Neat! That makes me feel like my comparison actually holds up (yay). 😀

Well, okay, she sounds awful!! (There are a baddies, though I mostly found them at the reference desk.) One of my jobs (that involved all the shelf-combing) was taking a stack of missing-book bills whenever they got printed and basically looking everywhere I could think of that they might have possibly got misshelved, before the bills were mailed. I remember, with a bill for one particularly snippy patron who had an unreturned mystery for a year, that she probably took with her to her winter home in Arizona and lost there, but she still didn’t want to pay for it, I read *every single* book-spine in the mystery section of the library. And I was unfailingly polite and kind to even the most shameless habitual non-returners (we didn’t have fines at that library, and it was a wealthy community, so there were a lot of them.) I perfected the painless, smiling reminder. “Did you know you still ___ at home, by the way?” There’s no point in being nasty anyhow; disliking the library staff isn’t going to make anyone bring back books.

I hate it when that happens. So far I’ve never had to pay for a book, but I’ve had several experiences of my books not being checked in properly. More frequently when I have a cranky experience at the library, it’s because the librarians are snotty to me about the things I’m checking out. One time an old guy librarian asked me if I was OLD ENOUGH for something I was reading. (I was in college at the time.) Hrmph.

You know, my library is city-run, by a biggish city, but it’s incredibly community-oriented (at least it seems that way to me). I’ll have the occasional unpleasant experience there, but as a rule it’s nothing but friendly and nice.

Like I said to laughingstar, it’s one of those books where you either like the way it’s written or you don’t. I knew from one or two chapters in that I was going to love the book no matter what happened in it. I just loved the writing style. So you could dip your toes and see what you think. :p

90% of the time the library is nothing but wonderful, so I really shouldn’t complain! 🙂

It’s an interesting book! I guess what I would say is that if you don’t care for the writing style in the first few chapters, you probably won’t care for the book. So there’s that at least – if you start it and don’t like it, you won’t have to feel you have to carry on waiting for it to get good. :p

Thanks!

I feel like I’ve been unfair to my librarians. The majority of librarians at my library are so sweet and helpful and I love them.