So after weeks of anticipation, Nancy Pearl made her appearance at our library today. She’ll be making a public appearance tomorrow night, but this afternoon it was librarians only. Although I’d say 75% of the attendants were from our system, some people had traveled quite far to listen to the Librarian Action Figure speak.

Our director gave a protracted introduction. He apparently played a pivotal role in bringing Ms. Pearl to Seattle and there were many stories between them. Once the stories had been told (although more would come later), she shared the story of her current release, Book Lust: how it came to be, the process of putting it together, some examples of the results.

There were lots of little insights revealed. We learned that there will be a sequel to Book Lust with the working title Book Lust II: Because Once Is Not Enough. Although I suspect the title won’t last, I’m pulling for it.

One interesting thing that Ms. Pearl mentioned was that she is hesitant to meet authors, for fear that any impressions she gets from such an encounter will influence her readings of their texts. She added that there is a similar problem with the audiobook concept, as the reader essentially mediates the experience of the text for the listener. I couldn’t agree more.

There was time for some Q and A at the end, so I summoned up some courage and threw a question her way. One of Ms. Pearl’s notions is that life is too short to waste on books you’re not enjoying. Some of you are familiar with her espousal of giving a book 50 pages to engage you (less as you get older and time gets even shorter). My question was whether she had ever revisited books that she considered favorites in her earlier days, only to realize that, if she had been employing the 50 page rule, the book would have gone unfinished. She responded that, although she hadn’t had that specific experience, she did come to recognize that some of the books that were favorites in her childhood proved to be poorly written pieces of literature. I wasn’t surprised at all, as this emulates my experience.

Of course, this event was ultimately a book promotion and we had the opportunity to purchase the book and have it signed. And admittedly, Nancy Pearl made me excited about reading again, so I paid up and waited in line for my little moment with a celebrity librarian.

And what did I do with that moment? Well, we learned that Ms. Pearl was able to select half of the books in the little stack that comes with the Librarian Action Figure, while her publisher picked the others. So did she pick Bulgarian Flax? Uh, no.