With the Lightnings
Schau! A post about a book I read! Those of you who like to tease me about how I’m a librarian, er, was a librarian, who doesn’t/didn’t read often enough for your standards, take note.
A good friend of mine with whom I recently reconnected loaned gave me David Drake’s With the Lightnings partially because of the librarian, Adele Mundy, who works in the Library of the Elector of Kostroma. Of course, chaos and adventure follow a government overthrow and, <sarcasm>as in any story featuring a librarian</sarcasm>*, she joins the right team and helps save the day. There are a lot of great librarian comments in the book that made me think of the quote from the movie The Mummy, “I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O’Connell, but I am proud of what I am…I, am a librarian!” Adele has a lot of, um, pep and goes from being portrayed as a somewhat stereotypical librarian to a woman not afraid to use deadly force to make people submit. My kind of librarian.
And yes, jj, I enjoyed the book. Thanks! = )
(*Apparently, WordPress doesn’t like fake HTML code and brackets. I had problems getting the sarcasm tags to appear. I had to resort to the characters for the brackets: &, lt, gt, and ;.)
April 5th, 2007 at 3:11 am
Ah, but did you read a physical book or the completely free electronic copy available from the Baen Free Library?
April 5th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Once a librarian, always a librarian!
This topic reminded me of a BU administrator I knew who wrote an article about being a book lover and titled it “In praise of bookies.”
Apparently having that headline on his c.v. didn’t hurt — he left Boston to become a university president, and he’s been one for more than 20 years.
Heh. When I went off to look up exactly how many years just now, I found a brand-new-today announcement that he’ll retire at the end of this year.
April 5th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
but did you enjoy it, that’s what i want to know
April 5th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Heya James!
I cheated and read the physical object. I can only hold my laptop in front of my face for so long. ; ) Besides, the paperback fit in my coat pocket. I don’t quite have pockets large enough for my machine.
Bob: Heh!
jj: Yes, I did! I finished it before the plane left.