https://libraryservices.net Library Services Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:12 +0000 https://libraryservices.net en https://libraryservices.net/How-to-love-your-library Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:06 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/How-to-love-your-library September 10, 2022 How to love your library ︎︎︎Moscow/Pullman Daily News <img width="3637" height="2433" width_o="3637" height_o="2433" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e40d4d1b530bfd6bbbf990f198aac14ea01dc0107ddf3f4d13db6f94fd84e117/Library-Sarah.jpg" data-mid="246522496" border="0" data-no-zoom="true" alt="Sarah Bofenkamp in the Palouse Rural Library, 2021." data-caption="Sarah Bofenkamp in the Palouse Rural Library, 2021." src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e40d4d1b530bfd6bbbf990f198aac14ea01dc0107ddf3f4d13db6f94fd84e117/Library-Sarah.jpg" /> It seems straightforward, right? Everyone loves a library: the picture books, the programs, the comfy chairs, the quiet, the air conditioning, the crafts, the community. It’s a place to run into your neighbors or even to meet them for the first time. It’s a place to get involved—to learn and grow and integrate. For these reasons, I am often asked the sweetest questions: “How can I support the library?” or “What can I contribute?” In fact, I find that library patrons are very gifted at expressing gratitude and, for their constant generosity, I am grateful too. Except that there is something I have been longing to tell them. The best way to love your library is to use it. For example, if you have ever had three books in your hand and thought, “I should just take one because I don’t want to be greedy,” I say, “be greedy!” If you have ever asked, “Can I read children’s books as an adult or is that silly?” I say, “be silly!” If a child has lamented, “I can’t choose just one,” I say, “don’t make them.” Within the Whitman County Rural Library system, I believe that there is no such thing as greedy, or silly or stifled. How can there be when libraries are designed with you in mind? When the perks exist for the taking, take them. Use the wireless internet, online news access, weekly storytimes, STEM kits, Discover Passes, free audiobooks and movies and language learning services, affordable printing, meeting space, book clubs … and enjoy a free friendly face. Speaking from experience, librarians want you to have what you need. Is there a book on your list that you can’t find? Please ask for it. Is there an event you would love to see in your community? Let us know. In a world where a resource is only considered valuable by its usage and where abundance is in short supply, I ask you to simply consider your evergreen local library, where hundreds of books can be browsed, where local history is at your fingertips and where most of it can be yours for a few weeks at a time. I ask that you encourage one another to bring a book home — or two or three — or to visit the library with your family after school this year. I ask you all to be generous with yourselves, and to know that this place is for you.&nbsp; https://libraryservices.net/Consider-the-library-card Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:07 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/Consider-the-library-card August 26, 2023 Consider the library card ︎︎︎Moscow/Pullman Daily News <img width="720" height="371" width_o="720" height_o="371" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/77e7b6036bd2354c476fd4189adf6a5ee49df33b80a226fcc027300bfb25cb2a/Charlie-Brown-Comic.png" data-mid="246522497" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/720/i/77e7b6036bd2354c476fd4189adf6a5ee49df33b80a226fcc027300bfb25cb2a/Charlie-Brown-Comic.png" /> Since the dawn of time — Sept. 1, 1987, to be exact — public libraries across America have been celebrating Library Card Sign-Up Month with giveaways, programming and the evergreen glory of access to free, local resources. Originally chosen by the American Library Association (ALA) for its proximity to the school year, September was deemed the best month to help potential patrons of all kinds save hundreds of dollars on educational materials and services for students. Now some 30 years later, this same money-saving priority can take many shapes, like that of a laptop, a hotspot, a dozen ebooks or an hour of after-school homework help. It can also look like access to current tools for SAT preparation, global NewsBank articles or language learning programs like Mango. Often, it can even look like a borrowed instrument, projector, or Washington State Discover Pass. All for even less money than your average Amazon purchase. As an avid library user, I often wonder what sum we all might save if we added these things up? Moreover, if we multiplied them by three. Why, you may ask, would we multiply them? Enter the regional reciprocal agreement between the Whitman County Library District, the Latah County Library District, and the Neill Public Library. A beautiful thing, this agreement allows residents of both counties to hold all three library cards with few limitations. I’ll let that sink in. As a resident of either Whitman or Latah county, you can have three different library cards. Together, those cards equal access to the physical collections, reference staff, local knowledge, event calendars and digital resources of 21 different communities throughout the area. So, for the price of gas and maybe a coffee, you could spend your afternoon reading comfortably at the libraries in Tekoa or Deary or Colfax. You could use one of your new library cards to explore area histories in Troy or Albion. Or why not mix up your work-from-home scenery by utilizing some capable Wi-Fi in either Endicott or Palouse? Even if you haven’t set foot in a library building since the ALA launched their first Library Card Sign-Up Month campaign in 1987, you are welcome. If you’ve never set foot in a library building at all, you are welcome. If we see you every day, you are welcome. Even if you don’t read books, you are welcome. So why not consider, or reconsider, the library card this September? No matter who you are — how young or old, how rural or how busy — September is the time to take the library card for the golden ticket that it is. It’s the time to reimagine your library card as a theme-park pass, a map, a blue ribbon, a key, a coupon, a badge of honor. Or a reason to remember where you are and why. If that’s not compelling enough, consider how many possible raffles you could enter. Here at the Whitman County Rural Library District, signing up for a library card could win you or your loved one a $25 local gift card to the business of your choosing. That’s free money. Really, it seems to me that the benefits of being a library card holder are boundless, but how can I convince you? If you were to see a recent ALA advertisement for Library Card-Sign Up Month, you would find the characters of the new “Elemental” movie attempting to inspire potential readers. Each year, the spokesperson is different. Though if I were to choose a celebrity to stand up and say “What are you waiting for?” then it would be the local kid with their coin purse, full-up with dimes and two shiny new library cards — the third incoming. You too can have that same sense of richness this month. Just swing by one of the 14 branches across Whitman County Rural Library District, Neill Public Library in Pullman, or any of the Latah County Library District branches throughout the month of September to register for a library card. We’ll certainly congratulate you. https://libraryservices.net/Homegoing-by-Yaa-Gyasi Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:07 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/Homegoing-by-Yaa-Gyasi HomegoingYaa Gyasi <img width="1100" height="1108" width_o="1100" height_o="1108" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4cf1bc5f961433a34a8bc74f02eb32c334b4dfc60c6ae2d82d31baeb6b7951db/Homegoing-by-Yaa-Gyasi.png" data-mid="246522499" border="0" data-no-zoom src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4cf1bc5f961433a34a8bc74f02eb32c334b4dfc60c6ae2d82d31baeb6b7951db/Homegoing-by-Yaa-Gyasi.png" /> “The need to call this thing ‘good’ and this thing ‘bad,’ this thing ‘white’ and this thing ‘black’... In her village, everything was everything. Everything bore the weight of everything else.”I was amazed by this book in a way that I had forgotten was possible. To express it, I will look to one of its many vivid portraits: Marcus, a sociology student. With his research he wants to capture “the feeling of time, of having been a part of something that stretched so far back, was so improbably large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it - not apart from it, but inside of it.”This, I believe, is what Yaa Gyasi has accomplished with her own work. From the onset of slavery to its transition into the prison industrial complex and from coal mining to Christianity, she reminds us what we have never stepped out of. &nbsp; https://libraryservices.net/We-Have-Always-Lived-in-the-Castle-by-Shirley-Jackson Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:08 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/We-Have-Always-Lived-in-the-Castle-by-Shirley-Jackson We Have Always Lived in the CastleShirley Jackson <img width="1104" height="1104" width_o="1104" height_o="1104" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1036cff7ca53555070ff4b0e1fb7c2d027cd21abff632fe636e632a9d76b2210/We-Have-Always-Lived-in-the-Castle-by-Shirley-Jackson.png" data-mid="246522501" border="0" data-no-zoom src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1036cff7ca53555070ff4b0e1fb7c2d027cd21abff632fe636e632a9d76b2210/We-Have-Always-Lived-in-the-Castle-by-Shirley-Jackson.png" /> “In this village the men stayed young and did the gossiping and the women aged with grey evil weariness and stood silently waiting for the men to get up and come home.”I read the last 34 pages of this book individually as they fell loose from the spine. It seemed perfectly fitting, considering the state of the castle. But I should tell you, the castle is only a house: with a harp in the mother’s old sitting room, Uncle Julian in his wheelchair in the garden, and a creek for Mary Katherine to run to. It’s a beautiful house, but one that the villagers both covet and fear. Although, I think people feel that way about Shirley Jackson too. &nbsp; https://libraryservices.net/Figuring-by-Maria-Popova Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:09 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/Figuring-by-Maria-Popova FiguringMaria Popova <img width="1056" height="1058" width_o="1056" height_o="1058" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/71f4d7110240918b6e6f5d33d0e016dbdf17cb783ce4e26fb908a8d3b3f5f845/Figuring-by-Maria-Popova.png" data-mid="246522503" border="0" data-no-zoom src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/71f4d7110240918b6e6f5d33d0e016dbdf17cb783ce4e26fb908a8d3b3f5f845/Figuring-by-Maria-Popova.png" /> “We are different people in different situations, each of our dormant multitudes awakened by a particular circumstance, particular chemistry, particular stroke of chance; each true, each real - a composite Master of our being.”We are different people too after reading certain books, which is the case for me and Figuring. Some brilliant concoction of biography, queer studies, history, literature, science, and art… it reads like a master of all beings itself: from Emily Dickinson to Rachel Carson, Margaret Fuller to Ralph Waldo Emerson. At over 500 pages, it seems to freeze time - catching the intricacies of one million moments like a single snowflake from the sky. &nbsp; https://libraryservices.net/The-Delicacy-and-Strength-of-Lace-by-Leslie-Marmon-Silko Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:09 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/The-Delicacy-and-Strength-of-Lace-by-Leslie-Marmon-Silko The Delicacy and Strength of LaceLeslie Marmon Silko + James Wright <img width="1102" height="1104" width_o="1102" height_o="1104" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a95d5cc328ff70c3cbbd154a8ccffc6996f2dafca45604e36e318818689c9316/Leslie-Marmon-Silko-and-James-Wright.png" data-mid="246522505" border="0" data-no-zoom src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a95d5cc328ff70c3cbbd154a8ccffc6996f2dafca45604e36e318818689c9316/Leslie-Marmon-Silko-and-James-Wright.png" /> “I guess I am still surprised at the feeling we had for him — to realize that without wanting to, without any reason to, he had been dear to us. We are told we should love only the good and the beautiful, and these are defined for us so narrowly. Monday I will be 31.”All of this and more, written to a stranger, about a rooster. But what else is there to say for this brief and perfect collection? This collection written between writers who met only twice: first at a reading, and then a hospital bed? A punch to the gut that lands you flat on your back in a field of tall, soft grasses… that has you looking up at a red-jeweled sky. &nbsp; https://libraryservices.net/Severance-by-Ling-Ma Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:10 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/Severance-by-Ling-Ma SeveranceLing Ma <img width="1104" height="1106" width_o="1104" height_o="1106" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/544e5f21b8fe7b813ae0e188b569f9b86a15893efd7d315bb7e569fd934a8b84/Severance-by-Ling-Ma.png" data-mid="246522508" border="0" data-no-zoom src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/544e5f21b8fe7b813ae0e188b569f9b86a15893efd7d315bb7e569fd934a8b84/Severance-by-Ling-Ma.png" /> “Memories beget memories. Shen Fever being a disease of remembrance, the fevered are trapped indefinitely… But what is the difference between the fevered and us? Because I remember too, I remember perfectly.”A year before the onset of COVID-19, Ling Ma made her literary debut with this satirical science fiction masterpiece. Set during a global pandemic that originated in China, Severance was the author's answer to the classic immigrant novel. Edgy and comedic, eerie and award-winning, she chose instead to pen something entirely unexpected - a new brand of zombie apocalypse novel, a millennial prophesy. &nbsp; https://libraryservices.net/My-Year-of-Rest-and-Relaxation-by-Ottessa-Moshfegh Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:11 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/My-Year-of-Rest-and-Relaxation-by-Ottessa-Moshfegh My Year of Rest and RelaxationOttessa Moshfegh <img width="1100" height="1102" width_o="1100" height_o="1102" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c50b1384adc100d48c40c6c0ca0077c6479c17ed2d1c75d33d0916639ca8b913/My-Year-of-Rest-and-Relaxation-by-Ottessa-Moshfegh.png" data-mid="246522510" border="0" data-no-zoom src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c50b1384adc100d48c40c6c0ca0077c6479c17ed2d1c75d33d0916639ca8b913/My-Year-of-Rest-and-Relaxation-by-Ottessa-Moshfegh.png" /> “I knew in my heart--this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then - that when I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories.”My Year of Rest and Relaxation had the opposite effect on me. I couldn’t sleep. Like so many of Moshfegh’s works, this book requires you to run, blindfolded, through her webbed and unmapped jungle. You don’t ask questions for fear of their answers; you trust her, but only because going back would mean going back alone. Unnerving, offensive, magnetic... You’ll refuse to remove the heavy veil she’s set over your eyes, lest you find that it’s become permanent. &nbsp; https://libraryservices.net/Rural-writing-that-gets-it Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:11 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/Rural-writing-that-gets-it Rural writing that gets itJuly 23, 2025 ︎︎︎Library Services Substack In 2020, the United States Census Bureau doubled the population threshold used to designate rural communities. Prior to this shift, only cities of 2,500 people or less were considered to be rural environments. After this shift, cities as large as 5,000 people were defined within the same bracket. Towns of 103 were suddenly as rural as cities of 4,027. This meant that communities with zero grocery stores, libraries, post offices, apartment buildings, or sewer facilities could be rendered equal to towns with all of those things plus public transit, restaurants, elderly care, and compensated elected officials. Named the same, resourced differently. Named the same, either rarely written. Even with this 50 percent increase in qualifying criteria, 80 percent of the U.S. population still lives in urban areas. It makes sense then that a similar ratio would translate into the publishing sphere—if not an even larger one. I certainly read my fair share of New York novels, Los Angeles novels, Minneapolis novels. I don’t begrudge anyone a localized story. Though, as a reader living in an old-definition rural place (population 1,041), I love to be thrown a bone every now and again. Like a slow-moving old dog, I love to savor them and display them, to sometimes bury them in shallow soil for safekeeping and simple return. This though? This is me, dropping them proudly at your feet. The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer“The prosperity of the community grows from the flow of relationships, not the accumulation of goods.” When this book was first published, I heard mixed reviews from library patrons. Fans of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s legendary Braiding Sweetgrass were oddly surprised to be reading about alternative economies. Myself, I found little surprising in the content of The Serviceberry but much inspiring. While not branded as a rural narrative, Kimmerer herself acknowledges a remoteness to her place. A place where things grow, are gathered, and shared. While this is certainly not the experience of many rural communities, lushness is also not the pivotal point of this book. Biomimicry and biodiversity are, as well as what human beings might learn from those processes in nature.* What makes this book old-definition rural is actually its approach to creative economy. In places with few jobs and resources, there is often the need for new exchange. Energy, skills, materials, and time can all be currency when the end goal is not wealth… but survival. This is why I choose to live where I do. Only the best books have ever reminded me of that, or given me hope that there is still more to be done. *Sounds similar to her other works, no?Stag Dance by Torrey Peters“Only a short time ago, I had been top axeman. I called my falls. And any and all knew not to bet against me. And yet, what? A triangle had changed this? Made me blamesome for all and sundry, even and maybe especially by those who had done a turn of dance at my waist?” Torrey Peters’ debut novel Detransition, Baby was urban at its core and on its surface—a queer “Sex and the City.” I read it, enjoyed it, and made assumptions about its author: namely, that she must be a full-time Brooklyn resident. Stag Dance, however, is built of three short stories, a novella, and new geographies. What this book made clear to me was that I was only half right about the homeplace* of Torrey Peters. Beginning with her story “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones,” she transports readers back and forth between Seattle and post-apocalyptic rural Iowa. There are pigs and guns, unmade beds and alcoholism. There’s that frightening, fateful feeling of running into someone in an impossible place. There’s shade from a tree and a vastness of landscape. All things that made it subtly apparent that Peters must have, at some point, touched down in the country. For me, the other two short stories in this collection fade into the dark behind the first one and the title piece, Stag Dance. Set in a logging camp in Idaho (a familiar place for my own family) it’s true that my feelings about this novella could have taken any number of shapes. Only… I loved it. Peters wrote the ultimate rural experiment. Isolation and desire, fear and permission, shame and elation, sound and alienation. It’s a story that quivers like firelight, that has you seeing things in the far-off shadows, that reminds you that we weren’t always surveilled except by ourselves. That asks: if gender falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, is it even real? *Brooklyn, yes, but also occasionally an off-grid cabin in Vermont.Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson“There is this great wisdom that can be gained through the SHENNONG body, which is the FARMER body, which is the body that is LABORING, that is actually DOING, that is actually EMBODYING. Exploring reality and literally DIGESTING it.” Craig Thompson would be the first to tell you about his hesitations in writing this book, quickly followed by similar statements from his publisher. A white man writing about ginseng, Chinese medicine, and the role of all of it in his own life? Suspect. The resulting book? Endlessly thoughtful, humanely explorative, internationally and regionally significant. Like his beloved graphic novel Blankets, this one is also memoir… but also more. It’s an unusual and illuminated tale of small town life and agricultural toil. It follows Thompson himself through a childhood of rock-picking and weeding on ginseng farms in Wisconsin, to his return to those roots decades later, to important ginseng hotspots in South Korea, China, and Taiwan. I enjoyed so much about this book. To start, that it was largely set in a town with a current population of 1,560—Marathon, Wisconsin. I loved that Thompson interviewed the people he had known since his youth: the farmers and families who had stayed. I cherished the adorable, anthropomorphized ginseng roots that cropped up with facts or jokes throughout. Richly illustrated in reds and blacks and weighing in at 435 pages, Ginseng Roots might also be considered graphic journalism. Or? A time capsule for a strange history and a rural people who might have otherwise been forgotten. https://libraryservices.net/White-men-I-will-never-read-1 Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:19:12 +0000 Library Services https://libraryservices.net/White-men-I-will-never-read-1 White men I will never readAugust 28, 2024 ︎︎︎Library Services Substack Norman MailerI have one Norman Mailer book in my possession. A pocket paperback, it is gold with red edge painting and an all-text cover that delights me. It reads: “THE DEFIANT AUTHOR OF THE DEER PARK AND THE NAKED AND THE DEAD REVEALS, CRITICIZES AND DEFENDS HIMSELF IN AN OUTRAGEOUSLY FRANK VOLUME UNLIKE ANY OTHER BOOK YOU HAVE EVER READ.” Its title? Advertisements for Myself. Published one year before he stabbed his then-wife at a party declaring his mayoral candidacy in New York, this book suggests that the only thing worse than listening to a man’s defense of himself is having to take it in through the eyes. Basically, it’s the title that walked so that A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius could run. It’s also the book I am citing as grounds for this writing of mine. Here’s a little Mailer moment from Advertisements for Myself (1959): I have a terrible confession to make—I have nothing to say about any of the talented women who write today. Out of what is no doubt a fault in me, I do not seem able to read them. Indeed I doubt if there will be a really exciting woman writer until the first whore becomes a call girl and tells her tale. At the risk of making a dozen devoted enemies for life, I can only say that the sniffs I get from the ink of the women are always fey, old-hat, Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque, maquillé in mannequin’s whimsy, or else bright and stillborn. Since I’ve never been able to read Virginia Woolf, and am sometimes willing to believe that it can conceivably be my fault, this verdict maybe taken fairly as the twisted tongue of a soured taste, at least by those readers who do not share with me the ground of departure—that a good novelist can do without everything but the remnant of his balls.Make no mistake, this is the only paragraph I have read in the entire 477 page book… and I read it in an article. It is also the only paragraph that I need to justify my stance: that if Norman Mailer can refuse to read an entire group of authors based on their gender and his estimation of their worthlessness, then so can I. Instead: Amiri Baraka, Masha Gessen, etc. Jonathan FranzenForgive me, but I just don’t think we need more “sprawling, satirical” family dramas written by white men. Nor do I think we need more men to be featured in The New Yorker going on about how attractive, or not attractive, they imagine Edith Wharton was. In short, we don’t need to be reading Jonathan Franzen. See also: ciswhitemale.com Instead: Celeste Ng, Tommy Orange, etc. Stephen King“I’m a reader now,” my friend S— declares as she strolls into the Palouse Library, sweetly clutching at her copy of The Shining. It has been keeping her up, calling her in, turning her over, she tells me. At an earlier date in the same library, my middle school history teacher puts his hands up and says, “Okay, okay, I hear you. If you change your mind though, be sure to pick up Different Seasons.” I don’t dislike Stephen King. In fact, I have a beautiful old paperback of The Shining that I cherish from my days at A Good Used Book. Aside from that, I am sure to keep a copy of Different Seasons on the shelf at the library should I ever change my mind. Except that I don’t think I will. For years I have said that I may read On Writing, but even that is feeling distant, fogged out. Sure, he is fine on the internet. Yes, he is beloved by respected sources. No, I am not interested. Instead: Stephen Graham Jones, Carmen Maria Machado, etc. <img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89bbf5a7-0d4a-4af7-be1e-54eceeca8297_496x206.png" width="496" height="206" style="width: 496px; height: 206px;"> Clive CusslerCan anyone explain to me what Clive was going for? From 1973 to 2020, his titles ranged from: Journey of the Pharaohs, Vixen 03, Celtic Empire, The Romanov Ransom, Havana Storm, The Mayan Secrets, Poseidon’s Arrow, The Adventures of Hotsy Totsy, Atlantis Found, Night Probe!, Inca Gold, and more. Someone, please, show me a list that screams “white male author” more than this one. What was his genre? What was his draw? Either way, it’s all lost on me. Instead: Jacqueline Winspear, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, etc. James PattersonIn Fredericksburg, Virginia there is a bookstore that my partner has visited, my childhood best friend has visited, my local post office clerk has visited, my town’s mayor has visited, and that I have only ever hoped to. This store, Riverby Books, has an elevated status here in Palouse, Washington—likely as a result of my aforementioned partner, but also as a result of its own personality. That now-canonical symbol of challenged literature: books wrapped in chains? Riverby did that first. An annual “dirty rag sale”: where everyone is welcome to grab a rag, collect some dust, and return it to the counter for a free kids book? Pure Riverby genius. My personal favorite Riverby bit, however, is the Super Secret James Patterson Section. Near the bathroom in the basement, from my understanding, sits a sign that reads: James Patterson has written more than 300 books and is one of the best selling authors in the world. We don’t carry his books upstairs because we are sort of snobs. Nevertheless, when COVID forced the store to close temporarily in 2019, James Patterson gave our store (and hundreds of others like ours) a no-strings attached gift of $1,000 to help us get through those tough times. These shelves of Patterson books are for sale at any price you’d like to pay—we recommend $10 for hardcovers, $5 for medium sized softcover, and $3 for pocket paperback—but if you want to pay less, that’s fine. As soon as we reach $1000, we will make a random donation to another independent bookstore &amp; then will begin again. This is our way of passing along the generosity that quietly permeates our society.I mention this approach to James Patterson because it accurately reflects my own: that we don’t have to be reverent of this sort of success, or beholden to mediocrity. In libraries across the country, Patterson’s books take up a significant portion of shelf space and purchasing funds. In homes, in Costcos, in bookstores, in minds, he is represented. To only briefly mention his comments about “racism” against white men in the publishing industry, I will simply say: there are much better things to read. Instead: S.A. Cosby, Walter Mosley, etc. Jeffrey EugenidesI bristle when people gush about Middlesex, because Jeffrey Eugenides makes me deeply uncomfortable in a way that is neither productive nor literary. His famous novel has defined a whole sub-class of sensational bestsellers* that link incest and abuse to the trajectory of their trans, intersex, or queer characters. But I guess some readers just really love his prose. To me, Eugenides feels like he could be the unknown fourth of the Bennington three. A stylistic and shadowy sibling of Donna Tartt, Jonathan Lethem, and Bret Easton Ellis—the last of which I will also never read. *Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle also makes this list. Instead: Rivers Solomon, Pidgeon Pagonis, etc. Louis L’AmourMy uncle Terry loved Louis L’Amour and I loved my uncle Terry. He was one of those oldsters who always had a western playing on the basement television: one that I would mute while the wives made dinner upstairs, while I read my book against the soft leather green of the sofa, and while the fellas played cribbage outside the screen door. Still, no matter how many times he insisted I read one of his gold-spined Western favorites, I never did. Terry and I, we could talk about the rivers and diners and winters of the West. But what we never discussed was the colonial propaganda, the social glorification of violence, or the cop-energy element of L’Amour that I did not have the language to articulate my dislike for at the time. In the end, Terry left me many of his books. Gold-spined copies of Jane Eyre and Moby Dick and The Mill on the Floss. All unread—shipped to him from a Franklin Library subscription service in the late 1970s—and smelling of cigarettes. I’m not sure what happened to his L’Amour collection but I am sure that, with Terry gone, I certainly have no reason to read any now. Instead: James Welch, Annie Proulx, etc. Brandon SandersonDon’t get me wrong, I love a good pocket paperback. What pains me, however, is a pocket paperback covered in cobwebs or swollen with moisture—which is the state I have most often found Brandon Sanderson’s in. They turn up as library donations: in milk crates, or dusty cardboard boxes, or deposited soggily into the book drop. In this way, I have come to understand them as the kind of books you pick up at the recycling center, read, and then donate somewhere else. Except that in March of 2022, Sanderson’s campaign to release “Four Secret Novels” became the most successful in Kickstarter history when it finished with 185,341 backers pledging a total of $41,754,153. Personally, I think someone should be paying me to dispose of them properly. Instead: N.K. Jemisin, Becky Chambers, etc.