Wisdom of Pearl
It takes a special person to write a book titled “Book Lust.”
Nancy Pearl is such a person.
But don’t be fooled by the title. Neither it nor its sequel, “More Book Lust,” is a bodice-ripper.
Each is, instead, a compilation of great books to read.
And yet they sell. “More Book Lust” has sold more than 50,000 copies all by itself, a fact that has Pearl working hard on a third.
“They came up with the title,” Pearl said of her Seattle-based publisher, Sasquatch Books, during a phone interview.
“If it were up to me it would be so boring. I mean, I would probably have said something like, ‘Great Books: Try These.’ “
Pearl will speak about her love of all things bookish at 7 tonight at The Met as a featured part of Get Lit!, Eastern Washington University Press’ eighth-annual literary festival.
On Friday, she’ll be part of a panel discussion with other Get Lit! authors at 8 a.m. at Spokane Community College.
The festival, which has been going strong all week long, will culminate over the weekend with three other headline readers.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa will read at 7 p.m. Friday in Showalter Hall Auditorium on Eastern’s Cheney campus. Marilynne Robinson, the Sandpoint native who won a Pulitzer last year with her novel “Gilead,” will read at 7 p.m. Saturday at The Met, while best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith will read at 3 p.m. Sunday, also at The Met.
In addition, both Friday and Saturday will be filled with events, free and otherwise, ranging from writers visiting area schools on Friday to writing workshops at the Ridpath Hotel on Saturday. A full schedule of events can be found online at www.ewu.edu/getlit.
Tonight’s speaker, Pearl, wouldn’t seem to be an exciting draw.
But Pearl is no ordinary librarian. A native of Detroit, she graduated from the University of Michigan with her library degree in 1967. After moving with her family to Oklahoma, and running an independent bookstore for nine years, she returned to library work.
In 1993 she assumed the position of executive director of the Seattle Public Library’s Washington Center for the Book.
Since then, Pearl has become a Seattle-area celebrity, and not just because of her “Book Lust” books. Her book-review show runs weekly on Seattle’s National Public Radio affiliate, and she can be heard regularly on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”
Nothing else that she’s done, though, compares to her greatest achievement: being the model for her own action figure.
It was at a dinner party in 2003 that she met Mark Pahlow, owner of Archie McPhee, the specialty business known for putting out such novelties as bacon-scented air fresheners and wind-up lederhosen – not to mention toy action figures of Einstein, Freud, Shakespeare and even Jesus.
“And he was telling us that people were writing into the National Enquirer or one of those papers and saying that the Jesus action figure was performing miracles,” Pearl said. “And I said, ‘But Mark, the people who are performing miracles every day are librarians.’
“And someone else said, ‘Oh, Mark, you should do a librarian action figure.’ And then someone else said, ‘And Nancy should be the model because she doesn’t take herself seriously.’ “
Later, driving home, Pearl’s husband asked her if she really wanted to be the Archie McPhee model.
“And I said, ‘Oh, Joe, don’t even worry about that. It will never happen.’ And then a year later, Mark called and said, ‘Can you come to Mukilteo to be digitized?’ “
The result, an $8.95 plastic figure of Pearl in a stern-looking dress with an arm that moves with “an amazing shushing action,” hasn’t pleased everyone.
“What I think is that there are probably nine librarians in the world who have no sense of humor and who take themselves far too seriously,” Pearl says, “and I heard from all of them.”
It’s they, though, who can’t comprehend Pearl’s real purpose.
“They just didn’t see that this whole notion of a librarian action figure was a tribute to the profession,” she says.