Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks

by Annie Spence

Since 1953, the talking walls are bigger and louder than ever. The modern-day “firefighters” are armed not with kerosene but snarky Internet memes, reality TV, and the ability to simultaneously see more and less of the world around them. I shouldn’t even tell you, but there are people who don’t believe libraries are necessary anymore. A bunch of Captain Beattys. It’s frightening.

The public librarian has been typecast. We’re supposed to whisper and shush, demand silence, when in reality we work our asses off trying to help people speak up. Maybe it seems safer for us to whisper. Because maybe if we could shout, it would shake the walls down.

In Two Across, Stanley and Vera meet when they tie for first prize in the National Spelling Bee. They decide to embark on a marriage of convenience so that they can live off the wedding-gift money while pursuing crossword-puzzle writing. Their plan goes awry. The book even offers romantic crossword puzzle clues. It is the nerdiest fun. Then move from crosswords to “cc:” with Rowell’s Attachments. In this novel composed mostly of e-mails, Beth and her work-wife Jennifer trade e-mails about Beth’s lackluster boyfriend on company time, even though they know the IT department scans all of their correspondence. Enter Lincoln, the IT dude reading the messages. Can you fall in love with someone through letters, even when they’re not addressed to you?

In Love in Lowercase, a lost feline wanders into the apartment of a linguistics professor, Samuel, and becomes the stimulus for his breaking out of an introverted shell and leading him back to his

Murder of a Stacked Librarian.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

In the Stacks: Short Stories About Libraries and Librarians by Michael Cart

Love and the Art of War by Dinah Lee Küng

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em. —John Waters

the Divergent series, by Veronica Roth, and The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

the Sedaris siblings (David or Amy) are a no-fail. I find something newly hysterical every time I read Amy Sedaris’s I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, including the autograph I have on the title page, in which she wrote, “Annie—Drinking kills feelings.”

parenting. I Think I Love You by Alison Pearson is a delightful romp of a book (in a British accent!) about a woman who finds her teenage dream of meeting David Cassidy coming true when she least expected

The Martian by Andy Weir It got a cool cover. Then it got a movie cover (blech, movie tie-in covers). But before all that, this funny, adventurous novel about an astronaut-botanist stuck on Mars had kind of a boring cover. It was just—Mars. Which, for previously self-published author and NASA enthusiast Weir, was probably really exciting. But I didn’t know how exciting Mars could be until after I read Weir’s book. When I first looked at the cover, it said to me, “Probably about an alien war.” I read it anyway because my big sister told me to and I have to do what she says. If you passed The Martian by because it looked too fantasy, or too sciencey, or too Matt Damony, you missed out on a book that is truly entertaining and informative, and also you skipped book club out of guilt, and they probably talked about you behind your back.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris When I need a time-out from the heavy issues of our society, real or novelized, I like to pick up the most absurd thing within reach. Sedaris’s animal fables of forbidden love, bureaucracy, and fad diets will make you laugh out loud and also put your worries in perspective. As with anything written by Sedaris, it’s double the fun to hear him read his work and Squirrel’s audio edition also features Elaine Stritch, so, c’mon, you’re not going to get better than that.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett Listen, don’t be above going in the children’s section when you need something to shake off your worldly adult woes. You can find a simple but still beautiful piece of work with an all-but-promised happy resolution and a chance to revisit some of your favorite characters (before you discovered Hermann Hesse and hardened your literary heart). Secret Garden is about another hard and sickly heart, two of them, actually, that are rejuvenated by a hidden garden in an otherwise lifeless English manor. It’s a little word balm for your soul.

Whatever Makes You Happy by William Sutcliffe The British tend to do wit well, and Sutcliffe is particularly good at bright and charming novels that are sure to cure your book blues. In Whatever, three adult men neglect to send their moms cards on Mother’s Day, and the mamas get to talking. They decide their sons need to grow the F up and that the most efficient route to that goal is, obviously, to move in with them, unannounced. Can you imagine? Sutcliffe does, and even though he pokes fun at everyone, there’s some serious humanity to this book. It’s good to read after a Game of Thrones binge, when you’re still in the mood for quirky family dynamics but without the incest and beheadings.

The Sweet Potato Queens’ Book of Love by Jill Conner Browne This is my high compliment for Browne’s series of hilarious books, where everyone’s named Tammy and no one is holding their tongue: a man asked me once for a book recommendation for his wife, who was dying, and just wanted to laugh. And Sweet Potato Queens’ was right where I led him. The women Browne describes, a clan from Mississippi who love to dress gaudy and march in parades as well as hand out advice and recipes freely, laugh a lot at themselves. But more than that, they love themselves. And they want you to love yourself and love the life you’ve got left. And eat more Pig Candy. And wear smutty clothes. And laugh. Even better on audio so you can hear Browne’s southern drawl. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot I know this book is super old. It was written in 1972, and the original cover is a dude rolling up his sleeves while a bunch of random animals flee him. And he’s looking down at the horse, whom he is inexplicably about eighty times bigger than, like “I’mma get CHA!” Anyway, that doesn’t matter because no library will ever discard it because it is ALWAYS popular. People love this book. I know because everyone who checks it out stops at the reference desk to tell me how pleased they are that we have it, and they all have rosy cheeks and they cradle their copy like it’s a broken locket and they’re Little Orphan Annie—so it’s got to be warming some cockles. Maybe people read the warm memories of...

Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, Mysteries, Page-Turners: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, 848 pages Classic, Sweet Revenge: Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre

Heartburn by Nora Ephron Heartburn is probably the funniest novel I have ever read. After I finished it, I listened to Meryl Streep read the audiobook. Because Meryl does everything perfectly, I liked the audio version even more than the book. I never thought extramarital affairs and self-pity could be so hilarious, but they are.

Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry