After years of spreading the word far and wide about reading and drumming up interest in books and literature, Nancy Pearl, the Seattle Library’s Director of Programming and Director for the Washington Center for the Book, has a new book out herself.  It’s entitled Book Lust:  Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason.  At 256 pages, it is a most comprehensive annotated menu of books to read for any season of the year and soul.  Nancy categorized and selected 1800 titles and distilled explanations for why these books are on her list and why she recommends them for reading in 187 categories such as Bicycling, First novels, Cat crazy, Christmas Books for the Whole Family, Japanese Fiction, Mothers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons, Father’s and Daughters, Fathers and Sons, Ecofiction, Elvis on My Mind, China Voices, Sex and the Single Reader, Prose by Poets, I Love a Mystery, Teachers and Teaching Tales, Women’s Friendships, Sports and Games, The Middle East and Historical Fiction Around the World.

Here’s a sample of the way Nancy presents her favorite books for you to consider reading.  It is only one half of the discussion under the category Ecofiction:

I’m using the term ecofiction here to describe novels whose theme is the interconnectedness between humans and the natural world and the attendant dangers we face should that connection be severed through the continued degradation or destruction of the environment and our natural resources.

The defining fictional work in this field is Edward Abbey’s 1975 comic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, the story of a group of ecosaboteurs who are intent on preventing any further exploitation of the wilderness. Abbey followed this up with Hayduke Lives!

Pleasure of Believing by Anastasia Hobbet is about a woman whose devotion to rehabilitating injured birds and her unbridled anger at the common use of pesticides to control livestock predators set her at odds with both her husband and her Wyoming-rancher neighbors.

Chris Bohjalian’s Water Witches pits environmentalists against developers in a small New England town.  The effects of the struggle are reflected in the dynamics of one particular family.

As I read Book Lust, I also had an opportunity to interview Nancy Pearl.  I began by asking her about developments in her professional life.

Sheila
You have been very busy promoting books and reading and appearing on radio and in person all over the state of Washington.  Many groups have recognized your activities.  Fill me in on the numerous awards I know that you have received.

Nancy
The last decade, especially the last few years have been a wonderful culmination of a lifetime of reading and my more than 30 years of being a librarian.  I have been so fortunate in being recognized by both my peers and the wider world and have won numerous awards  – it’s all a little embarrassing to talk about, but here goes:  I recently received the 2004 Brava Award from Women’s University Club in Seattle, recognizing “women of exceptional ability in the Greater Seattle Area;” the 2003 Humanities Washington Award, “which recognizes an individual or organization whose time and talents enlarge the meaning of the humanities in our lives and whose work reflects the spirit and programs of Humanities Washington;” the Public Library Association’s 2001 Allie Beth Martin Award, which “recognizes a public librarian demonstrating a range and depth of knowledge about books and other library materials and the distinguished ability to share that knowledge;” the 2004 Louis Shores Greenwood Publishing Group Award for excellence in the reviewing of books and other materials for libraries; and  the 2004 Media and Communications Award from the Ontario, Canada, Library Association.  I was also was named the Totem Business and Professional Women’s “1998 Woman of Achievement” and I received the 1997 Open Book Award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference.  In 1998, Library Journal named me Fiction Reviewer of the Year.  Perhaps my oddest accomplishment is that I am the model for the Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure, produced by Accoutrements Inc., a Seattle area company.

Sheila
Wow, Nancy! This makes me sure that people value books. From the start of your position in Washington, you have, with great enthusiasm, made clear a multitude of intellectual and emotional reasons to value literature. Please describe your position, the history of it, how you have shaped it, what your mission is and how you have made a difference for people concerning books, literacy, libraries.

 Nancy
I came to Seattle Public Library in 1993 to set up and run the Washington Center for the Book.  It is one of 50 state affiliates of The Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.  The overall mission of the Centers is to promote books, reading, and libraries, but I was able to tweak the overall mission to fit my goals for libraries and readers in Washington.  I think that one of the best things a librarian can do is to open the world of the reader to books that they may not have ordinarily read or would even think of reading.  I think that book discussion groups not only help do this, but also help deepen a reader’s experience with a particular work of literature and, equally important, help build a community of readers, with a common language that comes through a discussion of a book.  Putting all that together led us to come up with a program called “If All Seattle Read the Same Book,” in which each year we focus on a book by a particular writer and invite people to come meet the author in a series of informal question and answer sessions, held at libraries and community centers all over the city.  The authors have included Russell Banks, Ernest Gaines, Bill Moyers, Molly Gloss, Chang-rae Lee, and, this year, Isabel Allende.

Our focus has not been on literacy as such, but more fostering the love of reading and discovery and discussion about good books.

Sheila
While I was living in LA, the mayor declared a program something like you are talking about. The first book all LA was going to read was one by Ray Bradbury, I think.  Did the mayor talk to you?

Nancy
Los Angeles was one of the earliest cities that used “If All Seattle Read the Same Book” as a basis for a city-wide reading project. (Chicago was another).  While I never talked to the Mayor of Los Angeles, I was on a radio show on NPR with Ray Bradbury, who of course was thrilled that Fahrenheit 451 was chosen.  (He did mention that he thought the books should not be selected by politicians and concluded that thought by adding:  “I think Nancy Pearl should just choose all the books”)

Sheila
Tell me about your Book Lust, the why and how of writing it.

Nancy
This latest book (after two books aimed primarily at library reference collections, but which I always hope will sometime be available to the general public at affordable prices in trade paper – now they are too expensive for the ordinary person) is from Seattle’s Sasquatch Books.  It is a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and kids books that are in print and out of print, new books, old books arranged in quirky categories – everything from A…My Name is Alice (good books by people whose name is Alice [Munroe; Adams; Hoffman; Mattison, etc]) to Zero: This Will Mean Nothing To You (books about the history of the concept of the number zero).  And everything in between, like books with great first lines, books about the transcontinental railroads, great mysteries, best books from every decade, and Great Dogs in Fiction.

I had a wonderful time writing it and for about a week afterwards I was probably the happiest that I’d ever been in my professional life.  I thought that I had included all the books I had ever read and loved (there are some books in Book Lust that I first checked out from my library when I was a child growing up in Detroit).  Then after about a week I started waking up in a cold sweat – sitting bolt upright in bed and saying, Oh my god, I left out Anthony Trollope totally, or, oh no, I didn’t include the first line of Anita Brookner’s The Debut, or Why didn’t I remember to put the novel Vida in the Pawns of History column–you get the idea.  It was awful.  So I was totally thrilled when Sasquatch Books asked me to write a second Book Lust.  The working title is Book Lust II: The Morning After.  Some of the new categories are Adoption (good novels); good books about lots of the different states; more writers “too good to miss” – this was a very popular category in the first Book Lust – and on and on and on.  I’m really enjoying rereading and reading and then sitting down at my computer and actually writing about these great books.

Sheila
1800 titles in 175 categories amazes me just in itself. And now more?  How do you keep all these books in mind, let alone read so much? Can you explain what that training was and how it helped you create habits of mind concerning memory and books?

Nancy
This is a hard question, because there’s simply no rhyme or reason to how I remember the books I’ve read.  (I don’t remember much of anything else, for example!)  Partly, I think, it’s that I don’t try to remember specific plots, but rather the whole gestalt, or feel of the book, or where I was in my life when I read it, or who recommended it to me.  That sort of thing is easier to remember than what the precise plot twists and turns are.  Also, remember that when I do read a book, it’s because I love it.  I never finish a book that I don’t love – and Book Lust is the culmination of a lifetime of reading books I’ve loved.

Sheila
I saw a gag quoted from Publisher’s Weekly in the press kit about Book Lust.  It said, “Speaking before members of the Great Lakes Booksellers Association last month, GLBA president Becky Anderson expressed a wish for a fashion accessory for booksellers, librarians and other booklovers…Anderson suggested a bracelet that would prompt the wearer to ask, WWNR: What Would Nancy Read?” What are you reading now? How do you choose books to read?

Nancy
Wouldn’t that be cool – a WWNR bracelet!  I choose the books I read the same way everyone does:  I read reviews, I get recommendations from friends, I browse library and bookstore shelves.  But when I read a book review (in the Washington Post, or New York Times or Publisher’s Weekly for instance), I’m not particularly interested in whether or not the reviewer liked the book, but rather how he or she describes the book under review.  I am particularly attracted to books with three-dimensional, living, breathing, interesting characters, and especially in books that are very, very well written.  If I get the sense from the review that the book falls into those categories, I tend to start reading it.  Since what a book is about is so unimportant to me, I read any kind of fiction and lots of nonfiction.  My most recent reads have been Michelle de Kretser’s The Hamilton Case; Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star; Carrie Brown’s Confinement; and Howard French’s A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa.

Sheila
Do you have any particular advice for writers about reading?  So many of us don’t feel we have enough time to read if we are going to write and we even think that reading might make us sound derivative instead of original.

Nancy
Ernest Gaines, when he came here in the second year of “If All Seattle Read the Same Book” was asked if he had any advice for writers and he responded by saying that he had eight words of advice: read, read, read, read, write, write, write, write.  The problem of course is finding time to do both.  It seems to me that you just have to choose what’s important to you and realize that by doing the reading and the writing there will be other areas of your life that will inevitably fall by the wayside.  I no longer, for example, cook, garden (not that I ever gardened), or skateboard!  But I also find that I mostly skim the newspapers, am much more choosy about what New Yorker articles I am going to read, and get my news fix listening to the radio while I am exercising rather than by watching television or reading the papers.

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Whether you are involved in a book group (or confidently form one after you get a copy of Book Lust) or are just on the look out for good reads, Nancy Pearl’s categories and descriptions will help you navigate a path you won’t regret.  And unlike in school, you don’t have to waist time with books that don’t appeal—Nancy says if you are 50 or under, give any book you select 50 pages before you make up your mind about continuing to read. If you are over 50, because time is short, subtract your age from 100 and give the book that many pages before you decide.  Whew!  With Nancy’s guidance and by listening to ourselves, we might accomplish more good reading than we thought we ever would. Perhaps we will be able to relate to the quote from Virginia Woolf in The Second Common Reader that Nancy Pearl includes in Book Lust:

I have sometimes dreamt…that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards—their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble—the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward.  We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.