I'm a fraud. I'm not a reader. I talk the talk but it's all lies. Your average hamster knows more about popular literature than I do.

True Confessions of a False Librarian

(does this thing do blinking text? ...No?... I suppose that's for the best.)

I have been reading since age 2-- almost 3, but I was still technically a two-year-old. My first book was Hop on Pop.

My first grown-up book was Watership Down. Read it when I was 8. I liked the bunnies. I didn't pick up on the misogony. ("Hey, boys, let's go start a new life on that next hill over there!" .. "Okay!" [two months pass.] "Shit! We forgot to get girl bunnies! We're gonna die!")

Shortly thereafter I discovered Stephen King. Reading all his books, and then re-reading, kept me occupied through my teen years. I confess to maybe reading a Babysitters Club book or two or thirty-- this despite being insulted by the transparent plots and static characterizations-- but truly, most of my reading was school-related. I didn't read much popular stuff.

(Okay, FINE. I read the Sweet Valley books. Quit badgering me.)

Then I got to college and found myself majoring in English. (And Russian history and Women's Studies.) I read a slew of books, you betcha, but the Norton Anthology of English Literature v. I and v. II aren't exactly bestsellers.

(Exception: in college I discovered Harry Potter. I am J.K. Rowling's biggest fan. I mean it.)

Then I went to library school. (What the fuck else are you going to do with a degree in English, history, and women's studies? Nothing, that's what. Not a thing. It's a useless piece of paper. I was unemployable.)

So I got to read a lot of library science literature. Can't say as I recommend it.

Then somehow I found myself in a job at a public library where I was supposed to buy books that normal people would like to read.

"Oh shit," I said to myself. "Shit shit shit."

Not very eloquent, but there's a certain raw energy there, wouldn't you say?

As I believe I have demonstrated, I've always been an avid reader, but the types of books I prefer tend to come with prefaces by esteemed scholars and lots of explanatory footnotes. And bibliographies. The only popular author I was familiar with was Stephen King, and there's a no-brainer if ever there was one. Any collection development librarian who doesn't purchase SK for her library should be fired. No: shot.

So I've been faking it for over a year now. I've been working my tail off to play catch up, but it's slow going. There are a lot of genres and a lot of popular authors I need to read up on. And that doesn't even take into account the quirky, underground, cult-favorite titles that certain librarians in Seattle have the audacity to be fluent in, with the net effect of making me feel singularly stupid.

Is there a priest around? I need to confess. I have not read any of the following authors:

· James Patterson

· Nora Roberts

· Karen Kingsbury

· Patricia Cornwell

· Rita Mae Brown

· Beverly Lewis

Or any of these genres:

· Westerns (unless you can count Brokeback Mountain. That's a stretch.)

· Regency romances

· Street Lit

And I have VERY limited experience in reading romances, chick lit, contemporary fiction, women's fiction, non-academic nonfiction, Southern lit, urban lit, Christian fiction, horror... and I could go on.

You may be wondering how a poseur like me could get a job writing about popular fiction for NoveList. Good question. Here's the story:

When I was in grad school I decided I should be a volunteer. Civic duty called, style of thing. So I signed up to volunteer with ComPeer, a mental health program that matches a mentally stable person with a mentally unwell person. (They must have made a mistake. They thought I was the healthy one. Chalk it up to a clerical error.)

That's how I met Jane. (How's that for a transparent pseudonym?) Jane and I spent an hour per week together, getting coffee or going shopping or just hanging out. It was good for her to get out of the house, to have someone supportive to listen to her.

Thing is, I graduated and moved to another state. Obviously the official ComPeer relationship ended, but it's not like I was going to tell Jane to bugger off. She has my phone number and we still talk every few weeks.

Last Christmas Jane invited me down to Chapel Hill to attend a holiday gathering. It was not actually inconvenient, as I was passing through that day while en route to my parents' house in western NC.

But the thing is, see, is that I hate parties. I hate gatherings of people, even when I know them, and save for Jane and her family, these would all be strangers. Her care team (local church do-gooders) would be there.

I really didn't want to go. But I knew how much it would mean to Jane, and it was only for an hour anyway...

While I was there, considerately holding up a wall in a dark corner, a not-too-scary woman approached me and asked if I was the one with the Muggle license plate. (MUGL, actually. Some fucker already has the correct spelling.)

We got to talking Harry Potter, and then books, and then it slipped that I was a librarian.

"Oh!" she said. "Are you familiar with the database NoveList?"

Familiar with it? FAMILIAR WITH IT? I adored NoveList. It's the best thing since pad thai.

This nice lady, Katherine, turned out to be an editor with NoveList. From that point we started an email correspondence, and eventually I got up the nerve to ask if she needed another writer. (Me, of all people! Me, with no qualifications!)

Turns out she did need another writer, which is how I sneaked my way onto the NoveList crew. Excepting me, it's a group of very savvy, knowledgable, book-smart librarians. It's how I got to meet Marian-- obviously the highlight of the experience-- and it's how I got to meet Melvil, my new boss.

Yup. Because I decided to volunteer with Jane in grad school, and because I forced myself to go to her holiday party after I had moved away, I got to meet Katherine, which meant I got the prestige of writing for NoveList, which meant I was more than just a random name to the guy doing the hiring at the new job.

And that, ladies and gents, is the finest example of serendipty I have ever encountered. It would be the perfect story if the leading lady weren't an imposter.

Coming soon to a laptop near you! It's Blood! It's Boobs! It's Sex! And... It's... EXPLOSIONS!

Long the hallmarks of quality cinema, these elements are coming to you in the action-packed blog-posting of the summer!

Let's start with the blood. It's been on my mind in a figurative sense, and on my underoos in a literal sense. 'Bout once a month my uterus decides to leak blood. I've tried reasoning with it.

"I don't want kids," I explain. "If for reasons inexplicable I ever decide to raise a child, I'll adopt. There are too many babies out there who need parents."

"But what about those excellent Kennedy-Rockefeller genes?" responds my uterus.

And it is very difficult to respond to that, cuz let's face it, any sweet child o mine would be a badass, especially if Johnny Depp is the daddy. Still though. Until that day when Johnny Depp comes begging for my body (and it's just a matter of time) I'm not going to breed.

So there's this renegade organ in my tummy that gets a kick out of dripping menses from that oft-sought but rarely-seen region of my body. And until last month I had been using tampons and pads to staunch the flow.

Think about it. Imagine you're a happy little cotton plant in Alabama somewhere, assuming it's possible for any living creature to be happy in Alabama, which it's not. And then you get harvested and turned into a Tampax. Your whole raison d'etre is to sit in my vagina for a few hours. And while any sentient human being would kill for the opportunity, I just can't see a cotton ball getting off on it.

But now I've discovered The Keeper. It's a plastic cup you stick up your hoo-hoo. It collects the blood and then you dump it out, preferably into your houseplants, which thrive on menses. It's painless, it's practical, and you only have to buy one to last you the rest of your child-bearing years. It's so much less wasteful than disposable cotton products.

Now then. Sex and boobs. While reading MarianLibrarian's blog, it occured to me that the whole of library science literature is sorely missing an important textbook, and that she and I need to co-author it. To wit: there is no text on the world's hottest authors.

Naturally, Neil Gaiman would be the star. He'd probably be featured on the cover, and mebbe we could get him to write the intro. Maybe he'd agree to a personal interview, if you know what I mean.

But who else would be in the book? WHO ELSE? Discuss.

Me, I'm opting for Kurt Vonnegut. (It is not a coincidence that Vonnegut and Gaiman are my two favorite living writers.) He's hot for an octagenarian. He's the Sean Connery of writers.

Though I don't normally think of him as a hottie, when I was a young teen I was totally turned on by the picture of Stephen King on the back cover of Insomnia. It still has a strategic place on my bookshelf.

And then there would be philosophical questions to consider. Should he choose to write a book, do we include Johnny Depp? (He is, after all, going to father my children. See above.) Do we exclude celebreties who happen to write something? What about Madonna? She's written a children's book and a rather better known grown-up book.

Which brings to my attention that this is a rather hetero list. Marian's never gonna sleep with me if she thinks I'm all straight. (I suspect her husband might have something to say about it too...) So who are the hot female authors, huh? They've totally got to be included in the book. And authors of color! And international authors! This will be a book of the new millennium, please and thank you. No discrimination here.

Eric Jerome Dickey? Sandra Cisneros? Ian McDowell? (Hi, Id! Call Women!)

Guess that about wraps it up... oh! Wait! I promised explosions!

Here ya go:

Kaboom!