About this title: For most of us, librarians are the quiet people behind the desk, who, apart from the occasional shush, vanish into the background. But in Quiet, Please, McSweeneys contributor Scott Douglas puts the quirky caretakers of our literature front and center. With a keen eye for the absurd and a Kesey-esque cast of characters (witness the librarian who is sure Thomas Pynchon is Julia Robertss latest flame), Douglas takes us where few readers have gone before. Punctuated by his own highly subjective research into library history-from Andrew Carnegies Gilded Age to todays Afghanistan-Douglas gives ...
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Edition: Advanced Reading Copy.
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. advance reader copy or galley but great value. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 330 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2008-03-24
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: Good. Advance Reading Copy. Softcover. Spine uncreased. Cover has slight shelfwear. Pages clean, text unmarked. Gently used. *Ships Next Business day* read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2008-03-24
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: New. New, unread, unused & in perfect condition with no damaged or missing pages. This is a paperback with plain cover and pre-release stickers. This book is the same isbn, but is a paperback. Great Copy. Ships Lightning Fast. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2008-03-24
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: New. New, unread, unused & in perfect condition with no damaged or missing pages. This is a paperback with plain cover and pre-release stickers. This book is the same isbn, but is a paperback. Great Copy. Ships Lightning Fast. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2008-03-24
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: New. New, unread, unused & in perfect condition with no damaged or missing pages. This is a paperback with plain cover and publisher stickers. This book is the same isbn, but is a paperback. Great Copy. Ships Lightning Fast. read more
Description: Good. 0786720913 Book could have a shelf wear, or a bump, or sunfade to edges. These are new unread books from the publisher with one of these conditions. See are feedback as customers are satisfied in how we grade our books. Has remainder mark. Fast shipping and customer service is our number 1 priority! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Da Capo, Cambridge
Date Published: 2008
Description: Trade paperback. ADVANCE READING COPY. A review copy and thus printed on the cover 'not for sale' to avoid it being sold in retail stores as a new trade copy. Very Good with some wear to covers. read more
Edition: First edition.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: New in very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 330 p. Audience: General/trade. Brand New-Gift Quality In a plastic cover read more
Edition: First edition.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: New in new dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 330 p. Audience: General/trade. Brand New-Gift Quality In a plastic cover read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Pr
Date Published: 2008-03-24
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780786720910. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780786720910ISBN:0786720913
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Good. Minimal damage to cover and binding. Pages show light use. With pride from Motor City. All books guaranteed. Best Service, Best Prices. read more
"Let me preface this by saying that I am in no way a perfect librarian, nor do I pretend to never complain about my job or the patrons. However, I hope that I don't appear as mean-spirited or bitter as Douglas seems. I suspect that he thought that fellow librarians would, while reading his book, chuckle along with the stories and shake their heads in a knowing manner. In reality, I am totally disinterested in being categorized with this man as a librarian. It's one thing to good-naturedly vent about a wacky patron or co-worker...it's quite another thing to humiliate and mock them in print. This book made me uncomfortable, confused, and even angry at times (the chapter on mentally handicapped patrons was purely offensive). I am not sure what readers are supposed to take away from this unfunny, poorly-written mishmash, other than the fact that it's apparent the author should not work with the public. If Douglas was going for satire, he completely missed the mark. It's my hope that people don't think that Douglas represents all librarians. Some of us actually like our jobs at the end of the day and ultimately respect the people we work with and the public we serve, no matter how "crazy" they may be sometimes. (PS...what's with the incessant, annoying, and unnecessary footnotes??)"
"Folks seem to have either loved the book, or hated it. Me, I fall in between. Started out great with pieces on how the author came to become a librarian, including (the irrelevance of) library school. After that, the entries vary from gossipy, regarding patrons and co-workers, to meaningless (to me anyway) fake interviews. Good intentions, but the parts don't make a whole. Sometimes blogs are best left as blogs. I really wish I'd heard more about the job itself, beyond office politics and the occasional "difficult" patron."
"Is this what working in a library is like? Well yes and no. Every library is different and from what I've seen in my time in the profession, every library worker's experience of the library is different. Mr. Douglas, whether through his own mentality or through exaggerations meant to obtain what he thought would be a funny book, seems to see librarianship as long stretches of boredom punctuated by encounters with crazy patrons and co-workers. It's one legitimate experience of the library, one that is true-to-life for many who work in libraries. There are many difficult encounters with wacky, annoying, or simply sad people in the library. Everyone who works there has bad days and I've seen many get bogged down permanently in their obsession with that part of the job.
But for others, library work remains continually engaging. Whether it's pride in creating a great local institution, the pleasure of providing good service, or an ongoing love of getting to work with books and other collections every day and introduce these materials to others, many who work in libraries find the job continually sustaining.
If Douglas was funnier, or a better writer, this could still be a good book, but there are glaring problems. His use of footnotes for material that should be written into the text is annoying in the extreme, the equivalent of a drummer's rimshot to try to milk a laugh out of comic material that isn't particularly funny.
Two of the writer's personal traits annoy me too. One is the tendency to slam co-workers and patrons with cheap shots, then try to leaven the cruelty by proclaiming "I really liked them." I suspect this appreciation for the foibles of the people he met in the library is in some cases genuine, but his writing rarely shows the upsides that he appreciated, just his displeasure at what he didn't like about them.
What makes me really crazy is Douglas's own laziness, and how he never realizes how this creates most of his negative experiences. He admits that he spends most of his time off desk doing nothing and acts as if this is normal for the profession. As a hardworking librarian, that makes me angry. I don't want the job I love degraded by someone who practices it badly. As in almost any profession, one can find ways to coast, but there is no end of work to be done in a library. Those who can't find any of it ought to be fired. Even at the desk, which Douglas claims is his favorite part of the job, he seems prone to vaguely pointing in a direction or mumbling a Dewey number when asked a question. That's crummy service and I hope it isn't really typical of his work.
There's also no arc to this story. Douglas is unhappy with his job but doesn't really want to leave it. It seems like he is working toward some epiphany about his job, but instead, he finds a girlfriend and that makes him happy. It doesn't have much to do with everything that bothers him about his job or his life, it just provides him with a distraction. I couldn't help but think that his career, his relationship, or both are in trouble when this new distraction becomes less new.
Finally, I'm bothered by the author's absolute dismissal of library school. My library school experience was good, but like any other educational opportunity, you get out of it what you put into it. There were classes that didn't apply much to what I do now, but others were excellent. Most were somewhere in the middle, and I worked to make them relevant by thinking about the theory and figuring out how I would apply it in practice. Douglas should have tried the same. I have co-workers who have the same gripes as Douglas about the MLS degree, but I can't help but notice that they are generally less effective as librarians as those who have more mixed reviews of their schooling. I don't think it's a coincidence. Douglas ought to be a little more thankful that people are working to provide advanced education and set professional standards so he can make a living in the career he has chosen. Instead, this book is a wonderful argument for why shoddy librarians could be replaced by untrained part-time workers.
This isn't completely unreadable. There are flickers of insight and compassion. I suspect Douglas is a better librarian than this book indicates, that he is trying to portray himself self-deprecatingly to achieve laughs. But it just doesn't quite work and he comes off more as lazy and thoughtless. It also demonstrates the problems with trying to turn a blog into a book. What narrative structure there is here seems like it was imposed as an afterthought.
In the end though, I hope this book is not taken as the only version of librarianship by those who don't work in libraries. I hope it isn't taken as an excuse by lousy librarians to do their job even more poorly. If you thought this book was great and you work in a library or are thinking about working in a library, please consider another career."
"I expected to like this. He's a librarian, I'm a librarian, and the few excerpts I'd read sounded like he had some interesting crazy patrons stories.
But in fact I hated it. I *forced* myself to read to page 156, and then skimmed through the rest in about 5 minutes. The problem is, the author is a pretentious jerk. And while I'm happy to read a book by a jerk if he makes me laugh, this guy is also not funny in any way, which is a huge problem in a book that doesn't have anything else going for it. And the footnotes! Usually, I like footnotes. But not when the author forces me to look down three or more times every page to tell me something really stupid. For instance, he writes:
"I didn't think much of Michael's behavior because I was too busy to care; but it became water-cooler talk among staff."
Footnote to the above sentence: "There is no water cooler at the library."
Really? What a shatteringly interesting statement! Another attempt at failed humor, or does he imagine I actually care?"
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