Happy December, happy holidays, and happy last month of 2024! (As delightfully kooky youtuber Jenna Marbles once said, this year felt both short and terribly and insufferably long at the same time.)
My fellow HOTS writers and I thought we’d switch things up a little this month. In the spirit of gift giving and shelf picks—which is a personalized reading recommendation service where library staff introduce you to titles based on your preferences—we thought we’d do a sort of Secret Santa exchange of recommendations.
And thus, this post is dedicated to Claire and what I think (and hope!) she might like to read and watch, in the event she hasn’t yet. I gotta confess, this was a nerve-wracking test of how familiar I am with Claire’s taste and preferences.
Aiming to not give a gift that sucks, I revisited some of Claire’s posts and took literal and actual notes, by hand, in a notebook, to then do research with. I’m hoping that paid off! I’m also hoping you—dear reader—will find this list of recommendations to be a gift as well (pun fully intended).
A little while ago, my coworker Alison shared this list of top librarians in pop culture with the team and asked us who else we might add to it. Inspired by the resulting conversation, I thought I would compile everyone’s suggestions, along with my own, into a handy-dandy blog post on famous and infamous librarians, by librarians, as a sort of archive of librarian lore (hence the title).
(Shoutout to Adam, who has written about libraries already, actually! Our posts will therefore have some overlap…but can there possibly be too much said about this venerable profession? That’s a rhetorical question, and the answer is a cheerful ‘no’ from yours truly).
Before we dive into the list, let’s learn a bit about librarians and their libraries! So, what makes one a librarian, exactly? Do you need a degree? Technically, the answer is yes. To be a certified librarian you need to have completed a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. But not-so-technically, and to the general public, a librarian is what you might call any library worker.
Who was the first librarian? No one knows for sure, but the Sumerians (our earliest known civilization) may have been the first peoples to “train clerks to keep records of accounts. ‘Masters of the books’ or ‘keepers of the tablets’ were scribes or priests who were trained to handle the vast amount and complexity of these records.” And a king of Assyria named Ashurbanipal may have been the first person to make librarianship an actual profession, when he created a library in his palace in Nineveh and then hired clerks to look after it.
Gather round my cinephile friends (even you who don’t consider yourself as such), you’ll want to hear this. Have you heard of Lynn Shelton? No? Well, pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable. I first became aware of Lynn Shelton after watching her incredibly earnest and sweet picture, Touchy Feely from 2013. Sometimes a movie just hits you right in the solar plexus with its message of “you are not alone,” and that’s what this one did for me. We follow Rosemarie DeWitt’s character Abby. A masseuse by trade, one day she develops an aversion to other people’s skin that throws a wrench in everything. As a writer, this premise makes me think of one of the most effective writing aids I’ve ever been taught in a writing workshop: give your character the biggest obstacle that particular character could face. As a masseuse, developing an aversion to skin and touching other people is pretty much a mountain. Understandably, Abby is lost after that, not knowing what to do without the thing that gives her life meaning and fulfillment. We are introduced to Abby’s niece Jenny (played by the wonderful Elliot Page), her dentist brother Paul (Josh Pais), her boyfriend Jesse (Scoot McNairy), and the incredibly skillful Alison Janney as Reiki healer Bronwyn. Apart from the last, all of the characters seem lost in some way or another. Page’s Jenny has an unrequited crush on someone she can’t avoid, dentist Paul has closed himself off to life in a number of ways, and even Abby’s boyfriend Jesse is floundering in their relationship. I love that the actor’s name is Scoot, by the way. How many people do you know with a name like that? It’s a quiet film with very little plot to speak of. If you’re someone who’s used to action-packed adventures, it might not be for you, but I was moved by the performances and comforted by the characters ability to connect with one another. The littlest connection sparks something in each of them, and they start to come back to themselves and some sense of normalcy. I’d love to rewatch this one soon.
I’m glad I discovered Lynn Shelton while she was still alive. Tragically, she passed at the age of 54 of leukemia, but her work will always be there to discover. According to Wikipedia, she was a stalwart of the mumblecore genre, which is a hilarious term for the subgenre covering a range of independently-produced, small budget films with a focus on character development, interesting dialogue (presumably spoken at a lower volume than usual), and a desire to capture a feeling of authenticity. Fellow directors classified as “mumblecore” include the king of improvised indie cinema Joe Swanberg, known for the Netflix show Easyand several films featuring Jake Johnson (Nick from New Girl). Speaking of New Girl, the actors who played Cece and Winston have a podcast that’s a lot of fun for true fans of the True American players. We’ll get back to New Girl in a bit, as Shelton directed multiple episodes over the course of its run.
