'West Side Story': The Great Debate

 New York Times, "'West Side Story': The Great Debate", New York Times, pDecember 5, 2021, p. AR10.

CARINA DEL VALLE SCHORSKI
I  first saw "West Side Story" on a VHS tape my mom and I rented from the public library when I was maybe 9 or 10.  I grew up in California, away from my Puert Rican family in Washington Heights, so I thought I might find something about my culture that I didn't know before.  But nothing onscreen -- beyond the latticework of fire escapes -- reminded me of the people or neighborhood I new from frequent visits to New York.  I finished the movie feeling even more confused than I was before about what being Puerto Rican was supposed to mean -- to me, and to the average American. 

COMMENT
     The identity (or lack of identity) portrayed in a popular musical by and for white people is a disappointment to a person who is a little homesick for Washington Heights.  However, the movie version of Lin-Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights" was criticized for not having enough dark-skinned actors.  The library, of course, can provide both movies to anyone who wants to judge for themselves.

Why We Want Readers to Choose the Best Book of the Past 125 Years

 

Sarah Bahr, "Why We Want Readers to Choose the Best Book of the Past 125 Years", New York Times, December 5, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/insider/why-we-want-readers-to-choose-the-best-book-of-the-past-125-years.html

This isn’t the first time the Book Review has anointed a favorite title. In 1996, staff members asked critics and scholars to pick the best novel of the past 25 years. (The winner, Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” is also a finalist this year.) 

But there was little transparency about the panel’s selection process, Ms. Jordan said, and she was left wondering what other books were in the mix.

So she decided the time had come to ask again — only this time, readers would nominate the books.To reach as many readers as possible, the Book Review enlisted the help of public libraries across the country. Rebecca Halleck, an editor for digital storytelling and training at The Times, and Urvashi Uberoy, a Times software engineer, helped compile a list of email addresses for nearly 5,000 libraries, hoping they would spread word of their contest to their members.The team sent each library a flyer, designed by Deanna Donegan, an art director for The Times, and Joumana Khatib, an editor on the Books desk, that included a QR code created by the Interactive News Technology desk. When scanned, it would take people to the nomination site.

COMMENT

     The New York Times newspaper took advantage of the geographic distribution of public libraries to gather a list of best novels from the past 125 years to celebrate 125 years of the NYT Book Review.  The responses were winnowed into a list of 25, which includes "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, named Best Novel of the past 25 years by the NYTBR in 1996, and currently a target of right-wing censorship. 

 

Dictating All the Terms that Define Their Love

Jenny Block, "Dictating All the Terms that Define Their Love," (Vows) New York Times, Nov 21, 2021, p. ST17.

Over time, Ms. Wilson said her annoynace evolved into an appreciation for Mx. Reynolds' "big personality, humor and kindness." But months would pass before they actually "had a proper conversation," she added. On April 22, 2013, the last day of class, the both "hung out" with Ms. Edmondson t teh camps library's cafe and the two exhanged numbers.

COMMENT 

In this romantic tale, the couple self describes as "lesbian-queer, interracial, progressively Christian."  They met as students in a human behavior course, but made the personal connection within the safe space of a library, and eventually married each other. 

50 Years On, a Legacy of 'Plant -Based' Living

 Steven Kurutz, "50 Years On, a Legacy of 'Plant -Based' Living," New York Times, Nov. 21, 2021, p. ST9. 

Ms Lappé was 25 and attending graduate school at the Univesity of California, Berkeley, when she began to quetion her life's purpose.  Like many in her generation, she'd read "The Population Bomb," the 1968 book by Paul Ehrlich that predicted (wrongly, it turned out) a coming amine because of overpopulation, and she was inspired by the ecological movement that led to the first Earth Day. 

Ms Lappé was also being exposed to new and different foods, including bulgur and tofu.  She started auditing courses on soil science and poring over academic reports in the agricultural library at Berkeley, to better understand the food system and global hunger. 

She was ruprised by her findings; notably, that over half of the harvested acreage in the United States at teh time went to feeding livestock, leaving more than enough food to go around if those resources were redirected.  

COMMENT

This research led Lappé to write the bestselling "Diet for a Small Planet" published in 1971.  It is not too much to say that she discovered her life's purpose in the library.  It is remarkable that her insight about the food system was available to anyone, but the agricultural professors and students had failed to see it. 

Windswept

 Annabel Abbs, Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women, Tin House, 2021.

I started exploring onine, prowling around second-hand booshops, investigating library catalogues.  Women remained elusive.  As Rebecca Solnit, one of the few female writers on the subject of waling, wrote "Througout the history of walking...the principal figures...have been men." 

Every now and then, Virginia Woolf's name appeared.  I'd spent my teenage years in the shadow of the South Downs, where Woolf had lived and walked for much of her adult life.  My parents were still there, so whenever I got the chance I plotted a Woof route and began tracing her footsteps over the South Downs. [xxi] 

.

COMMENT 

After noticing that her colleciton of nature book is largely by and about mean,  Abbs began to research accounts of women  walking.  She notes that the absence of literature is a self-reinforcing loop:  "Many more have disappeared, the casualties of a self-referencing male canon of walking and nature literature, of men-only hiking and climbing clubs, of publishing firms historically run by men, of miguided concerns for female safety." [xxiii] 
      

How I Became Extremely Open Minded

Ross Douthat. "How I Became Extemely Open Minded. New York Times, Nov. 7, 2021 p. SR8.

I'm bad, but not that bad, I would think while walking through a photograph exhibit on chonic Lyme in the local library, with its pictures of hollow-eyed sufferers with platoons of pill bottles -- until I foun myself with drawrs full of enough pill bottles to put those medicne cabinets to shame. 

COMMENT

The library exhibt doesn't exactly help, but it becomes part of the story for Douthat who is dealing with chronic Lyme disease.  What does help is an alternative medicien Rife machine that Douthat reads about in a New Yorker article.   He doesn't say whether or not he reads the magazine at the library, but I would guess that he probably has his own subscription 

How to Recommend a Book

 Malia Wallan, "How to Recommend a Book," New York Times Magazine, October 24, 2021, p. 15.

"Recommending books you love is the hardest thing of all," says Joyce Saricks, 72, who worked for nearly 30 years as a reference librarying in suburban Chicago.  Saricks has written several textbooks on so-called "readers' advisory," which largely disappeared from libraries after World War II and is credited with helping spark a national revival in the practice of librarians' suggesting books to patrons.

...

When Saricks was stumped, she often led patrons into the library stacks, where book spines would spur ideas and conversation.  "My colleague used to say, 'The books know when you're desperate,'" she says.  

COMMENT

The librarian in this story is an author of a book for librarians that, according to this author, helped restore a culture of reading and literacy to contemporary libraries.   The story includes a plug for physical browsing, which can lead to finding something unexpected.   The Internet most definitely does not know when you're desperate.