building mutual understanding and respect is how you make the world a better place.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently reading books about race and privilege. I have several more books on my list to read. This is a list of titles which challenge my perspectives and open my eyes to aspects I hadn’t considered before. Here they are, via my current library account. *

Checking My Privilege: A Reading List

* John the Librarian is my personal blog. The opinions and ideas I express here are strictly my own and do not represent the views of my employer.

Movie Review: A Star Is Born by Bradley Cooper

A Star Is Born, directed by Bradley Cooper — *A Star Is Born*
Directed by Bradley Cooper
Screenplay by Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper & Will Fetters
Based on the screenplay by William A. Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker & Alan Campbell
Produced & distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, 2018

I didn’t think I was all that interested in seeing the new version of A Star Is Born. I’ve rarely been happier to be proven mistaken.

This film is phenomenal.

I’m a fan of Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, both. So perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised that I ended up spending 2.25 hours sitting in a theater, losing myself in them.

I’m not going to offer a plot synopsis or go through specific scenes. There are a couple of points I want to make, but mostly I want to offer a list of all the reactions I had watching this movie. In no particular order:

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The Challenge of Fairness

I struggle with the idea of fairness. Fairness is important to me. It bothers me, deeply, when I see things that are unfair. As a kid, I hated it when people would say, “The world isn’t always fair!” It was always just a transparent excuse for people treat others unfairly. Just because the world isn’t fair doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be.

Most libraries have a Patron Code of Conduct: a document laying out behavioral and usage expectations for people who use the library. Fairness is essential when it comes to these codes of conduct and especially when it comes to disciplinary actions in response to infractions.

Fairness requires us to apply our codes of conduct equally to all patrons. That seems obvious, right?

Maybe not.

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Movie Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo: A Star Wars Story directed by Ron Howard — *Solo: A Star Wars Story*
Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Jonathan & Lawrence Kasdan
Produced by Lucasfilm, Ltd.
Distributed by Walt Disney Studios, 2018

What I find most interesting about Solo: A Star Wars Story is that it doesn’t really feel like a Star Wars movie. That’s mostly a good thing.

What I mean is: it doesn’t feel important. It’s the only Star Wars movie so far that isn’t significant. In the original trilogy, Lucas explicitly sought to create a modern myth, a la Joseph Campbell. There’s an inherent sense of weight to it. The new trilogy sought to bring the Star Wars universe back to relevance and so it has a sense of mission, as well as a similar sense of modern myth. Rogue One tells a tale of emotional, moral, and narrative consequence.

Solo doesn’t have any of that. It’s not important to the main trilogies and it doesn’t take itself all that seriously. Which makes it one of the most fun Star Wars movies I’ve seen. It’s pure entertainment. It’s refreshing.

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What If…?

I wanted to be a cosmologist when I grew up.

In third grade, I wrote an essay about it for class. I went through my whole childhood assuming that would be the path I followed, right up until I started high school and discovered theater. I don’t regret turning away from cosmology to follow the theater path, just as I don’t regret leaving theater to become a librarian, but some days I find myself melancholy over the loss of what could have been.

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Free Speech & Hate Groups

Or: OK, I Lied—My Previous Post Wasn’t the Last I Had to Say on This Subject. Honestly, I Won’t Ever Run Out of Things to Say about This Issue.

It’s illuminating to peruse the history of judicial interpretations of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. Time and time again, it’s noted that the goal of the freedom of expression is to enable and promote the free exchange of ideas.

The free exchange of ideas is the fundamental purpose of public libraries.

The freedom of expression requires us to engage with the presence of hate speech and the various expressions of hate groups in our communities. As we debate the proper approach to and place of hate in society—and more specifically within public libraries—we must at least acknowledge that hate groups don’t care about participating in the free exchange of ideas. If we believe we must allow hate groups and hate speech in libraries because we believe that we should provide access to all ideas, and a platform for all members of our community, it should matter to us that hate groups don’t care about any of that.

Hate groups have no desire to engage in discussion or debate. That’s not why they speak their hate.

They speak to cause harm.

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