This book has been on my TBR forever - since it was written by a librarian at my home town library and caused a huge ruckus. I decided to pick it up since I moved back home and started a summer reading challenge - one of the fields was a Michigan author, so I decided it was time.

I didn't know what this book entailed - I just heard it was 'awful' and assumed it had library gossip in it?? But it wasn't really at all what I thought. It is marketed like a humorous book - maybe funny recollections or stories of library experiences. I found nothing of that in here.

This reads like someone's bitter, angry drunken ramblings. The kind of person that doesn't actually care if you're listening or not. The kind of person that isn't aware of your social cues that you desperately want to escape their presence but they just keep going and going...

Sally Stern-Hamilton (Ann Miketa) is filled with anger about the world and the people that exist - most specifically anyone that is poor, disabled, or god forbid, fat. Each chapter features an experience the author had with a library patron/patrons. In many of the recollections, there isn't even anything BAD that happened. The author just rants about them existing. There isn't even a negative interaction! I cannot imagine the judgment this librarian made the patrons feel. (And - I'm so curious who she was. I remember a very grouchy librarian there when I was growing up and can't help but wonder if it was her lol). There was one chapter that talked about a family who was fat. She commented on how the whole family was bigger, and then ranted about food assistance and how disgusting fat people were. There was literally nothing stated that this family did to the librarian. Nothing about an interaction, nothing harmful. They just....existed and went to the library and that enraged her.

I know workplace stories can be horrifying and disturbing. And if this was written as that, I may have felt differently. But she wasn't sharing stories like that. She would go on this rants complaining about unrelated things. She even had people's addresses in the text! And it was clear she drove by all these patrons houses because she would say what their houses looked like...I'm assuming using their library personal info for her own negative vendetta. Very, very disturbing. Every chapter contained unrelated rants. She was VERY bitter about her and her husband's lack of benefits and salary while other people might get any form of assistance. And that was the basis of so much of her anger in this book.

I took a few quotes but you could basically read any section of this book and clearly see how ableist, bigoted, classist, and gross these thoughts are. Things like

"When a human doesn’t have the brain capacity to think as a human to function in her environment, we really don’t have a human being."

I feel like I don't even need to say anything else than this quote. As a mother of a son with cerebral palsy, I can see if we would have entered her library, she would have had issue with his existence if he had showed even the smallest difference.

And she had this amazing ability, supposedly...
While working at the library, I can determine which kids will grow up to be criminals by the time they are eight or ten years old.

And this statement I found truly hilarious! The irony....

There have been several patrons who have written books. These books, for the most part, are unreadable.

She was VERY mad about anyone reproducing.

I hope after reading this book you are convinced of the far-reaching consequences we all face when we allow active addicts and alcoholics, individuals with psychotic mental illnesses, and people with low IQs to have children.

And a final example of the judgment that really has nothing to do with library stories in any way....

I was in line behind a food-stamp customer at the grocery store the other day. Nowadays, if a person is using food stamps, he has a card that resembles a credit card instead of the good-ole book of stamps that everyone can see and hear as the purchaser rips them out to use them. I guess this is an attempt to eliminate the stigma or humiliation attached to food-stamp recipients.
Once again I’ll say, humiliation is a good motivator for change.

Just GROSS