Request and poll aftermath (cute)

[mrissa]

First, I'm going to copy a request from a friend who is a librarian. This person has a patron who wants books (preferably good ones) with the following characteristics

Comments

[ellameena]

Mostly I don't mind being called cute or whatever. I am often told I look younger than I am. And mostly that's a good thing. But the other side of the coin is you get condescension. For example, I worked a funeral at church last week, and there was an older lady working also. There was a certain part of the service that I hadn't done and still needed walking through. This lady proceeded to patronize me through the entire thing, even when I told her that I already had experience turning the lights on and off in the church, and could handle it on my own, thanks

[mrissa]

I know those church ladies in some detail, yes.

[mrissa]

Well, what do you tell them? If this is a familiar question? Or are you saying there just isn't stuff to tell them?

I think part of the problem is that those of us who don't have the same limitations are not thinking of books that way. I can't tell you whether most of the books I've read recently contained the word "damn," for example. I feel sure that someone with this set of sensibilities would notice it strongly, but I just don't, and that makes it much harder to pick out what might lack it.

[mrissa]

Right, your job is to deal with the patrons, not to select the patrons you wish you could have. Which is why I posted this to try to help my friend out: he's doing his job, and it's a hard one, and driving people away from the library is likely not to help the things that he or I believe in related to his job.

I think that anyone who gets upset reading the generic warning labels is probably going to be best served by a sectarian institution rather than a secular public library. (Although there was sex, violence, romance, and swearing in my parents' church library.) But as you say, you want to keep your job.

[sam_t]

I can see that one might want such books occasionally - in the aftermath of a particularly difficult breakup, for instance, especially if one already dislikes strong language - or might want to find out whether such works exist, but I'm a bit perplexed by it as a general reading strategy.

No love interests/romance ever, or just for the main character? Are peripheral characters allowed to be married, for instance?

Will ponder.

[sam_t]

I've got a possible: the 'Miss Read' Fairacre books. The main character is the middle-aged headmistress of an English village primary school, and they're basically about how she fits in to village and school life. A character may get married occasionally; the main character has a friend who keeps trying to matchmake; I can't say definitely that there will definitely be no bad language and violence, but if there is it will almost certainly be a small child who then gets told off for it. There is rural poverty and people do not always treat each other well, but it's not exactly gritty, and it's always told very gently and with humour.

Could be difficult to get hold of in the U.S., though.

[sam_t]

Oh, and also: set somewhere pre-1970s, I think.

[sam_t]

That's interesting: I had no idea how popular they were, and they struck me as something that might not work well too far outside the British Isles. There aren't as many around here as there were, either.

[timprov]

If she's willing to read YA, there's Richard Peck's A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder, which I think qualify.