The hold requests at a library can be a hell of a thing, sometimes, the books requested by patrons at other libraries in our system. Often it isn’t the actual requests that are weird, rather the context the request sits within. Maybe someone orders a book by Jill Shalvis and so as you put it into the transit bin the brain, just keeps on repeating “SHALVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING, SHALVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING”. Sometimes it’s as simple as the Easy Readers’ tome by Margaret Brown popping up shortened into “EASY-BRO” so for the rest of that day, you imagine Russian mobsters trying to calm someone down, “EASY, BRO! Easy, Bro, No Have To Kill! Easy, Bro!”
Never-mind when it’s just a text with unfortunate spine-label sticker placements, many of those books have extra labels on them connotating a genre for the volume, maybe a horse for western, maybe a skull for a murder mystery. But sometimes, it’s a little snowflake for a kids’ Christmas book and a sticker has turned “The Crayons’ Christmas” into “The Crayon’s Christ” and you’re left wondering what the hell that story would be like. Instead of INRI over the cross, does it say CRAYOLA? Does He just melt in the sun and turn that cross into a Hannukah candle? Anyway.
The most fascinating though are the requests we will get from the library in the prison a couple towns over. While prison requests are hardly a monolith, you can put the vast majority of them into one of two buckets: the most sexually-explicit most violent Japanese comic books that can still be stocked in public libraries or outdoors survivalist manuals. The Japanese comics (that is what I’ll always call them as I don’t wanna be that one middle-aged white guy mispronouncing “manga”) make a lot of sense. A prison population is sadly generally lower-literacy, so pictures make it easier? Even PG-13 sex or violence is probably hard to come by for those incarcerated, but it comes from a nice safe public library and wardens probably won’t even know for “Sailor Moon” so they take what they can get. Not pornographic, just mildly racy? But it’s something!
But it’s those outdoor survival guides that always really catch my eye, because you and I both know why they’re taking them out. To dream upon. They’re not studying to try and be guides, park rangers, whatever. They are coming up with a plan to survive if they can ever manage to break out. To eat and hide and live in the hill-and-dales of the lower Adirondacks as free men, provided someone blew up a wall or whatnot. I imagine the manic nights of fevered readings, hope springing eternally, practicing making lashing ropes out of swamp reeds, dreaming free.
It’s a helluva thing to be a book on hold. Helluva thing to have life on hold. If a scantily clad ninja or the ability to identify poison mushrooms helps, I’m proud I get to help them through.
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