Back to reality, a week back at work and the red squirrels of Galloway Forest seems a dim and distant past. I now could do with another holiday to cope after last week!
It was our Bookclub meeting and the book under scrutiny this time was Cath Staincliff’s The Kindest Thing – a cheery book about the aftermath of a lady’s decision to assist her husband, suffering from motor neurone disease, to commit suicide, and ended up in court for murder after being reported to the police by her 16 year daughter! Although I wanted to complete the book, I found the book lacked depth and gave the impression that it was written with television in mind, similar to the Rosamund Lupton book Sister. There was no surprise to discover that the author wrote a lot of TV dramas in general. I was not alone to complain about the shallowness of the book and the lack of depth to the characters. It was suggested that Jodi Picoult would have done a better job with the subject matter. It led to some interesting debates about whether the law on assisted suicide should be changed, would we have done the same if we were put in her shoes and did we predict the family’s reactions. I gave the book 6 out of 10 while the average was 7 out of 10.
The customer suggestions have gone round for their monthly vote and there are some really good titles in the mix including a book on the Falklands War called Scram, Planet of the Apes, favourites such as Rosamunde Pilcher and Nelson Demille, new titles by Sue Townsend and Anne Tyler and some really autobiographies and biographies such as Gillian Lynne’s A Dancer in Wartime, Peter Jefferson’s And Now The Shipping Forecast, Joan Collins’s new autobiography and biographies on Leonard Cohen and Barry Sheene. There was also a flood of completed new talking books and one week alone resulted in 89 customer requests being ordered.
I spent a couple of evenings catching up with The Booksellers, again more readable than the last couple of editions of The Library Update. It’s depressing to read that a 5th of professional library posts have been cut last year and that Suffolk County Council are handing the running off branch libraries to volunteers. Hopefully, they may find themselves in the same boat as Surrey County Council who have found that their plans to remove paid staff from 10 of the county’s libraries has been deemed illegal. There was also an interesting debate between the Society of Chief Librarians and publishers regarding lending e-books in public libraries. One debate can be found on Bobbi Newman’s blog http://libarianbyday.net/. Questions are raised on whether libraries should stop buying e-books until issues over provision settles down and whether libraries should be lending out e-books at all and that they shouldn’t be offered as a core service as libraries are community spaces. A contentious argument from Surrey County Council is that libraries are not just there to serve the needs of the poor and they have to follow where customers are going. They argue that 1 in 10 people have an e-reader and that 7 out of 10 people use mobile devices to read books. I would like to see these stats in more detail! Also, they are running a pilot scheme involving Koboes as they have closed their mobile library and see this as an alternative. I like to see how some of the mobile library users ie the elderly, physically disabled or a visually impaired person get on with this! I’m hoping that the library lends out the Kobo and doesn’t expect someone to buy one out of their pension unless everyone in Surrey is wealthy and expert in technology regardless of who they are! I can’t get my head round this scheme!
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