Quiet Please

Ok. I admit it. I am a sucker for books about libraries. I am not entirely sure what I was expecting from this book, but I really liked it. Scott Douglas is funny and educational.

Scott Douglas started working in a library in Anaheim before he went to school to be a librarian. The book talks about working in the library – the librarians who don’t know who Thomas Pynchon is; the homeless man who accused Scott of stealing his generator; the man who slept in the bathroom; and his involuntary stint as a story teller for elementary schoolers.

I loved the book. I love the fact that Scott feels like he needs to be a servant to his community and how he’s more judgmental of his judgmental coworkers than he is of the patrons. He questions his career choice more than once, but when he does, something always happens to remind him why he chose his profession.

I wish I had the foresight and lacked the tunnel vision of law school when I was in college. If I had, I might have seen that a library was the right place for me. Since I did not, I have to live vicariously through other librarians. This book was worth the ride.

The Outsider: My Life In Intrigue

I read Day of the Jackal when I was in college. It is one of a very few books that I re-read from time to time. And I am never disappointed. It truly is a page turner that led me read Forsyth’s other novels. So, needless to say, I was looking forward to learning about his life and how he wrote the book and how he came up with the idea. I was really excited when I won an advance copy of his autobiography The Outsider: My Life In Intrigue from Goodreads.

I really enjoyed this book. Though it was quite slim on the details of his writing process, he provided many anecdotes from his life that became the novels he is famous for. More than that, however, I learned that he is also an man of principle who gave up a job at the BBC because he could not be a foreign correspondent the way he wanted to, which is to report honestly events that occurred and not report how the government wanted him to.

Mr. Forsyth has had a quite incredible life. He joined the RAF at 17 and got his pilot’s license. He became a foreign correspondent for Reuter’s and was in Paris when the attempts were made on DeGaulle’s life. He was stationed in East Berlin. He has always lived a life of adventure, some of which has ended up becoming plots in his novels.

I found it interesting that he never sought to be a writer. He wanted to be a foreign correspondent because he wanted to see the world. He wrote Day of the Jackal in 35 days and never intended it to be the beginning of a career as a novelist. He was just trying to get some income after he left the BBC.

I also found it interesting that many of the good things that happened in his life occurred because of luck or meeting the right person at the right time. The fact that he wrote the book, met a publisher, was offered a contract, and then got an agent shows how lucky he is.

Overall, I loved this book and I would recommend it. I did not give it five stars, because, as I mentioned, I wish he would have provided a little more detail about certain things. But it is a really good book.

I received the book as a Goodreads giveaway winner. The opinions provided herein are mine and mine alone. I did not receive any other compensation for the opinions herein.

The Other Son

The is the second book in the Brinkman Trilogy. The other is the Andalusian Friend. I have read both. And while I normally love suspense thrillers and buzz through them, I could not keep my focus on this book. There were so many characters to keep track of and so much going on that I got lost. I gave it up halfway through. I will pick it up again…some day.

I received a copy of the is book from Blogging for Books and the opinions contained herein are mine and mine alone. I received no compensation for giving this review.