Super Librarian Nancy Pearl on her way to Fairview
By Charles Cassady
happenings
Published April 5, 2006

Seattle has given two distinct gifts to the staid world of the library.

One is a rock band called Bloodhag, made up of young, tie-wearing librarians who pound out heavy-metal lyrics about their favorite writers (usually science-fiction and fantasy authors) for swooning young fans at raucous concerts. The other is a grandmother named Nancy Pearl.

Guess which one is the first to have her own action-figure out?

It’s super-librarian Nancy Pearl, of course. She writes the popular series “Book Lust” and “Now Read This” as well as commentary on literary matters for magazines, newspapers, broadcasting and the internet (www.nancypearl.com). Nancy Pearl appears at 7 p.m. on April 10, in a special evening at the Fairview Park Public Library.

“My talk will be about the pleasures and perils of a life of reading,” said Pearl from her Seattle home. “I’ll talk about my own relationship to reading, how I came to write `Book Lust’ and `More Book Lust,’ and then about some of the perils I’ve discovered in my love affair with books. Along the way I will, of course, be recommending good books to read.”

Pearl’s prominence in the field led to her winning the Women’s National Book Association Award in 2004 and regular timeslots on National Public Radio and Seattle-area cable television. The “Book Lust” franchise, with its recommendations on volumes in different genres and specialties - from Walter Mosely to Robert Heinlein to railroad history to Sri Lanka - is now spun off into diaries and wall calendars.

Her enshrining by a Seattle newspaper as the most famous librarian in the country was confirmed when Nancy Pearl served as the model for a posable action-figure doll “With Amazing Push-Button Shushing Action!”

She explained, “The owner of Archie McPhee - the company in Seattle who makes a series of action figures, including Moses, Freud, Einstein, and Jesus - and I were at a dinner party in 2002, and he was telling us that people were convinced that the Jesus action figure was performing miracles for them.

“I said, `But Mark, the people who really perform miracles every day are librarians.’  And someone else said, `Yeah, Mark, you ought to do a librarian action figure.’  

“And the rest is history.”

Some of Nancy Pearl’s own history: She aspired to be a librarian at the age of 10, working in that capacity in Detroit and Tulsa before arriving in Washington state. She has served as Director of Library Programming and the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library. She also inaugurated a groundbreaking community-outreach program called If All Seattle Read the Same Book, that has been adopted as a model by other cities nationwide.

She doesn’t have a figure to offer on just how many different books she finishes in a given period, “however, because I have no life except for reading, it’s a lot.” And that’s without resorting to audiobooks, either.

“I don’t listen to audiobooks because aurally is not how I take in information best, and also because I don’t spend a lot of time in my car. I do almost no online reading, including blogs, because I find that it takes away from my book reading time.”

“...Basically I’ll read anything that is nicely written and has interesting characters - either fiction or nonfiction, and in any genre. My least favorite reading areas are true crime and psychological mysteries where you are forced into the head of a psychopath. They’re just too scary for me.” 

Between “The Da Vinci Code,” the James Frey “Million Little Pieces” scandal, Oprah Winfrey, Harry Potter, and a First Lady who used to be a librarian, books and talking about them seem to be on the upswing. But, Pearl said, “I think there are still too many people in our society who simply can’t read well enough to read the warning signs on a Drano can - that’s something that must be addressed. What concerns me almost equally, though, is that there are people who don’t find reading a pleasurable activity because no one’s pointed out books to them that they’ll thoroughly enjoy. 

“I think librarians have a huge role to play here - to turn people on to good books.”

In the process she has pondered what makes a good library. “The best library systems I’ve seen are those that have a nice balance in their service to their patrons...between providing information on the one hand and promoting books, reading, and lifelong - or as I call it, recreational - learning on the other hand.” She said that based on what she’s seen, the Cuyahoga County Library system does both.  

Nancy Pearl’s appearance is free and open to the public, but it would be a good idea to register in advance by phoning (440) 333-4700. The Fairview Park Public Library is at 21255 Lorain Road.