Closed Stacks is a professional library blog, full of important commentary on pivotal issues. Our brainy writers are diligent about staying on topic. Following this logic, I should report on funtime summer projects in the college library. Self-studies, collection management, ILI planning, meetings, blah, blah, blah…
I just cannot do it. Anyone that works in academia knows that summer break was prescribed for recovery. As an undergrad working for a large university, I would periodically leave my library job to swim in the ocean and flirt with hippie boys. The sand in my damp bathing suit irritated my skin as I sat at the media circ desk. My wonderful boss and mentor would mysteriously vanish for hours in the middle of the day. I suspect that she was seeing her husband.
Having gainful employment as a career librarian has not changed my behavior. Two years ago, while looking at clouds during lunch, I fell asleep and was eventually discovered by a concerned maintenance worker. This month I discovered the most secluded of campus places: the greenhouse. Actually I prefer to use the word conservatory because it makes me feel like I’m in an Oscar Wilde play.
Our conservatory is a lush, warm environment where I can sit for an hour, my entire lunch break, and read books of fiction. I began with the erotic thriller In the Cut, and I will hopefully end with an equally mesmerizing novel in September.
During this period, when I blog I will tell tales of literature, exploring its themes, its meaning, and its importance. I am justified in doing this because according to a circulation report that I ran yesterday in support of the self-study, works classified by LC as literature circulate more often than any other subject area in our collection.
*In 2008, Hasbro updated its board game, Clue. The remodeled mansion has a spa instead of a conservatory and a living room rather than a library. 
Filed under: Books/Authors, By: Librarian About Town | 4 Comments
Tags: books, librarians, library of congress, reading
What a beautiful way to read! As for Hasbro– “what fools these mortals be.” One cannot have a satisfactory Christie mystery in the living room and the spa.
–Lizaanne
http://lizaanne42.wordpress.com/
SPA? Lame, not impressed.
Oh would that your work was not such a long carriage ride from my estate, or I would call on you in the conservatory where we could laugh, make merry, and be like two librarians of yore!
Too long a journey by carriage? I’ll expect you on horseback then! Less expense, Lady A.
Dang, the closest thing we have to a Hot House or “conservatory” is my truck out in the parking lot on 110 degree days under one of our trees!