Read Harder: Library Edition

Audre Lorde was a Black poet and essayist best known for Sister Outsider and The Cancer Journals. This biography covers her youth in Harlem, her adult years of discovery in regards to her own ideals and sexuality, and the development of her writing as part of the modern American canon. 

Having made it to the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist in 2022, The Book of Form and Emptiness follows a young man dealing with grief and strange occurrences. After his father dies, Benny starts to hear the voices of objects around them. He seeks refuge in a local public library, where the books around him tell a very different kind of story. 

When university professor Victoria goes to the local public library to propose a partnership with the local children’s librarian, she is not expecting to see a wildly attractive man with long hair and tattoos in the position. Especially not one who might be interested in her for things beyond a professional partnership. 

Have you watched and/or listened to Janelle Monae’s sci-fi space opera concept album and film? Whether you’ve had the experience or not, you can immerse yourself in the stories written by Monae, partnered with several authors who are known to be experts in their craft. The titular Memory Librarian isn’t specifically a librarian like the ones we think of, but can definitely count as an image of where librarianship could go in the future. 

R. Cooper writes delightful romance novellas, and does wonderful work when it comes to the opposites attract trope. Here, outgoing and body-focused Scott is a firefighter in a small town where there aren’t many people of any gender to date, let alone hot guys. The taciturn and sarcastic widower who runs the school library is definitely someone Scottie might be interested in, but it doesn’t seem that the stylish Mr. Porter is interested in someone like Scott. 

Instead of a story about a librarian, this is by a librarian. Ann Allen Shockley is one of the earliest known writers of sapphic romance featuring Black characters, and was also a librarian for several years. Even after retiring from the library, she has been an activist for systemic change in the library world. In Say Jesus and Come to Me, Shockley introduces us to a charismatic preacher and the blues singer who can’t resist her — and who she can’t walk away from. 

His Quiet Agent is a quiet novella featuring an analyst at a government agency and the quiet coworker who he can’t stop watching in the break room. Their quiet courtship is sweet and delightful, and you’re probably wondering how the heck it’s on this list. Let’s just say there’s a really great scene in the library, featuring some kids and a guy named Merlin. (And there’s a bonus short as well!) 

This collection focuses on the lives and experiences of two sisters living in Western Pennsylvania. The collected poems focus on everything from experiencing and recovering from trauma to ruminations on Georgia O’Keefe. The author has written other works about library life and art as well. 

Nell Young used to be a highly sought-after cartographer working with her father at the New York Public Library. But now, she’s working in a dinky shop creating facsimiles. When her father turns up dead, presumably from a heart attack, she finds that he’s secreted away the one thing that tore them apart: a cheap gas station map from the 1930s. From there, she goes on a quest to discover the truth about her parents, her life, and the importance of this random map. 

An alien population has invaded, colonized, and essentially enslaved the people of Earth. Ellie, who has amassed and hidden a collection of books in her apartment building’s lower levels, acts as a secret librarian to her fellow captives. When she is caught, a sympathetic alien officer helps her escape, and the pair go on a journey to save the people of Earth from an even worse future. 

In 14th Century Italy, a Benedictine investigator arrives at a remote abbey to look into possible heresy. The perfect time for there to be mysterious deaths, amirite? The abbey’s library holds a central and important role in the investigation, and in the lives of the monks within it. I don’t remember much about the film besides Sean Connery in a robe, but the book is even more library-y. 

Did you know there was a new adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife coming out this year? But instead of the meager couple of hours we got last time around, this one is a whole series! Theo James will play the titular time traveler, and Rose Leslie the titular wife. Henry, the time traveler, is also a librarian in most parts of the story. Clare, the wife, is an artist who meets Henry at age 6, and marries him 20 years later…when he’s a few years younger. The timeline is interesting, to say the least. But the book is incredibly captivating!

(Also if you want something else time travel and library related, there’s A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, which doesn’t feature a librarian but will make you want to look up the Selden End of the Bodleian Library…and then move there.)

When Briar signs a deal with a demon, she finds herself married to a dragon in another realm. The two don’t build much of a rapport until he introduces her to his library, à la Beauty and the Beast.

So really, you can also think of this as a queer retelling, because everything Katee Robert writes is inherently queer.

Technically this is fiction, but it’s based on a real person, and you’ll still learn a lot. At the center of the story is Belle da Costa Greene, who worked as J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian — and also passed as white in public circles. 

If you’d rather read a true history book, try The Library Book by Susan Orlean or Dear Miss Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference by Joanne Oppenheim

Disability is a broad spectrum, but this librarian friends and colleagues to lovers romance was written by neurodiverse author Candace Harper, who also writes as Ceillie Simkiss. While some books that feature librarians don’t particularly include much library work, this one is partly set in the library where the main characters work, and partly set at the conference where they’re mistaken for a married couple. It’s delightful.