Tomb of the Unknown Librarian

I attended the Book Group Expo in San Jose over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised. Four fellow librarians from the county also attendend along with as many as five hundred (?) book club fans and fanatics, authors, independent book sellers, wine merchants… You get the picture. For $25, I saw dozens of authors speak about everything from the creative process to using real-life as an inspiration. Some of the highlights included seeing one of my favorite librarian buddies, the opening salon author Khaled Hosseini, a hilarious salon with three authors ZZ Packer, Andrew Sean Greer (The Confessons of Max Tivoli), and Sarah Gruen (Water for Elephants), and meeting the lovely and elegant Leslie Sbrocco host of Check Please, Bay Area (I am definitely thinking about applying to be on the show). Overall it was a great experience. I really get the sense that authors do like to visit book clubs and really appreciate them. I also got the sense that small independent book sellers are struggling and book clubs & author visits are their lifeblood. I hope they do it again next year when our library can have a booth alongside the San Jose Rep and where we can actually show off the resources that the library has to offer book clubs.

Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, and Dismissed by Annabelle Gurwitch

You might remember Annabelle Gurwitch from TNT’s Dinner and a Movie. More recently you didn’t seen her in a Woody Allen Broadway production…oh, because she was fired. Well, she’s not alone in being fired. Gurwitch has collected stories from a cadre of comedians, actors, writers, and friends, her mother, and even former Clinton Labor Secretary and commentator Robert Reich. Not all the stories are about being fired from jobs, some are about firing themselves from dead end jobs and even firing themselves from dating. I guess that could be considered a job. Unfortunately, not all of the tales are as amusing or engaging. Most are barely anecdotes lacking structure and often even punchlines. Overall, only a few of them are worth the read.

Cody, who is sharp, literate and infinitely rock-n-roll, takes a joy-ride that is both hilarious and harrowing. Her memoir starts with her facing a terminal case of cubicle death as a low-level copy editor. She decides to inject a little chaos into her life by entering a dance contest at a seedy strip club. The initial rush is enough to overcome the eww factor and before long she finds herself delivering lap-dances at a series of “gentlemens clubs.” The managers at Choice, DeJa Vu, Shieks and the other friendly sounding clubs each have their own particular take on how to fleece their dancers, yet Cody manages to earn enough money to finally quit her day job. Her penultimate stop puts her in a glass cage performing for a parade of clichéd perverts and bizarre, laughable fetishists, one who surprisingly doesn’t seem to have a problem with Gastroenteritis. Don’t expect something salacious, the memoir is an entertaining expose of someone choked by an upbringing of “normalcy, decency and JIF sandwiches with their crusts amputated” who manages to jar herself free by stripping and ultimately realizes she is more than a confection or a concession.