Tagged with highly recommended

New! Favorite! Book! Ms. Barry covers some similar turf as she does in The Good Times Are Killing Me, but O!H!D! covers a broader spectrum of her "autobiofictionalography," plus it's illustrated. In color--over 200 pages. I'm impressed Sasquatch Books was able to put this out for $24.95 in '02. Barry did some zen painting exercise where the artist explores her demons, and this is the result. She shares 17 of hers with us, mostly about her childhood and adolescence, but a few take place in grown up life.

Comix with footnotes--hubba hubba! But of course one's enjoyment is tempered by the fact that the facts presented about the prison industry are infuriating.

Per my post on LCSH Watch 2009, Week 51, I discovered this book via its subject heading, FEMALE JUVENILE DELINQUENTS—FICTION. If I were assigning subject headings, I wouldn't necessarily have picked that one, though. I might have gone with one of the cataloger's other choices PROBLEM FAMILIES -- ENGLAND -- NOTTINGHAM -- FICTION, but more to the point, CHILDREN OF DRUG ADDICTS. Essentially, I would have been more loving to the book's protagonist, Kerrie-Ann (Kez) Hill, whom we follow from the age of five to eighteen. She does a lot of illegal things and more than her share of drugs, but I don't see her as a delinquent, and neither does author Nicola Monaghan.

The author quotes former ALA president Patricia Wilson Berger in her epigraph "Show me a computer expert who gives a damn, and I'll show you a librarian." I wouldn't say all librarians give a damn or that no non-librarian computer geeks don't, but I do think that sentiment is an appropriate way to launch into Johnson's 250 page mash note to librarians. What she likes about us is what I like about us—that we are dedicated to our user population and to our professional ethics. That unlike many other experts, our mission involves educating people and providing access to self-education tools without being snotty about it. At least to your face.

As it turns out, although it was the computer expertiness of librarians that made Johnson notice us, many of the librarians and library projects she profiles in this book are stronger in "give a damn."

Before I really get started, I need to contemplate for a moment that Johnson got interested in librarians, because in researching her previous book The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiff, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries she fell in love with librarians through their obituaries. She is a loving and generous writer, but we have to admit a little quirky, right?