Wild goose chase

I frequently get patrons who come in looking for a book but they have incomplete or inaccurate (or both) information. This happens pretty much on a daily basis.

One day this week a woman came in looking for a book that she’d heard about that had the word “dog” in the title. That is all she remembered. The only other piece of information she could give me was that it was fiction. I was sure there was no way I was going to be able to find the book with so little information to go on. But I put the word “dog” into Amazon and started reading off the titles that came up. Still on the first page of results, when I read off The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time she said, “I think that’s it!” I read her the description and she said that was the book. Wow. Dumb luck.

I was not so lucky with another patron this week. She had heard about this book on NPR. She said it started with “Big Book of…” and the author’s last name was Lamont. He was known as the Culinary Doctor or the Chef Doctor, or something. But that’s all she knew.

I searched NPR and scoured their books page, but I came up empty. I checked Amazon and Google and still came up empty. She said she’d go home and try to remember more about the interview.

As I was listening to the NPR books podcast this morning, I heard the interview with the author of the book she was talking about. The book is actually called ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine and it’s by John La Puma and he is known as the ChefMD. So you see why I had no luck finding the book before! If I had not trusted her conviction about the author’s name, I probably would have found the book right away on Amazon, since typing in “Big Book of” brings up this book right away. But I had been using what I thought was the author’s name in all my searching, so of course I came up empty.

Two zeroes or three?

I recently was reading an address over the phone to a patron. When I said “700″ she asked, “Is that two zeroes or three?” I paused, dumbfounded. “Um, that’s 700, so two zeroes.” And her reaction wasn’t “Oh, of course, duh!” It was more like, “Thanks for clearing that up.” Seriously? Three zeroes would be seven thousand, which is not the same as seven hundred. I wanted to say this to her, but didn’t know how. I don’t think that woman was playing with a full deck.

Terrible book

I recently finished reading The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. This book has been VERY popular since it came out two years ago and I get pretty frequent requests for it at the library. The hold list was pretty long at one point, but enough people have read it that you don’t have to wait long for it anymore. If you take my advice, you won’t wait for it at all and you’ll read something else altogether. I really don’t understand the appeal of this book. I found it terribly boring and the author’s writing style was awful. He would use the strangest languate sometimes. I remember one part that described the main character’s face melting like cardboard. Um, what? The whole book was like that. Bah!

On to better things. I’ve started reading the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer and so far I love it.

I don’t read books all day

The other day a guy came into the library wanting a recommendation on an audiobook. Unfortunately, he couldn’t manage to be very specific about what kind of book he was looking for and he needed it that day. Since the majority of our audiobook collection is checked out at any one time, the best way to find stuff – if you need something right away – is to browse the shelves. He was having none of it, though, and kept asking for a recommendation. He was very vague about what kind of books he liked to read and seemed to be acting deliberately ornery about the whole thing.

At some point I was printing out a list for him when he said, “I bet they require you to read a lot, eh?” I laughed. “We’re not required to read at all,” I told him. “It’s not part of the job description.” He looked confused. This is a common and annoying misconception about librarians, that we just sit around reading books all day. I wish. I explained this to him, giving him a very brief rundown of all the other things I was busy doing at work. He actually seemed rather put-out at the discovery that reading was not part of my job!

Bad pet owners

This morning I swung by the Post Office on my way to work to pick up some padded envelopes. There was a big dog tied up out front and as the lady a few steps ahead of me approached the door, the dog barked at her and jumped menacingly in her direction. She scrambled through the doors as the dog barked again, and I quickly stumbled backwards away from the door. Just then the owner came out and scolded the dog for barking. He did not acknowledge me as I quickly slid past into the building, the dog barking once more. The other woman, just inside the door, commented how she was a dog-owner and dog-lover but that dog scared her to death. I said it had scared me too. The man didn’t come back inside and I could not believe how cavalier he was about the whole thing. I love dogs. But many dog owners, like this guy, are completely irresponsible. Your dog may be friendly most of the time, but if he barks menaciningly at even 1 out of 20 people then you shouldn’t leave him unattended outside the post office. I come across this behavior ALL the time on hiking trails. You will never find a huger group of irresponsible dog owners than in the forest. They let their dogs run around off-leash, getting into trouble and harassing other hikers. About a month ago a dog had to be put to sleep after running off a cliff along a hiking trail and sustaining a lot of injuries. The dog was not on a leash. A sad ending for that poor dog, all because of its irresponsible owner.

Anyway, after all that I didn’t even get my envelopes because the line was moving so slow that it was clear I wasn’t going to make it through and still get to work on-time. Going to the post office ranks right up there with getting gas on the list of things I detest doing.

No politics at the library

Yesterday at work, a patron came up to the reference desk and started off on a quiet, passionate (but thankfully brief) rant about Obama and McCain. He had just read an article about how Obama is going to raise taxes and, in the words of this patron, “make us all bankrupt.” He claimed not to be a McCain guy but after reading this article, he said he wasn’t going to vote for Obama. I just sat there with a tight smile on my face. I can’t get into politics with library patrons. I really wanted to point him in the direction of something like this, but I couldn’t even do that. He wasn’t asking for information on this subject. In fact, he wasn’t asking for help at all. He just wanted to rant and I happened to be there.

He said he wished he had printed off the article, and desperate to get rid of him, all I could think to say was, “Well, you’re welcome to log back onto the computer and print it out.” He declined to do so, and left, and it didn’t occur to me until later that if he HAD gone back and printed it out, he probably would have given it to me for me to read!