Cathy the Librarian

I just finished up listening to Me Talk Pretty One Day. This is both very interesting and bizarre. How to describe this book? David talks about his family, friends and about moving to France with his boyfriend. He talks about growing up and knowing he was different. He didn’t like sports, beating people up or doing other manly things. He’d rather bake banana bread and singing jingles in the voice of singer Billie Holiday. The title of the book stems from David’s lisp. A speech therapist tries to “correct” his problems with pronouncing s. He eventually learns to use words without the letter s in them, sometimes having to be extrememely creative in what he was saying.

He also talked about how he wanted to be an artist, and how he needed to use drugs in order to do so. It seems sad to be in such a state, and reading it, I can’t imagine how no one in his family noticed his abuse.

Eventually, he cleans himself up and falls for a guy named Huey. They move to France, and much of the later half of the book discusses his inability to communicate with the French. He take French classes, but it sounds like they don’t help too much either. It makes for quite the interesting story however.

I’m listening to Dress Your Family in Courdoroy and Denim now. Its another really interesting book, and I’m happy that I picked them up at the Ogden’s Farmer Library when I was consoling Roberta (teen services librarian) about the terrible anime selection that ADV Advocates had given us for the month.

There were TONS of boobies that month… don’t they know that public librarians are trying to show these? One of the clerks asked me if I showed that kind of disgusting pornography at my library. Of course she didn’t exactly say it like that, but I knew she didn’t like it, and I’m pretty sure that she was sizing me up with her eyes.

I keep thinking that I should write them an email. The teen librarian from one of the Irondequoit libraries took me aside at a program we were both involved in and asked me if they were all like that. I told her that USUALLY there were some save episodes to show, but you really have to be careful. Try to have a backup.

Anyway, I love David Sedaris now. Me Talk Happy Now!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Librarians. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.