Portland top city for book lovers!

Not that it's a surprise, but livability.com just named Portland, Oregon as #1 in its Top 10 Cities for Book Lovers! Portland has 139 bookstores, arguably the most per capita in the nation (I've seen a few competing statistics). We also have the largest new and used bookstore in the world, the almighty Powell's City of Books.

Powell's



Our local bookstore, Annie Bloom's



It's a little more manageable than Powell's, and equally as fun for browsing

Then there's the Multnomah County Library, which has the second-highest circulation rate in the country, second only to the New York Public Library. According to this news release, "For the ninth year in a row, Multnomah County Library patrons have checked out and renewed more items than patrons of any other U.S. library serving fewer than one million residents. With a population of about 735,000, that’s an average of about 31 items checked out or renewed for every man, woman, and child in Multnomah County."

The historic Central Library downtown

Sheer coincidence that this English major/writer-editor/book lover was born and bred in Portland (well, actually, a suburb)...I think not!

Go librarians (and Nancy Pearl), go!

If you're reading this blog, you are a book lover like me...which means that you cannot get enough of recommendations for great books.

Nancy Pearl, retired Seattle librarian and author of all of the great book compilations shown above, has just been named as Library Journal's Librarian of the Year. Pearl also has the claim to fame as the only librarian with her own action figure!

As a long-time library patron (Multnomah County, where I live, has the highest circulation in the country--for 8 years running), I am thrilled to see Nancy Pearl get such a fine recognition. I own the first two Book Lust books, but am dying to get my hands on Book Lust to Go, to update our outdated literary traveling guide. (I will probably support Nancy Pearl in spirit and get it out of the library!)

I have to hide some of my books...

No, they are not rated R. But they are books my 14-year-old wants to read.

The other day when I came home with a big stack of library books, he scanned through them to pick out which ones HE would read! He immediately spied Eat My Globe by Simon Majumdar and announced his intention to read it. Before he could whisk it away to his room, I told him that I was going to read it first...if I have to wait for him to read it, I'll be waiting weeks. He tends to read about 10 books at once--no kidding! So it takes him awhile to get through one. I'm 2/3 of the way through Eat My Globe, and he can have it next. I'm really enjoying it, but I'm also getting a bit tired or reading about food adventures. Majumdar is heavily into meat--and all parts of it--and I think I've read enough about eating pork fat, tripe, calf's brains, and sheep's head--not to mention dog, rat, and rotten shark--to last me a lifetime.

The other day Mike was at the Garden Home library and spied a copy of Mockingjay on the shelves...it's the third in the series by Suzanne Collins. He immediately nabbed it for me (isn't he a darling?). I have had it on hold at Multnomah County Library, but I believe I'm hold 350 or something like that! I asked him to hide it from Chris. When I received Catching Fire (second in the series) as a gift, I didn't get to read it until a year later, because it disappeared into Chris' room. Mike said he'd stick it next to my side of the bed--on the floor. It didn't take long before old eagle eyes saw it. I've told him he gets it right after I'm done. Given that it's so popular, both of us will have to be done with it in about 3 weeks. It won't take me long, but he might have to give up his 10-books-at-once habit to get through it.

I suppose if I had daughters, they'd be stealing/borrowing my clothes at age 14. I know this is a GOOD problem to have...