Since I work in a library, I have the inside knowledge of the oddities that regularly occur there. However, I found the title interesting and decided to give Free For All a try. I enjoyed Borchert's humor and descriptions of the library's evolution. While this book offers nothing new or earth shattering for those of us who work in libraries, it's still a good read. ( )

What a great book! Even though some of the stories from this book are horrifying, I am still up to the challenge of public library work!

This is just what it says on the tin - a memoir of working in a library. On the whole I enjoyed it. However, I don't think the characters really came alive and I got irritated by the author's moving between past and present tense. For the most part, anecdotes were described quite dispassionately, which was both a strength and a weakness - a detached viewpoint seems to have more integrity but on the other hand I relished the times when the author hinted at his own feelings and opinions, rather than just describing what took place. ( )

I will have to read this soon!

Like Scott Douglas' Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian (review), Don Borchert's Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library (Virgin Books, 2007) is an anecdotal memoir of the author's work-life at an urban branch library. The tales tend toward the amusing, but Borchert (again, like Douglas) focuses a bit too much on the salacious, disgusting, and negative at the expense of positive experiences (there are a few of these, but they disappear under the preponderance of stories about drug dealing, fights, strange things in the book drop, and crazy patrons).

If you're after a reasonably funny look at the daily ins and outs (mostly outs) of the life of a public librarian, this book, or Douglas', is right up your alley. I'm sure that for many employees at libraries like Borchert's, this rings true. For my part, I'm glad that it seems so alien to me - I'm sure I couldn't go to work every day knowing that any of the things that Borchert recounts could possibly happen on a regular basis.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2008/... ( )