Flowers, no. A sentimental greeting card, no. When someone is dear to you, few things are as intimate as sharing a book.
It says to that treasured person, "Here, this means something to me. And I want you to know it."
Do you do this? I do it even with my own mother. Those of us who adore books want the people in our lives to be on the same page. Book sharing is a personal act.
Nancy Pearl knows.
A Seattle librarian and director of the Washington Center for the Book, Pearl last week made the Everett Public Library her first stop on a tour to promote a book of her own, a book about books, her favorites.
Pearl is anything but a stereotypical stern librarian holding forefinger to lips in a gesture of "shhhh." Her book is anything but a heavy-duty catalog of required reading.
It’s titled "Book Lust," not book list.
"It is like falling in love," said Pearl, describing the feeling of discovering a great book.
A crackerjack speaker, Pearl offered her audience in Everett Wednesday an example of how the affair begins.
Riding a bus, she opened Pete Dexter’s novel "The Paperboy" and read the first line: "My brother Ward was once a famous man."
"It’s a terrific first line," Pearl said. "It dares you to go on." She did, and began to experience "weird physical symptoms."
"I had fallen in love with this book," she said. She held it to her chest and told herself, "You can’t read this book in public. You have to read it in the privacy of your own home."
Nuts? I don’t think so. I’ve had those symptoms myself. You too? Get your hands on "Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason" (Sasquatch Books, $16.95).
Her book is divided into breezy conversations on everything from "Boys Coming of Age" (with suggestions for "A Separate Peace," "All the Pretty Horses" and "About a Boy") to "Chick Lit" (try "The Group," "Bridget Jones’s Diary" or "I Don’t Know How She Does It").
There’s nonfiction, from "Riding the Rails" (Pearl suggests Steven Ambrose’s "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869) to "Sports and Games" (go for "A Season on the Brink: A Year With Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers" by John Feinstein or the best-selling "Seabiscuit" by Laura Hillenbrand).
Pearl isn’t above a romance novel (a classic is Kathleen Winsor’s "Forever Amber"). Yet she’s brave enough to tackle scholarly science (she loved "A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons" by Robert Sapolsky).
She lists 10 great novels for each decade of the 20th century. Most, such as "The Great Gatsby," "Lord of the Flies" and "To Kill a Mockingbird," would be on anyone’s list. Others — say Stephen King’s "The Shining" or Jacqueline Mitchard’s "The Deep End of the Ocean" — are there because you simply can’t put them down.
"You know, I love to read. Books are my life," Pearl said.
Books have been her life since childhood, when she sought refuge from an unhappy home at the Detroit Public Library. The daughter of a highly educated but severely depressed mother and a father with a sixth-grade education who earned his GED at age 70, Pearl studied library science at the University of Michigan.
At the Seattle Public Library, she started If All of Seattle Read the Same Book, an acclaimed book club program now imitated around the country.
She directs the Washington Center for the Book, a state affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, which aims to deepen appreciation of literature.
Pearl reviews books every Monday at 2 p.m. during "The Beat" on public radio station KUOW (94.9 FM). She was honored with the 2003 Washington Humanities Award.
Petite and bespectacled, with cropped graying hair, Pearl also has a wacky brand of fame. The Seattle novelty store Archie McPhee used her as a model for its latest irreverent gag doll, a librarian action figure. Her likeness has some powerful company at Archie McPhee — Jesus and Sigmund Freud.
She serves on a literacy board with Mark Pahlow, who owns the parent company of Archie McPhee. "There was a little wine involved," is all she’ll say of the genesis of the action figure.
Action? Yep, the 5-inch doll raises a finger to make a "shhhh" gesture.
Delivered from youthful misery by librarians, Pearl said, "I have never stopped believing that being a librarian is a noble profession."
Books are work and play. "I always have a book with me, it makes me nervous when I don’t," she said.
Her publisher is so pleased, that Pearl has been asked to write "Book Lust II," because, she said dryly, "once is not enough."
In love or lust or books, dare I say that is too true.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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