Tag: book

Little Library DIY

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We made our own little library! Our little library is not only an accomplishment of a yearslong fantasy, it is also a constant source of joy when people stop by and a great excuse to buy books. I did most of the planning and designing, with construction and style guidance from my parents and my partner Cory and our friend and housemate and generous feudal lady PJ, and fixing from Cory, an actual mechanical engineer, when things broke. I think PJ wanted to buy a professionally built little library, at least at first, but I wanted to do something ill-advised, amateurish, in retrospect possibly manic, and from the soul and also to use a dremel for the first time in ten years.

Our little library is painted black and the books have a sometimes spooky tint, because we live in a not-yet-painted-black house that may or may not have its own soul (and if it does have its own soul, or a visiting soul (other than our visiting souls, of course), it is absolutely a spooky one) across the street from a graveyard in Salem—which of course means that most of our neighbors and subsequently most of the visitors to our little library have died. Spooky books are often also joyful books, and hopeful books—but sometimes just spooky.

This is a blog post about how we made the library/libraries. Spoiler alert, it ends up looking like this:

This blog post includes links with my Amazon referral code. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. If you click a link and buy something, I get about 4% of the price as commission. You don’t have to buy these things from Amazon—actually, you don’t have to buy these things at all. You can also support me by buying merch of my art, by buying me a campground store decaf coffee, or by simply reading and enjoying. Thank you!

Ingredients

Here’s everything I bought to make the library:

  • A reasonably-sized waterproof bathroom cabinet, to serve as the larger library—we painted it black, but this one was originally white, which already looked very nice as a potential library
  • A narrow waterproof bathroom cabinet, to serve as the small library—this one is dark brown, since it was closest to the intended black, but it also comes in white
  • A five-pack of 8×10″ plexiglass, to serve as the windows
  • Durable, waterproof plastic file folders, to serve as the roofs—in black since our library is black, but you can get colorful ones instead
  • Mounting tape, to attach the windows and the roof
  • Black outdoor paint, to paint the cabinets our preferred color, which was black—but you can choose a different color, or you can choose to not paint your libraries at all
  • Barrels to plant your libraries in—I bought these fancy wooden bucket barrels (18 inch, 15 inch, and 11.5 inch diameter, one for each library and the smallest destined for flowers). I like them a lot because the real wood and its smell and its texture and the metal handles were important to me because smells and textures are important to me in general, but they are expensive; cheaper, perfectly acceptable, possibly more durable plastic bucket barrels exist, and different sizes and shapes and quantities of the wooden ones—this is the fun part; you could even get this weird wishing well planter I’ve been trying to find some excuse to buy (but I have nothing in particular I want to do with it and nowhere in particular I want to put it) and stick a library in it, which is what I would probably try to do if we decided to add a third library

And here are things we already had that we also used:

  • A dremel, to cut out interestingly shaped window-holes
  • A sturdy pocketknife, to cut the plexiglass to fit the window-holes
  • Variously sized small pieces of scrapwood, to attach the roofs to and to make lock-type turning mechanisms so the doors don’t blow away
  • A drill and drill bits and screws, to attach the roofs so they don’t blow away and to attach the lock-type turning mechanisms
  • Lots and lots of rocks
  • Dirt
  • Flowers
  • A very strong glue to fix things when they break, like JB-Weld or Gorilla glue

And some things I bought to put in the library once we built it:

Methods

Here’s how we built the library.

First, I assembled the smaller of the two shelves. (In retrospect, I should have waited until after dremeling the doors, but it worked out fine.)

The shelf fit nicely in its intended bucket, as intended, with some books in it.

I dremeled windows into the doors of both the small shelf, which was easy because I just sliced the spaces between the horizontal gaps, and the larger shelf, which was more challenging. I tried to make the windows large enough that you could see in and see the books. I considered adding more windows to the other sides of the shelves, which you could if you wanted to, but we decided on just the doors.

(Does what I’m doing make you slightly uncomfortable? It probably should. I have no training in this except Science Olympiad in high school.)

I also reoriented the doors of the larger shelf to open in opposite directions because that is more interesting.

Here is how the larger shelf looks, dremeled and assembled:

I like how the large shelf looks as a white shelf, and white might be a good fit for a different project, but we had a whole vibe planned so it had to be painted black. I think it turned out nice and dramatic.

I measured and cut as large rectangles of plexiglass as would fit across each of the doors of the small shelf, covering the windows I had dremeled in (and which had partly already existed before my dremeling). I attached the plexiglass to the doors using mounting tape, which apparently is used for cars so it is probably good enough for this purpose as well.

I cut small straps off a skirt belt I didn’t like and curled them into door handles for the larger shelf, and attached them using mounting tape as well.

Then I cut and attached the plexiglass windows on the doors of the larger shelf—big rectangles covering both the big window holes and the little door handle holes.

Here’s how they turned out, with books inside:

To make a roof, I decided to use file folders, supported by wooden blocks that had been used to deliver furniture. Here is what that brainstorming looked like.

I painted the wooden blocks black and used mounting tape to attach them to the libraries.

I wanted the roofs to be waterproof, and black, so I ordered black plastic file folders and used them as roofs, attached also with mounting tape. Cory told me that when he was improving on this idea later he mentioned my use of plastic file folders as roofs to a coworker, who said that non-engineers sometimes come up with creative ideas to engineering challenges that a person boxed in by an engineering education might not have come up with. A very kind compliment.

They turned out quite nice, I think. Very witchy and spooky.

Here they are in their buckets, outside. We reserved the bottom part of each shelf to fill with rocks so that the libraries would be heavy and more or less sturdy. The shelf comprising the smaller library is actually upside down—the now-bottom shelf used to be the top shelf, intended to store toilet paper.

We bought flowers to plant in the buckets alongside and around the libraries:

Here is Cory planting the flowers. We planted the flowers on the sides and filled the rest of the space in the buckets with dirt. The smaller of the shelves is entirely dedicated to a flower we saw a lot of bees on, which seemed like a very good sign.

Here is how they turned out, after sunset and full of books. Very spooky and cozy:

We bought a ton of books to fit in the libraries. Here are some of the books we bought:

We dedicated the hall window overlooking the libraries to the books we plan to add to the libraries. Here they are at various moments. We ended up moving them from the windowsill to a dedicated shelf under it because there got to be too many.

PJ officially registered our libraries. Here are the fancy materials they sent us, including a little plaque:

Here are the libraries with their plaque. PJ also got a gorgeous flag and a wooden sign and little reading owls sculptures.

Here’s where dreams meet reality, and it gets a little sad—but happy and better afterward. Around Halloween we had a very bad windstorm and everything that could blow away did. The library flag blew away and we found it somewhere down the street. The roof folders blew away and we did not find them. The skeleton hand you can see in the mulch also blew away and we found it later near the graveyard (maybe it was trying to return home). The fence came down, thankfully missing the libaries.

There were two problems we kept running into: one was wind and the other was rain. The roofs kept blowing away, and mounting tape was just not doing the trick. And the doors kept blowing open, letting in rain and getting the books soaked. Twice a door was blown open hard enough that it broke off.

Cory is an actual engineer. He made nice wooden door locks to keep the doors from blowing open and drilled them into the libraries.

Cory also fixed the broken door with superglue.

Finally, Cory added additional wooden supports for the roofs, and drilled screws through the roofs into the supports. No more flying away.

I’m very grateful to Cory for supplementing my—um—creativity with thoughtful and weather-aware actual engineering. Here’s how the libraries turned out, with their improvements:

And here they are now:

Little Libraries of Centre County

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The past two weeks I was home in Pennsylvania for the first time in two, maybe even three years. All the trees I remember got taller. Even our houseplants got taller.

Last time I was home I don’t remember seeing many little libraries; I don’t remember seeing more than one. Since then they seem to have cropped up like mushrooms (or mushrooms/suburban housing developments/suburban housing developments made of mushrooms)—all shaped like little houses, all clearly created and curated with care and love, all unique. The libraries I visited multiple times had different books each day—and the books themselves seem to be very thoughtful collections.

There are, of course, many more little libraries I did not see than there are little libraries I did see. And some of the ones I did see were not on any map—which means there could be surprise libraries on any street we could step into on a meandering walk like those we had together in the evenings this June, and even making a thorough scavenger hunt of it would not guarantee I found them all. Some kind of commentary, perhaps, on more generally living life as a whimsical adventure.

Here are the little libraries I got to visit.

A little library in the Arboretum. The Arboretum was just starting out when I started college and has now blossomed. We had class field trips to the Arboretum in my writing classes during my year at Penn State. This little library is the one and only little library I remember seeing on a past visit:

A little library on a walk near our neighborhood. This library has adorable decorations inside: little hanging pictures, including of cows in a field, which is a not-uncommon view here. The book selection changed from day to day, and on one day, a sticker collection appeared:

A little library in the park where I and my friends used to play hide-and-seek tag after dark, and past which I used to bike on my way to school in the mornings, past little lakes of mist settled in the little valleys between the tiny hills in the park:

I picked up my next book to read at this library, and a book heart sticker at the library before it. The book heart sticker is now on the first page of my todo list notebook:

I picked up Gameboard of the Gods by Richelle Mead, which I am now reading alongside Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. Because circumstances necessitated comfort reading I took a break from Small Gods to reread Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Bridget Jones’s Diary volume 2) by Helen Fielding, which are two of my favorite books. But now I am on from novelized late-90s feminism/Pride and Prejudice retelling to fictionalized polytheism. Along the same path I am also listening to Old Gods of Appalachia, which is spooky and excellent (“…an eldritch horror fiction podcast set in an Alternate Appalachia, a world where these mountains were never meant to be inhabited. This world feels eerily similar to the hills and hollers we’ve grown up with, but there are some tell-tale differences. Names of towns and counties may be altered. Historical events slide forward or backward in time. And then, of course, there are the monsters…”).

Note that the above includes links with my Amazon referral code. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. If you click a link and buy something, I get about 4% of the price as commission. You don’t have to buy these things from Amazon—actually, you don’t have to buy these things at all. You can also support me by buying merch of my art, by buying me a campground store decaf coffee, or by simply reading and enjoying. Thank you!

A little library on the drive to a friend’s house (I nearly dove out of the car to get a better look and take a photo). This one has a gnome and little red mushrooms, and I really like the trellis up the side of the house. It feels like maybe the gnome lives in this house, and it is his personal library that we are disturbing; very kind of him to invite us in:

And another little library in that same neighborhood, right along a bike path. This neighborhood is very modern, with unique and unusual homes, some built into hillsides; this library matches them nicely:

A little library near our high school, on the walk we used to take home from school:

This library is in a park I used to bike past multiple times a week, depending on the path I took to school or home from school, and yet I never particularly noticed—and the park is huge! and gorgeous.

You might notice that by the time we got to this little library, it was sunset. The walk home gave us these gorgeous spooky-peaceful Pennsylvania views:

Another little library near the school, on the same walk, a few blocks out of the way, in a beautiful neighborhood I’d never walked through before—this library is more of a castle, with stepping stones, a little garden with labelled plants, and flowers painted into the inside walls:

A surprise little library we stumbled on, also on that walk. This little library has a cozy reading chair inside, and a door nicely sized for a creature who might use that chair. Very cute, and very sturdily and creatively constructed, with a gorgeous and modern glass ceiling and glass walls and therefore plenty of sunlight for the cozy creature(s) to read by:

There is a convenient door at the base of the library, which means there might be an exceptionally tall spiral staircase up to the reading nook.

We came back a few days later and the Pride flags had moved up:

A little library on another walk, on the way to go see a new housing development that was just being planned (and protested against) when I was last home. Years ago, the new housing developments were all very strange: some of the roads had been made, but not all of them, and none of the buildings, but the busses were already running, circling around nowhere, picking up no one. Now this one is a bizarre modern village with lights in the windows and people living their lives and a steep drop into the hills.

This little library is a ways away from the new neighborhood, but it was on our winding walk there. It has a cat in a window:

This walk gave us these gorgeous spooky-peaceful Pennsylvania views:

A little library by an elementary school. My dad thought there might be a library there and stealthily led us to it on a walk, and indeed there was a library there; a very happy surprise. The color and in particular the roof are very elegant and cute:

A little library we intentionally walked to, but were startled to find empty. It is by a football stadium near campus; the semester is over and the football stadium is empty, so maybe that is why the little library is empty. It also has a little free necessity box next to it:

A little library in Shaver’s Creek, next to the environmental center, surrounded by forest. This little library is next to a very pretty little artificial pond with a bench next to it. We saw a turtle swimming in the pond and we saw two frogs:

Here is what Shaver’s Creek looks like—the world surrounding this particular library:

Finally, a little library my brother’s friend Maya sent to my brother Max and my brother Max sent to me when I was on my way back to Massachusetts. I love its long shape and asymmetrical roof:

The plane ride back to Massachusetts was the most beautiful and the most bittersweet of recent memory. Here are my views on the way home:

The Free Book Cycle, Crayons, and Answering Reader Discussion Questions for Don’t Look Behind You by Lois Duncan

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As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This blog post includes links with my Amazon referral code. If you click one and buy something, I get about 4% of the price as commission. You don’t have to buy these things from Amazon—actually, you don’t have to buy these things at all. You can also support me by buying merch of my art, by buying me a campground store decaf coffee, or by simply reading and enjoying. Thank you!

I blogged previously about my love for our neighborhood’s little libraries. If you are like me, and you ever feel lonely or disconnected, then maybe you, like me, could benefit from buying and donating your favorite books as a valued part of a good de-lonelying. You get to experience the fun of shopping, the anticipation and thrill of getting books in the mail and finally holding them in your hands, maybe the comfortable adventure of rereading a favorite story, a lot of nice walks with a nice destination, and finally the hope that you’ve given a favorite piece of yourself to someone else who really loves it and that that part of you might be out there making the world better for them. If you can afford it (and it’s cheaper than you might expect), I recommend it.

This time, I also bought a big pack of crayon boxes, because I love crayons and I think I would have loved to find a box of crayons as a child, especially alongside a great book, and I wrote little notes in the books and in the crayon boxes, including a favorite inspirational Neil Gaiman quote.

As much as I give I apparently also take. Here is our добыча from Salem’s Free Book Day on April 10th. All or at least the vast majority of these books will, of course, eventually make their way back into the free book ecosystem.

So far, I have read Finlay Donovan Is Killing It, which is about a writer writing fiction about (and definitely not engaging in, certainly not for substantial supplemental income, and absolutely not as research for her next book) murder for hire; The Messy Middle, which is not about murder for hire but is about working through the middle of any other kind of long and difficult project (something like, perhaps, a PhD); and My Name Is Awesome, which is about naming things and is really more of a pamphlet. My partner Cory is reading Company of Liars. Happiness, happiness, happiness.

One of the books I bought for my little library donations was a favorite from a previous life, Don’t Look Behind You by Lois Duncan, which is a fictional suspense story about a family that goes into witness protection. Growing up I really, really, really loved anything and everything by Lois Duncan. I still remember the exact shelf in my middle school library where Lois Duncan’s books lived. I checked that shelf every time I got to go to the library to see if there were new-to-me books that had previously been checked out. Whenever I did get a new Lois Duncan book I remember not being able to sleep until I was done reading—by flashlight under the covers (worth the vision loss? maybe), promising my dad every time he noticed the light under the door that I’m of course going to sleep (absolutely not, but worth the sleep loss, I think). It was delightful to reread.

When I finish a book I enjoyed I usually read through to the acknowledgements and, if it’s a teen book, the reader discussion questions. Just for fun, just this once, I decided to actually answer them.

1. Until April was called out of class, she didn’t know how much trouble her dad was mixed up in. Do you ever wonder if your parents are hiding secrets from you?

What an odd question to ask your middle school English class: “Children, are any of your parents secretly tied up in anything suspicious? Maybe an international drug cartel? Please, speak clearly and slowly into this microphone.”

(And no, I don’t. But I also believe that if my parents do keep secrets from me it is healthy and okay, because we’re all adults and we are all allowed our own private (non-crime-related) lives.)

Discussion questions are off to a weird start.

2. Is April’s life back home really as perfect as she makes it sound? Explain.

April has a boyfriend, a nice house, a sport she is both good at and deeply invested in (a helpful combination, to be both good at something and interested in it), friends, and a family that loves her. That sounds great. I think that’s a nice life.

3. Lorelei and April’s mom are very different. Do you know people who are very different from their parents? In what ways are you different from your parents?

I really enjoy stories about women in a family, especially women from multiple generations of a family. There is so much that goes into a multigenerational family relationship—your expectations of each other through the different stages of life as each of you changes, how that relationship changes into adulthood and old age, the childhood scars and fears that each person brings in, the unexpected things that bring you closer or farther apart. I love how Meg Wolitzer explores family and friend relationships over time, especially in The Position and The Interestings, and I really like Gilmore Girls for the same reason. The first time I watched Gilmore Girls I was closer to Rory’s age; Rory was my main character and her relationship with Lorelai was the most interesting part of the story to me. Now that I’m closer to Lorelai’s age, Lorelai has become my main character and her relationship with Emily and her professional growth are the most interesting parts of the story to me. I wonder how my experience of the show will change if I rewatch Gilmore Girls again in the future, maybe when I hopefully someday have my own kids.

My mom, my maternal grandmother, and I all have the same voice—I guess it is passed down on the maternal line. My grandmother is a bit more high-pitched (she sometimes sets of fax machines), but all three of us have very expressive voices that can’t be distinguished from each other over the phone. Otherwise the three of us are all very different, and those differences are magnified by us having lived through very different times and experiences and having grown up in different cultures. Exactly as we should be. I think we complement each other well.

4. When April listened in on Max’s call to Jim about the threatening letter her dad received, she decided not to tell her mom. Did she do the right thing? Why or why not?

I definitely think that in a scary story it is generally very important to the protagonists’ survival that they openly and immediately communicate all scary-story-relevant information. So no, not the right thing.

5. April complains that her family’s time at the hotel with Jim is boring. What would you do if you were stuck in that situation? Would you be bored watching TV all day, with no friends to talk to?

This was a very interesting book to read at this time. In the book, April is trapped indoors by the witness protection program. In the real world, we’ve been isolated and to varying extents removed from our lives by the pandemic. (I’m not sure which sounds more fictional.) Based on the past year, I know that I would watch a lot of TV but that I would not watch TV all day. I would probably spend more time on the balcony, or whatever outdoors I could reach. I would get more books (clearly) and spend as much time as I could with them—and maybe some plants, too. I would miss my friends and family a lot.

6. Since she was quite happy with her old life, April is reluctant to start a new life in the Witness Security Program.
Other people might find it exciting to start with a clean slate. Have you ever fantasized about starting fresh in a place where no one knows you? If you could reinvent yourself, what would you change? Where would you move?

I, like April, have a lot invested in my current life and have worked hard to build many things that I care about—I wouldn’t want to start over. A change sounds appealing, but not a clean slate, except perhaps the kind of clean slate that comes from finishing projects and getting to start new things that I currently can’t even imagine. I do think it would be fun to do something new—not too new, but a little new, having finished previous projects to my satisfaction and taken some time to read and think. That kind of clean slate sounds nice.

7. If one of your friends disappeared without warning with her entire family, what would you do?

I would assume that my friend got deported. I tend assume that my friends are not going to be deported, but I have been wrong in the past. It is very sad when something like this happens.

8. When Larry first invites April to the movies, she’s worried about being faithful to Steve and doesn’t want to go on a date. Later she finds out that Steve hasn’t waited for her. Taking the situation into account, would you wait for April if you were in Steve’s shoes? How long could you wait without even knowing what happened to her?

I’m not in high school, and my partner is my partner of almost a decade—if he disappeared to go into witness protection and I did not even know where he disappeared to, my world would crumble. For that reason I imagine we would disappear together, though I also wouldn’t want to leave my family so maybe we could bring them too.

If I were me from high school and my boyfriend of perhaps several months moved across the country without saying goodbye, I don’t know that I would look too far past the surface of the situation. Boyfriends move, and while a cross-country move is a lot to hide, sometimes people hide things they aren’t thrilled about. I would be upset but, in high school and as my high school self, I’d probably move on quickly.

9. April really loves playing tennis, and her skill is a big part of her self-image, so she takes it hard when she finds out she can’t play on the team. What interests, hobbies and talents do you think define you as a person? What would you be unwilling to give up in a similar situation? Are there certain things that are so important you could never sacrifice them?

I think any means of creative expression, especially one you are good enough at that you are reliably able to commit a piece of yourself to it and feel truly seen by other people through it, becomes an important part of the self. I can’t imagine tennis being that kind of expression for me, but I do not play tennis. I am especially sympathetic to April’s mom, who had built a writing career she was proud of and now couldn’t write, not even under a pen name.

10. When April presses her dad for the reason he put the family in danger, he says, “The real truth is, I wanted to be a hero” (p. 120). He explains that he’s never felt important in his life, and this was his big chance. Do most people want a chance to be heroes at least once in their lives? Why or why not?

I think everyone wants to feel that they’ve made a positive impact in the world, preferably in some way that is personal and validating. This scene was a very valuable part of the novel. I don’t know that I would have sympathized with April’s father without it.

I think this question ties in to the previous question. To April, her legacy was tennis. To April’s mom, her legacy was her writing. To April’s dad, his legacy was what forced the family into witness protection. No one got to keep their legacy except April’s dad, and living his legacy stripped the rest of his family of theirs. That’s not how it should be—families should support each individual’s independent life and work and whatever mechanism they’ve found for sharing themselves with the world.

11. At the end of the book, April seems to come to terms with her new life. What would you miss most if you had to start over? Who would you most want to be able to see again?

At some point in The Messy Middle (from my Salem book haul) the author says that we should value our projects and jobs and situations and the people around us not only by how much we want them now, but by how much we would want them and fight to get them back if we lost them. For me, that’s a lot.

I would miss my friends and my family the most. I would miss my home—both Cambridge and central Pennsylvania. There is something very comforting in the particular plants I’m used to seeing around me, and in the clouds and the rain and the hills and the forests. I don’t think I could comfortably live for very long in a desert or in a warmer climate or in a very different part of the world. I don’t think I could live at all without my family or my partner.

And of course I would miss the life I’ve built for myself and the hope I have for it. I would miss all the little parallel tracks I’ve built, and I would always wonder where they would have led if I’d gotten to stick around to see them.

—But I don’t have to miss it, any of it. It’s all mine.

To end, an inspirational reminder to myself and to anyone else reading this, because art is important and uplifting from both the receiving and the creating side of it—