Every Month is Library Month

Book Sluts Never Die

My colleague Danielle designed this banner for the Ottawa Public Library. What a joy to see it in the wild. I am lucky to work with libraries and literacy organizations.

October was Library Month. I have been quite busy, so I didn’t quite get to celebrate. I packed up my own library into 35 boxes. Better ways to celebrate: I would have gone to Carleton University’s MacOdrum Library, where I can read old books long removed OPL shelves and look out on the Experimental Farm from the fifth floor. I would have gone to the National Gallery of Canada’s Library & Archives, where I have to make an appointment by email to reference past exhibit catalogues and weird art books. Plus I’d get a great view of Kìwekì Point and the Kichi Zibi, a.k.a. Nepean Point and the Ottawa River. I can see Algonquin College’s Library from my front step, when the leaves have all fallen. But they are holding on… And there isn’t much of interest there anyway. The best libraries have old, strange books and nice vistas, clearly.

Ah, I should have visited the Book Nook in the basement of Julian of Norwich Anglican Church, run by often kind and only sometimes churlish church ladies—but that’s only open from 12PM to 3PM on the first Thursday and Friday of every month. I will likely never go there again, because it will be torn down to build, of course, condos.

A delightful MacOdrum Library find.

“Motto” by Bertolt Brecht

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.

I got rid of 700 books in the last two months, in preparation for a move to Nova Scotia. Sold them at a garage sale, to Black Squirrel Books, on Facebook Marketplace. I donated 200 to the Friends of the Ottawa Public Library, whose library branch book shops have kept me stocked with copies of Dog Man, The Magic School Bus, Arthur and I Spys for years. And now I’m heading east tomorrow with only a few books in tow: about 700.

I completely forgot to send some to Yashoda’s Library in Fort Kochi. She is always looking for biographies and memoirs, what her readers crave. Public libraries are uncommon in Kerala—perhaps all of India?—so this girl and her family were like, “no, we need a lending library with programming in our town. So we’ll have one above our house.” Of course Karine and I visited it.

I was reminded just a week ago: when Eric, Jeff, Thomas and I spent a long weekend in Pittsburgh to watch Pirates play baseball, the guys went to the Steelers training facility and I went to the local Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh branch. “And Joe most likely had a better time than us,” said Thomas. I most likely did.

First thing on the list of #HalifaxProblems is: get a Halifax Public Libraries card. (Actually, I just registered on their website for a temporary barcode, so I’m in! Never mind! Now I can start saving all those titles I can’t wait to take out: like this one, and this one, and whatever the fuck this one is!)

I grew up at the library. Weekly visits with Mom and Annie: 30 books returned, 30 books back out. Some picture books had imagery that is still with me today. There is no max on book borrowing now: the most I had out was 69, I think. My “Recently Returned” section says 101. On Oct. 23, I returned Art of Over the Garden Wall. This was the first time that I had zero books out at OPL in eight years.

Honestly, I don’t like the feeling. It makes me nervous. I need to have multiple things on hold or I get scared.

How do you use the library?

Yesterday, I dropped off an old Dyson battery at the front entrance of OPL’s Emerald Plaza branch and wandered in. Perused the used book shelves, skipped into Juvenile Fiction. On my OPL app, I checked my “For Later” bookmarks: 1,001 saved items. Which ones are available now, at the Emerald Plaza branch? 13.

(It’s a cool app. Here is a guide I made for all students and interested parties in journalism and immersive non-fiction. You can make one too.)

So yesterday afternoon I found: Island of the Blue Dolphins. A 1960 novel about a girl who must survive in the West coast wild on her own—à la My Side of the Mountain (1959) or Hatchet (1987). I read the opening paragraph and propped it up on the shelf for a young read to find.

I saw this book on the way to non-fiction and thought to tell Adrian that Felix might like it. Because he’s a bravo ragazzo:

When I was in Vancouver this June, I debated purchasing a VPL card as a non-resident so I could take out The Ashley Books of Knots. Adrian said it was the king-shit bible of knot-making. But good luck finding it! Well, I could find it, I said with macho bravado: just use the Library and Archives Canada’s Voilà database, which tells you where to find any book in all of Canada’s library systems. Karine talked me down from getting a library card in Vancouver. I used the OPL Interlibrary Loan system instead, and didn’t have to fly across the continent with a 620-page manual of 7,000 knots and then mail it back.

Through reading Jeff Sharlet’s Substack I learned about Natasha Trethewey, who was the United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. Her debut collection of poems was one of the 13 available now, in my old home branch, on Oct. 30, 2025. Domestic Work, it’s called. I read two poems and put it back, a slim volume among many, sticking out just a bit more than the others.

I got kind of emotional then. I’m going to miss this place, I thought. It doesn’t look anything like it used to, when I was a kid. But it was a pleasant brand, always.

I tried to take it all in, to enjoy it, to see the kids making the communal puzzle, to observe the Art Bank art on the walls, to hear the accent of the librarian in the hold section. And, yes, even the guy in the corner at the front doors (who is always in his corner at the front doors, you can see him in the banner image at the top of this newsletter) with a conspicuous Pornhub tab open on his laptop (and yes, you can see that on the banner image at the top). I love libraries.

On a frigid day in January 2022, I piled up 20 books at the Canmore Public Library and turned their pages for two hours. What can you get out of that, you ask? Well, several pages get turned! I may not be checking them out—thus upping their staying power in the rotation of lending books—but at least I’m touching paper and seeing words. It soothes me. And on that visit, I discovered Daniel Pennac’s Rights of the Reader.

These Rights adorn my Little Library, in French and English. I love it and I will miss it. I dug up its stake on Wednesday and slammed into the ground in front of Jan & Gavin’s house. Two blocks away from our home in Nepean, with new custodians who will keep the library lending.

Thank you, libraries, for making me who I am.