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ATTENTION: are you having trouble with macro and closeup shots on your smartphone?
The 3 Biggest Mistakes When Taking Closeup and Macro shots with Your Smartphone
Smartphone Macro Photography Now Made Easy
Terrance Roman - Author and Smartphone Photography Guru
Imagine never taking another terrible closeup or macro photo with your smartphone.
I have a goal, one that involves you. You see, I really hate terrible photos. And I hate them with a passion. But the problem is that terrible photos are everywhere. In online photo sharing sites. In the media, whether in print or on the web. In your friend's photos from their last trip to someplace cool. And there are also terrible photos that you've taken.
Don't bother denying it. I know you do.
But that's ok. So do I. I have plenty of horrible shots.
That's because nobody only takes great shots all of the time. Every photographer, whether a pro or amateur or hobbyist; an adult or teen or senior; and every other person will take bad shots. That's no surprise.
But are most of your shots bad?
Maybe they are. There are many people who take consistently horrible shots. If that's you, I have something to tell you. It's not your fault.
At least, not completely. While you are the person pressing the button and getting the terrible photo, that's happening for one reason. You were never taught how to take a good shot.
But that's normal. Photography isn't taught to everyone growing up. When I got into it, most of my photos were terrible. But it's a different story now. Only some of my photos suck now(ha ha!). But I do have a lot of good ones.
But that change didn't happen overnight for me. GETTING GOOD AT PHOTOGRAPHY CAN TAKE A LONG TIME.
There are several routes that you can take to get good at photography. Let me tell you what the best ones are.
But before I do, you need to know something about this page.
This site is dedicated to macro and closeup photography on smartphones.
While I've become quite accomplished with DSLRs, point and shoots, as well as smartphones for various types of photography, I've dedicated this site to one of my favourite type of photography - macro and closeup on a smartphone.
The main reason I've done this is that there are many, many books on general photography. But I couldn't find any good resources on just macro and closeup when I was learning, and certainly not one dedicated to smartphones.
So my goal is simple.
When I'm done teaching you, you'll be taking amazing macro and closeup shots with your phone.
Can you picture yourself taking stunning macro and closeup photos in the next few days, or even HOURS? Keep reading and I'm going to show you how easy it is to start taking great shots on your smartphone. And you don't need to have the best smartphone or the greatest gear.
You're going to learn that the right technique will get you most of the way there.
Let's start with how most people get better.
3 Typical Ways To Get Better at Photography
I'm going to cover the traditional routes that you can take to improve your photography skills.
You may be thinking to yourself "Don't I just take photos and get better over time"? Well, while I would encourage you taking lots and lots of photos, my short answer is no. That strategy will not work well for you.
But don't worry. I'll explain why further below.
Remember though, while these strategies may be obvious, I've cover the benefits and drawbacks of each that may be less that apparent. Specifically as it relates to closeup and macro shots on your smartphone.
The most common approach you could take to improve your photography skills is to use good ol' Trial and Error.
On the surface, you might think this is just what I mentioned earlier. Just take lots of photos and you'll magically get better. Sounds good to me!
Sadly, it doesn't usually work that way. The act of just taking more photos doesn't necessarily make you a better photographer.
In fact, if you're reading this now, I'll bet you've taken lots of photos but your skill isn't where you want it at.
And that's common for most, if not all people. The problem is that order to improve, a few things really need to happen. You will need to:
- recognize what went well in a photo,
- why that aspect went well,
- what went wrong in a photo, and
- why that aspect went wrong. THEN, you'll need to adjust something from the "wrong" group and see if that improves it
I'm guess that you normally don't think of most of these points when taking a photo, right?
That's ok. Who the heck does?
Actually, I do. And so do a lot of accomplished photographers. But it is hard work. You will need to commit to a lot of effort and getting bad shots until you find the "ah ha" moment and start getting good shots.
But all of this is best done through a methodical process.
There are a couple key benefits to this method. First, it's free! Yes, that's right. You can start being methodical about your photography right now and not have to spend a dime.
Second, I think you'll learn the lesson very well. In my experience, spending time and effort to figure something out usually goes a long way to ensuring you really understand it and never forgetting the lesson.
But there are a few huge drawbacks as well.
First, it is VERY TIME CONSUMING. And I mean VERY. Expect to spend many, many hours over the course of weeks and months really get to a decent level. I know this as I've gone through it (and still do).
And the second issue is, you are limited to your biases. And I don't mean you're biased to people or anything mean. What I'm saying is that you are more likely to overlook areas for development or techniques because you don't know what you don't, and you have your own unique way of looking at things.
There are huge advantages to learning from other sources as people look at things differently that you may have never considered.
To help you, I'm going to show you how to get better much faster, and expose you to techniques you probably wouldn't have considered.
The next best method to getting better is to read instructional photography books. Sounds pretty simple, and frankly I read lots of them. I've learned a significant amount from an assortment of books and magazines, and will continue to read.
But the important point with this approach is you just can't read the book and you're magically better.
What you need to do is put what you're ready into practice. And you'll want to do that soon after you've learned a technique that will be helpful.
There are two reasons to put the technique to the test right away. Firstly, some techniques are not simple. You may need to spend time practicing it to get it right, otherwise you could screw it up when you really need it.
The second reason is that human memory isn't perfect. Even if the technique you read is easy, you'll likely forget about it when you need. However, if you practice it several times first, you're more like to remember to use it later on.
From my point of view, one of the biggest benefits from reading photography books is that you get another photographer's perspective and can learn from their ideas. Different people will have different ways of doing things, and they can often inspire you.
The other large benefit is that there are many, many books on photography. If you like the subject in general, then you will have no shortage of material to look at for a long time,
But the biggest downfall for what you want to learn is...THERE are no books on your topic.
If you want to learn macro and closeup techniques for a smartphone, there are books available.
At least none that I could find. And I looked hard because that's what I wanted to learn.
What you will need to do is what I already did. Read some books on macro and closeup photography (which are generally DSLR specific), then read some smartphone photography books (which are general), and THEN you will need to figure out how to merge the two bodies of knowledge.
Which leads to the second big disadvantage - this is all very time consuming. Having to read lots of material and figure out how it integrates takes time and is a strain on the body and mind. I've gone through it, and I don't like it.
Taking lessons from a professional is another way to go. And I've taken a few courses from professionals and have to say they can be well worth the time.
Professionals make a living from photography and will know the ins and outs of a lot of aspects of the art.
If you life in a larger city there should be lots of options for you, but in smaller towns it may be harder to find pros who teach.
The big benefit is that you will get direct instruction in a class room setting. You've be able to see exactly how to do the technique, but more importantly can ask questions on how it was done. And most pros will explain why you need to a technique a certain way.
As good as pros are, they are very expensive. I live in a city with millions of people, and a good photography course will cost $250-300 for 6 weeks, 1 hour per week.
I don't think pros will teach closeup and macro courses for smartphones.
Most pros are DSLR centric, so you may not find what you need.
But that's ok. I'll show you everything you need to know about closeup and macro photos on your smartphone.
The 3 Mistakes Your Making
With Closeup and Macro Smartphone Photography
The fact that you're reading this site tells me that you've make some mistakes with your closeup and macro shots. But what many people find difficult is understanding what those mistake are.
Believe me that in order to get better, you need to come to understand what mistakes your making so you can correct them.
I've compiled some of the most common mistakes you could be making.
Poor Exposure
The most common and critical mistake many budding photographers make is not properly using and/or manipulating light.
Light is the most critical element of all photos. Without light, you wouldn't have a picture, just blackness.
The one area you need to learn and get very good at is exposure. Exposure is all about capturing the right amount of light in a photograph. Too little light (like this example of my cat's eye), and you can't see the details very well.
Too much light on parts of the image get washed away.
PAY ATTENTION TO HOW MUCH LIGHT IS ON YOUR SUBJECT. Make adjustments to as needed.
Blurry Image
Another common mistake many people learning photography make is having an image that's blurry.
A blurry image can have great exposure and composition, but you still end up with a blur which makes the image unclear.
This is especially true in macro photography, where there's a higher chance to get a blurry image.
There can be a lot of reasons why your shots are uninteresting. But the core reason is often related to composition.
Composition is essentially how you place the subject and other elements with in the frame of the photograph.
While that sounds pretty straight forward, it isn't.
Remember that in photography you are artist, and as an artist you need to tell a story with your image. And while the subject, foreground, background, and all other elements play a role in that, it is truly the composition of all of them in the shot that gets the true story across.
If you're wondering how to put these ideas into practice, don't worry. For most of them there are a lot of different ways to fix the underlying problems.
Let me show you how to put these ideas, and more, into practice.
And when you start using my instructions, you'll find that you'll be taking significantly better closeup and macro photos on your smartphone immediately.
You may wondering HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?
Well, it's simple.
Most people take the traditional route of getting better. I've outlined those above (trial and error, reading, and professional lessons).
However, EVEN when you take any or all of those routes, it's still going to take time to improve. But once you're there, you'll start to develop the shortcuts to taking great shots.
I'll show you those shortcuts to awesome closeup and macro smartphone photos.
That will allow you to bypass the long, frustrating phase of taking what you learned and finding out the best way to apply it.
I've been through that before, and I don't want you to suffer through it.
Personally, I can be an impatient person.
I like to learn how to do things in the fastest, simplest way. So that's how I developed these photography techniques.
And that's exactly what I'm going to pass on to you.
BUT, do you want something you WON'T FIND ANYWHERE ELSE?
At the core of what you're about to learn is a very simple, easy to learn secret. But it's the simplicity that makes it so powerful. It's used by Fortune 500 companies, the most successful tech firms, and by now I've applied it to photography. And that secret is to
Use the same process when taking photos.
Sounds dead simple, right? It is. But how does it help photography?
Simple. By repeating the EXACT SAME STEPS in creating a macro or closeup photo with your smartphone, you'll skyrocket the number of great shots that you take.
Of course, this depends on one important aspect. That the steps you're taking will lead to a good shot.
For me, it took many months and fruitless photo sessions until I FINALLY NAILED THE PROCESS. And that's I documented it to create a repeatable process.
Of course, anyone could do this.
Which begs the question, why isn't everyone doing this?
I struggled with this question for some time. I knew that everyone gets some good shots here and there, so why not follow the same process that worked for those shots they took?
Then two things dawned on me.
First, most photography enthusiasts probably don't take CAREFUL NOTES as to HOW they take their shots. SO when one was successful they didn't realize why, but were just happy that it was good.
And second, most people don't have an analytical background. I have a background in the financial sector in a role that deals with strict processes. And in my environment, when things go wrong, people lose money and people get fired. So I'm trained to be thorough.
By using these skills, I developed a comprehensive 10-Step system to ensure that I take excellent shots.
Here's How To Get Started
Access to these lessons have sold for as much as $46.99. And that's a bargain.
But if you take advantage of this opportunity today to finally take exceptional closeup and macro photos with your smartphone, you will get 40% OFF.
Ultimate Smartphone Close-up and Macro Guide
With this eBook you'll be able to very quickly learn how take incredible closeup and macro shots on your smartphone, using the 10-Step system to create consistently phenomenal shots rather than taking occasional good shots by dumb luck. By following these easy-to-follow steps, you'll see consistent results and reduce amount of wasted time and virtually eliminate the stress that comes with it.
Your ebook will include:
- Equipment Overview - a breakdown of the various gear available, what they do, and what you'll typically need
- Introduction - to macro and closeup photography and smartphone camera basics
- 10-Step System - follow these simple 10 steps to getting awesome closeup and macro shots with your smartphone
- Composition - take your shot from boring to inspiring with these secrets to composing your shot
- Stability - get ride of blurry images with an assortment of tricks to keep that camera stable - even WITHOUT a tripdo
- Exposure - advanced techniques to ensure you never over or under exposure your photos again
- Lighting - find out the secrets that pros having been using for decades, but don't know you to know
- Artistic - the less taught skill and most closely guarded, you'll soon be taking photos with more meaning and emotion
- Staging - become the "illusionist" when you master the art of staging photos to get the 1-in-a-million look you want
- Effects - explore new ways to create the hard to get effects that other photographers seem to "luck into"
Remember, this entire program is a simple to follow program that guarantees you will get better.
All you need to do is start reading the eBook and follow along. It's that simple.
You won't need to spend hours and hours reading general photography books, wondering how to use the techniques for closeup and macro shots on smartphones.
And you won't need to spend $300.00 to $400.00 or more on expensive lessons with pros.
And YOU CAN START RIGHT AWAY.
Immediate Access on Any Device!
Because this product isn in PDF, you can download the eBook immediately and begin reading on any device, anywhere, and at anytime. That means you avoid outrageous shipping fees and import duties (for international buyers). So you can learn when and where you want, on any device that reads PDFs:
- Computers - Mac or PC, desktop or laptops, etc.
- Mobile phones - iPhone, HTC, Samsung Galaxy, etc.
- Tablets - iPad, HTC Nexus, Microsoft Surface, Samsung Note, etc.
This guide will show you the proven steps, advanced techniques, and must know tricks to taking stunning macro and closeup shots, time and time again and with ease, on your smartphone.
This course is the product of my pain. After having gone through so much to finally take decent macro shots, I realized I'd like to help others avoid the frustration that I've endured.
Before I made this, I'd looked at many macro and closeup photography products out there and they're either very general, very complicated, or just plain unhelpful.
I created this eBook to fill the gap of what you really need.
Bonus Material
As an aded bonus, I'm throwing in some additional eBooks for you when you order today.
These books will make life a lot easier for you, allowing you to get better much faster, and to save money rather than buying expensive accessories.
Six Secrets to Instantly Better Macro Shots
The guide for those who want it now!
While this guide alone will not make you a master, this will certainly show you how to quickly and very easily improve your macro and close-up shots. The results will be significantly better shots, all with techniques you can use minutes after your download the guide.
Value: $7.99
Make Your Own Gear
This guide is dedicated to those do-it-yourself types and people wanting to save funds.
You'll learn to bypass the smartphone photography gear purchases and find out how to make a lot of your own equipment with items you may have around your home.
If you make the gear in this eBook vs. buying, I expect you will save $50-100. Now that's a deal!
Value: $6.99
Lesson Plans
This plan covers 13 Lessons that you should complete from end-to-end (especially for a beginner).
It's designed to develop your skills including the basics of taking a great macro or close-up shot; dealing with more complicated topics like lighting and composition; helping you develop your own style and/or theme to your photographs; and more.
Unlike the other sections of most of my eBooks, this will take effort on your side to get to expert level.
You will receive all of the following:
- Ultimate Smartphone Closeup and Macro Guide - Valued at $46.99
- Six Secrets to Instantly Better Macro Shots - Valued at $7.99
- Make Your Own Gear Guide - - Valued at $6.99
- Lesson Plans - - Valued at $4.99
This is a $66.96 value.
60-Day Money Back Guarantee
My guarantee is pretty simple. If you're not taking better macro and close-up photos with your smartphone within 60 days of buying the eBooks, then you will get a 100% refund. Period.
You don't need a specific reason and I won't say no.
The reason I offer this is that I don't want to be known for selling something that didn't help people achieve their goals. So the risk is on me to make a good product!
So download the eBooks now and give it a shot. If within 60 days your macro and close-up shots on your smartphone aren't significantly improved, you have nothing to lose.
Your photos will be stunning! Fully guaranteed.
I'd say it's a no-brainer, wouldn't you?
Once you learn these techniques, your photos will skyrocket to the next level.
Get started now with an instant download, all for the low price of:
Your eBook will be available for instant download after payment
From the author
Hi! My name is Terrance and I'm the author of these eBooks. I hope you like what you're reading so far and that smartphone photography is as much fun for you as it is for me.
If you're really keen on getting really good at taking closeup and macro shots on our smartphone, then I'm confident these eBooks will help you.
I've spent over 15 years learning how to perfect these types of shots. And now you can learn the easy way.
Remember, if you don't like the eBooks in anyway, you can get a full refund. I won't take offence and I won't say no. In fact, all transactions are processed through ClickBank, one of the leaders in Digital Informational Product sales.
I look forward to seeing your amazing shots!
Terrance Author
This truly is a speedy course.
The eBooks are beautifully designed for a pleasant reading experience, and not a harsh, ugly Word document layout so many other authors use.
I've avoided being too "wordy". We both know I'm not writing a piece of literature. It's an eBooks for you to learn from as fast as possible.
The design makes it very easy to read and very quick to scan through. So no need to read through pages and pages of dry text to get what you want!
Your eBook will be available for instant download after payment
Gallery of Photos Taken With These Techniques
Take your smartphone macro and closeup abilities into the next level.
Remember - you have nothing to lose. If you're not happy with the product, get a full refund.
But you have lots to gain.
- Overall better quality of your macro and close-up photos - you will feel more pride
- Less frustration and stress - and you take those great shots much quicker
- A sense of great accomplishment - as you explore new boundaries previously unexplored by you
Be BOLD and TAKE ACTION NOW.
Your eBook will be available for instant download after payment
Frequently Asked Questions
"You don't take a photograph, you make it."- Ansel Adams
"What I like about photos is that they capture a moment that's gone forever, impossible to reproduce."- Karl Lagerfeld
Do I need any special software on my smartphone to take great photos?
The simple answer is no. All you need is the basic camera app that your phone came with and you can do most, if not all, of the shots you will read about.
Of course, there are many free and paid for apps that you can get for your iOS, Android, and BB OS phones that will allow you take more control and do more editing. You don't need them, but I recommend you try at least some of the free ones out there are there are some nice effects you can get.
In most cases, I have not done any processing to the photos. However, there are a few shots where I did some processing on the phone. However, there are only a few of those.
I did not do any processing in software outside of the phone (i.e. no Photoshop, LightRoom, MS Paint, etc.). Everything was on the phone.
How much time will I need to get better?
That is solely to you. But I am sure that even by using any of the 6 Secrets to Better Shots, you will instantly get better results.
Of course, as you work your way through the entire manual including my 10-Step Process and my 13 Lessons, you will be taking amazing shots!
Is this program suited for someone with no knowledge of close-up and macro ability?
Absolutely yes. I made these eBooks for people with no to moderate knowledge in macro and closeup photography. You need no previous experience outside of generally knowing how to use your smartphone camera.
Is this program suited for advanced smart phone photographers?
If you're an advanced smartphone photographer but don't do much close-up and/or macro shots, then you will learn from these eBooks.
However, if you are a pro at this stuff and take macro shots with your smart phone all then time, then you would be hard-pressed to justify buying this. Unless you are looking for more reference material, I'd suggest you stick with what you know.
What if I just don't get any better?
Then the book is FREE!
As my guarantee states, if you don't get any better after you have gone through my program, you can simply request a refund within 60 days of your purchase and we will refund you with no hassles! (We may ask why you didn't like it, but that's just so I can improve the book for version 2).
What smartphones will this work with?
This will work with ANY smartphone!
Where you have an Apple, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, LG, or even a Windows phone, as long as it has a camera, these techniques will work!
Your eBook will be available for instant download after payment
How About a SNEAK PEAK?
$7 will get you Immediate Access to my Closeup and Macro Smartphone Guide for a MONTH LONG TRIAL.
Why not let the Ultimate Smartphone Closeup and Macro Guide proves it's value to you?
For just $7, you'll get full access to the entire program and all the bonus material for one month. You'll be able to review all the techniques and start using them to improve your smartphone closeup and macro photography.
You'll be able to accelerate your skills, saving you weeks and months of reading, trial and error, and of course expensive lessons.
After a month, your credit card will be charged one final payment of $20, giving you life time access to the Ultimate Smartphone Closeup and Macro Guide, as well as access to all the program's updates. We'll send you a reminder email and if you won't want to keep the program, just let us know.
That's it.
Remember, you risk nothing by giving the Ultimate Smartphone Closeup and Macro guide a try. If you're not delighted with the results you get, just send us an email and you'll get a full refund - including the $7 you invest today to try my program out.
YES! I want to try out the Ultimate Smartphone Closeup and Macro guide for just $7.
Your initial charge will be $7, then the remaining $20 will be charged after 30 days.
Your eBook will be available for instant download after payment


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by Alix E. Harrow on Feb 6, 2018 in Short Fiction | 62 comments
4,900 Words
Nebula Award nominee (Best Short Story)
Hugo Award Winner (Best Short Story)
2018 Apex Magazine Story of the Year Winner
Eugie Award Finalist
WSFA Award Finalist
Locus Award Finalist
You'd think it would make us happy when a kid checks out the same book a zillion times in a row, but actually it just keeps us up at night.
The Runaway Prince is one of those low-budget young adult fantasies from the mid-nineties, before J.K. Rowling arrived to tell everyone that magic was cool, printed on brittle yellow paper. It's about a lonely boy who runs away and discovers a Magical Portal into another world where he has Medieval Adventures, but honestly there are so many typos most people give up before he even finds the portal.
Not this kid, though. He pulled it off the shelf and sat cross-legged in the juvenile fiction section with his grimy red backpack clutched to his chest. He didn't move for hours. Other patrons were forced to double-back in the aisle, shooting suspicious, you-don't-belong-here looks behind them as if wondering what a skinny black teenager was really up to while pretending to read a fantasy book. He ignored them.
The books above him rustled and quivered; that kind of attention flatters them.
He took The Runaway Prince home and renewed it twice online, at which point a gray pop-up box that looks like an emissary from 1995 tells you, "the renewal limit for this item has been reached." You can almost feel the disapproving eyes of a librarian glaring at you through the screen.
(There have only ever been two kinds of librarians in the history of the world: the prudish, bitter ones with lipstick running into the cracks around their lips who believe the books are their personal property and patrons are dangerous delinquents come to steal them; and witches).
Our late fee is twenty-five cents per day or a can of non-perishable food during the summer food drive. By the time the boy finally slid The Runaway Prince into the return slot, he owed $4.75. I didn't have to swipe his card to know; any good librarian (of the second kind) ought to be able to tell you the exact dollar amount of a patron's bill just by the angle of their shoulders.
"What'd you think?" I used my this-is-a-secret-between-us-pals voice, which works on teenagers about sixteen percent of the time.
He shrugged. It has a lower success rate with black teenagers, because this is the rural South and they aren't stupid enough to trust thirty-something white ladies no matter how many tattoos we have.
"Didn't finish it, huh?" I knew he'd finished it at least four times by the warm, well-oiled feel of the pages.
"Yeah, I did." His eyes flicked up. They were smoke-colored and long-lashed, with an achy, faraway expression, as if he knew there was something gleaming and forbidden just beneath the dull surfaces of things that he could never quite touch. They were the kinds of eyes that had belonged to sorcerers or soothsayers, in different times. "The ending sucked."
In the end, the Runaway Prince leaves Medieval Adventureland and closes the portal behind him before returning home to his family. It was supposed to be a happy ending.
Which kind of tells you all you need to know about this kid's life, doesn't it?
He left without checking anything else out.
GARRISON, ALLEN B—THE TAVALARRIAN CHRONICLES—v. I-XVI—F GAR 1976
He returned four days later, sloping past a bright blue display titled THIS SUMMER, DIVE INTO READING! (who knows where they were supposed to swim; Ulysses County's lone public pool had been filled with cement in the sixties rather than desegregate).
Because I am a librarian of the second sort, I almost always know what kind of book a person wants. It's like a very particular smell rising off them which is instantly recognizable as Murder mystery or Political biography or Something kind of trashy but ultimately life-affirming, preferably with lesbians.
I do my best to give people the books they need most. In grad school, they called it "ensuring readers have access to texts/materials that are engaging and emotionally rewarding," and in my other kind of schooling, they called it "divining the unfilled spaces in their souls and filling them with stories and starshine," but it comes to the same thing.
I don't bother with the people who have call numbers scribbled on their palms and titles rattling around in their skulls like bingo cards. They don't need me. And you really can't do anything for the people who only read Award-Winning Literature, who wear elbow patches and equate the popularity of Twilight with the death of the American intellect; their hearts are too closed-up for the new or secret or undiscovered.
So, it's only a certain kind of patron I pay attention to. The kind that let their eyes feather across the titles like trailing fingertips, heads cocked, with book-hunger rising off them like heatwaves from July pavement. The books bask in it, of course, even the really hopeless cases that haven't been checked out since 1958 (there aren't many of these; me and Agnes take turns carting home outdated astronomy textbooks that still think Pluto is a planet and cookbooks that call for lard, just to keep their spirits up). I choose one or two books and let their spines gleam and glimmer in the twilit stacks. People reach towards them without quite knowing why.
The boy with the red backpack wasn't an experienced aisle-wanderer. He prowled, moving too quickly to read the titles, hands hanging empty and uncertain at his sides. The sewing and pattern books (646.2) noted that his jeans were unlaundered and too small, and the neck of his t-shirt was stained grayish-yellow. The cookbooks (641.5) diagnosed a diet of frozen waffles and gas-station pizza. They tssked to themselves.
I sat at the circulation desk, running returns beneath the blinky red scanner light, and breathed him in. I was expecting something like generic Arthurian retelling or maybe teen romance with sword-fighting, but instead I found a howling, clamoring mess of need.
He smelled of a thousand secret worlds, of rabbit-holes and hidden doorways and platforms nine-and-three-quarters, of Wonderland and Oz and Narnia, of anyplace-but-here. He smelled of yearning.
God save me from the yearners. The insatiable, the inconsolable, the ones who chafe and claw against the edges of the world. No book can save them.
(That's a lie. There are Books potent enough to save any mortal soul: books of witchery, augury, alchemy; books with wand-wood in their spines and moon-dust on their pages; books older than stones and wily as dragons. We give people the books they need most, except when we don't.)
I sent him a '70s sword-and-sorcery series because it was total junk food and he needed fattening up, and because I hoped sixteen volumes might act as a sort of ballast and keep his keening soul from rising away into the ether. I let Le Guin shimmer at him, too, because he reminded me a bit of Ged (feral; full of longing).
I ignored The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, jostling importantly on its shelf; this was a kid who wanted to go through the wardrobe and never, ever come back.
Once you make it past book four of the Tavalarrian Chronicles, you're committed at least through book fourteen when the true Sword of Tavalar is revealed and the young farm-boy ascends to his rightful throne. The boy with the red backpack showed up every week or so all summer for the next installment.
I snuck in a few others (all pretty old, all pretty white; our branch director is one of those pinch-lipped Baptists who thinks fantasy books teach kids about Devil worship, so roughly 90% of my collection requests are mysteriously denied): A Wrinkle in Time came back with the furtive, jammed-in-a-backpack scent that meant he liked it but thought it was too young for him; Watership Down was offended because he never got past the first ten pages, but I guess footnotes about rabbit-math aren't for everyone; and The Golden Compass had the flashlight-smell of 3:00 a.m. on its final chapter and was unbearably smug about it. I'd just gotten an inter-library-loaned copy of Akata Witch—when he stopped coming.
Our display (GET READ-Y FOR SCHOOL!) was filled with SAT prep kits and over-sized yellow For Dummies books. Agnes had cut out blobby construction-paper leaves and taped them to the front doors. Lots of kids stop hanging around the library when school starts up, with all its clubs and teams.
I worried anyway. I could feel the Book I hadn't given him like a wrong note or a missing tooth, a magnetic absence. Just when I was seriously considering calling Ulysses County High School with a made-up story about an un-returned CD, he came back.
For the first time, there was someone else with him: A squat white woman with a plastic name-tag and the kind of squarish perm you can only get in Southern beauty salons with faded glamor-shots in the windows. The boy trailed behind her looking thin and pressed, like a flower crushed between dictionary pages. I wondered how badly you had to fuck up to get assigned a school counselor after hours, until I read her name-tag: Department of Community-Based Services, Division of Protection and Permanency, Child Caseworker (II).
Oh. A foster kid.
The woman marched him through the nonfiction stacks (the travel guides sighed as she passed, muttering about overwork and recommending vacations to sunny, faraway beaches) and stopped in the 616s. "Here, why don't we have a look at these?"
Predictable, sullen silence from the boy.
A person who works with foster kids sixty hours a week is unfazed by sullenness. She slid titles off the shelf and stacked them in the boy's arms. "We talked about this, remember? We decided you might like to read something practical, something helpful?"
Dealing with Depression (616.81 WHI 1998). Beating the Blues: Five Steps to Feeling Normal Again! (616.822 TRE 2011). Chicken Soup for the Depressed Soul (616.9 CAN). The books greeted him in soothing, syrupy voices.
The boy stayed silent. "Look. I know you'd rather read about dragons and, uh, elves," oh, Tolkien, you have so much to account for, "but sometimes we've got to face our problems head-on, rather than running away from them."
What bullshit. I was in the back room running scratched DVDs through the disc repair machine, so the only person to hear me swear was Agnes. She gave me her patented over-the-glasses shame-on-you look which, when properly deployed, can reduce noisy patrons to piles of ash or pillars of salt (Agnes is a librarian of the second kind, too).
But seriously. Anyone could see that kid needed to run and keep running until he shed his own skin, until he clawed out of the choking darkness and unfurled his wings, precious and prisming in the light of some other world.
His caseworker was one of those people who say the word "escapism" as if it's a moral failing, a regrettable hobby, a mental-health diagnosis. As if escape is not, in itself, one of the highest order of magics they'll ever see in their miserable mortal lives, right up there with true love and prophetic dreams and fireflies blinking in synchrony on a June evening.
The boy and his keeper were winding back through the aisles toward the front desk. The boy's shoulders were curled inward, as if he chafed against invisible walls on either side.
As he passed the juvenile fiction section, a cheap paperback flung itself off the return cart and thudded into his kneecap. He picked it up and rubbed his thumb softly over the title. The Runaway Prince purred at him.
He smiled. I thanked the library cart, silently.
There was a long, familiar sigh behind me. I turned to see Agnes watching me from the circulation desk, aquamarine nails tapping the cover of a Grisham novel, eyes crimped with pity. Oh honey, not another one, they said.
I turned back to my stack of DVDs, unsmiling, thinking things like what do you know about it and this one is different and oh shit.
The boy returned at ten-thirty on a Tuesday morning. It's official library policy to report truants to the high school, because the school board felt we were becoming "a haven for unsupervised and illicit teenage activity." I happen to think that's exactly what libraries should aspire to be, and suggested we get it engraved on a plaque for the front door, but then I was asked to be serious or leave the proceedings, and anyway we're supposed to report kids who skip school to play League of Legends on our computers or skulk in the graphic novel section.
I watched the boy prowling the shelves—muscles strung wire-tight over his bones, soul writhing and clawing like a caged creature—and did not reach for the phone. Agnes, still wearing her oh honey expression, declined to reprimand me.
I sent him home with The Count of Monte Cristo, partly because it requires your full attention and a flow chart to keep track of the plot and the kid needed distracting, but mostly because of what Edmund says on the second-to-last page: "… all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—'Wait and hope.'"
But people can't keep waiting and hoping forever.
They fracture, they unravel, they crack open; they do something desperate and stupid and then you see their high school senior photo printed in the Ulysses Gazette, grainy and oversized, and you spend the next five years thinking: if only I'd given her the right book.
Every librarian has Books she never lends to anyone.
I'm not talking about first editions of Alice in Wonderland or Dutch translations of Winnie-the-Pooh; I'm talking about Books so powerful and potent, so full of susurrating seduction, that only librarians of the second sort even know they exist.
Each of us has her own system for keeping them hidden. The most venerable libraries (the ones with oak paneling and vaulted ceilings and Beauty and the Beast-style ladders) have secret rooms behind fireplaces or bookcases, which you can only enter by tugging on a certain title on the shelf. Sainte-Geneviève in Paris is supposed to have vast catacombs beneath it guarded by librarians so ancient and desiccated they've become human-shaped books, paper-skinned and ink-blooded. In Timbuktu, I heard they hired wizard-smiths to make great wrought-iron gates that only permit passage to the pure of heart.
In the Maysville branch of the Ulysses County Library system, we have a locked roll-top desk in the Special Collections room with a sign on it that says, "This is an Antique! Please Ask for Assistance."
We only have a dozen or so Books, anyhow, and god knows where they came from or how they ended up here. A Witch's Guide to Seeking Righteous Vengeance, with its slender steel pages and arsenic ink. A Witch's Guide to Falling in Love for the First Time, for Readers at Every Stage of Life!, which smells like starlight and the summer you were seventeen. A Witch's Guide to Uncanny Baking contains over thirty full-color photographs to ensorcell your friends and afflict your adversaries. A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies has no words in it at all, but only pages and pages of maps: hand-drawn Middle Earth knock-offs with unpronounceable names; medieval tapestry-maps showing tiny ships sailing off the edge of the world; topographical maps of Machu Picchu; 1970s Rand McNally street maps of Istanbul.
It's my job to keep Books like this out of the hands of desperate high-school kids with red backpacks. Our school-mistresses called it "preserving the hallowed and hidden arts of our foremothers from mundane eyes." Our professors called it "conserving rare/historic texts."
Both of them mean the same thing: We give people the books they need, except when we don't. Except when they need them most.
He racked up $1.50 on The Count of Monte Cristo and returned it with saltwater splotches on the final pages. They weren't my-favorite-character-died tears or the-book-is-over tears. They were bitter, acidic, anise-scented: tears of jealousy. He was jealous that the Count and Haydée sailed away from their world and out into the blue unknown. That they escaped.
I panicked and weighed him down with the first three Harry Potters, because they don't really get good until Sirius and Lupin show up, and because they're about a neglected, lonely kid who gets a letter from another world and disappears.
Agnes always does the "we will be closing in ten minutes" announcement because something in her voice implies that anybody still in the library in nine minutes and fifty seconds will be harvested for organ donations, and even the most stationary patrons amble towards the exit.
The kid with the red backpack was hovering in the oversize print section (gossipy, aging books, bored since the advent of e-readers with changeable font sizes) when Agnes's voice came through the speakers. He went very still, teetering the way a person does when they're about to do something really dumb, then dove beneath a reading desk and pulled his dark hoodie over his head. The oversize books gave scintillated squeals.
It was my turn to close, so Agnes left right at nine. By 9:15 I was standing at the door with my NPR tote on my shoulder and my keys in my hand. Hesitating.
It is very, extremely, absolutely against the rules to lock up for the night with a patron still inside, especially when that patron is a minor of questionable emotional health. It's big trouble both in the conventional sense (phone calls from panicked guardians, police searches, charges of criminal neglect) and in the other sense (libraries at night are noisier places than they are during the daylight hours).
I'm not a natural rule-follower. I roll through stop signs, I swear in public, I lie on online personality tests so I get the answers I want (Hermione, Arya Stark, Jo March). But I'm a very good librarian of either kind, and good librarians follow the rules. Even when they don't want to.
That's what Agnes told me five years ago, when I first started at Maysville.
This girl had started showing up on Sunday afternoons: ponytailed, cute, but wearing one of those knee-length denim skirts that scream "mandatory virginity pledge." I'd been feeding her a steady diet of subversion (Orwell, Bradbury, Butler), and was about to hit her with A Handmaid's Tale when she suddenly lost interest in fiction. She drifted through the stacks, face gone white and empty as a blank page, navy skirt swishing against her knees.
It wasn't until she reached the 618s that I understood. The maternity and childbirth section trilled saccharine congratulations. She touched one finger to the spine of What to Expect When You're Expecting (618.2 EIS) with an expression of dawning, swallowing horror, and left without checking anything out.
For the next nine weeks, I sent her stories of bravery and boldness, defying-your-parents stories and empowered-women-resisting-authority stories. I abandoned subtlety entirely and slid Planned Parenthood pamphlets into her book bag, even though the nearest clinic is six hours away and only open twice a week, but found them jammed frantically in the bathroom trash.
But I never gave her what she really needed: A Witch's Guide to Undoing What Has Been Done: A Guilt-Free Approach to Life's Inevitable Accidents. A leather-bound tome filled with delicate mechanical drawings of clocks, which smelled of regret and yesterday mornings. I'd left it locked in the roll-top desk, whispering and tick-tocking to itself.
Look, there are good reasons we don't lend out Books like that. Our mistresses used to scare us with stories of mortals run amok: people who used Books to steal or kill or break hearts; who performed miracles and founded religions; who hated us, afterward, and spent a tiresome few centuries burning us at stakes.
If I were caught handing out Books, I'd be renounced, reviled, stripped of my title. They'd burn my library card in the eternal mauve flames of our sisterhood and write my crimes in ash and blood in The Book of Perfidy. They'd ban me from every library for eternity, and what's a librarian without her books? What would I be, cut off from the orderly world of words and their readers, from the peaceful Ouroboran cycle of story-telling and story-eating? There were rumors of rogue librarians—madwomen who chose to live outside the library system in the howling chaos of unwritten words and untold stories—but none of us envied them.
The last time I'd seen the ponytailed girl her denim skirt was fastened with a rubber band looped through the buttonhole. She'd smelled of desperation, like someone whose wait-and-hoping had run dry.
Four days later, her picture was in the paper and the article was blurring and un-blurring in my vision (accidental poisoning, viewing from 2:00-3:30 at Zimmerman & Holmes, direct your donations to Maysville Baptist Ministries). Agnes had patted my hand and said, "I know, honey, I know. Sometimes there's nothing you can do." It was a kind lie.
I still have the newspaper clipping in my desk drawer, as a memorial or reminder or warning.
The boy with the red backpack was sweating beneath the reading desk. He smelled of desperation, just like she had.
Should I call the Child Protective Services hotline? Make awkward small-talk until his crummy caseworker collected him? Hey, kid, I was once a lonely teenager in a backwater shithole, too! Or should I let him run away, even if running away was only hiding in the library overnight?
I teetered, the way you do when you're about to do something really dumb.
The locked thunked into place. I walked across the parking lot breathing the caramel-and-frost smell of October, hoping—almost praying, if witches were into that—that it would be enough.
I opened half an hour early, angling to beat Agnes to the phone and delete the "Have you seen this unaccompanied minor?" voicemails before she could hear them. There was an automated message from somebody trying to sell us a security system, three calls from community members asking when we open because apparently it's physically impossible to Google it, and a volunteer calling in sick.
There were no messages about the boy. Fucking Ulysses County foster system.
He emerged at 9:45, when he could blend in with the growing numbers of other patrons. He looked rumpled and ill-fitting, like a visitor from another planet who hadn't quite figured out human body language. Or like a kid who's spent a night in the stacks, listening to furtive missives from a thousand different worlds and wishing he could disappear into any one of them.
I was so busy trying not to cry and ignoring the Book now calling to the boy from the roll-top desk that I scanned his card and handed him back his book without realizing what it was: The Runaway Prince.
The overdue notices go out on the fifteenth day an item has been checked out. On the sixteenth day, I pulled up the boy's account and glared at the terse red font (OVERDUE ITEM: J FIC GEO 1994) until the screen began to crackle and smoke faintly and Agnes gave me a hold-it-together-woman look.
He hadn't even bothered to renew it.
My sense of The Runaway Prince had grown faint and blurred with distance, as if I were looking at it through an unfocused telescope, but it was still a book from my library and thus still in my domain. (All you people who never returned books to their high school libraries, or who bought stolen books off Amazon with call numbers taped to their spines? We see you). It reported only the faintest second-hand scent of the boy: futility, resignation, and a tarry, oozing smell like yearning that had died and begun to fossilize.
He was alive, but probably not for much longer. I don't just mean physical suicide; those of us who can see soulstuff know there are lots of ways to die without anybody noticing. Have you ever seen those stupid TV specials where they rescue animals from some third-rate horror show of a circus in Las Vegas, and when they finally open the cages the lions just sit there, dead-eyed, because they've forgotten what it is to want anything? To desire, to yearn, to be filled with the terrible, golden hunger of being alive?
But there was nothing I could do. Except wait and hope.
Our volunteers were doing the weekly movie showing in Media Room #2, so I was stuck re-shelving. It wasn't until I was actually in the F DAC-FEN aisle, holding our dog-eared copy of The Count of Monte Cristo in my hand, that I realized Edmund Dantès was absolutely, one-hundred-percent full of shit.
If Edmund had taken his own advice, he would've sat in his jail cell waiting and hoping for forty years while the Count de Morcerf and Villefort and the rest of them stayed rich and happy. The real moral of The Count of Monte Cristo was surely something more like: If you screw someone over, be prepared for a vengeful mastermind to fuck up your life twenty years later. Or maybe it was: If you want justice and goodness to prevail in this world, you have to fight for it tooth and nail. And it will be hard, and costly, and probably illegal. You will have to break the rules.
I pressed my head to the cold metal of the shelf and closed my eyes. If that boy ever comes back into my library, I swear to Clio and Calliope I will do my most holy duty.
I will give him the book he needs most.
He came back to say goodbye, I think. He slid The Runaway Prince into the return slot then drifted through the aisles with his red backpack hanging off one shoulder, fingertips not-quite brushing the shelves, eyes on the floor. They hardly seemed sorcerous at all, now; merely sad and old and smoke-colored.
He was passing through the travel and tourism section when he saw it: A heavy, clothbound book jammed right between The Practical Nomad (910.4 HAS) and By Plane, Train, or Foot: A Guide for the Aspiring Globe-Trotter (910.51). It had no call number, but the title was stamped in swirly gold lettering on the spine: A Witch's Guide to Escape.
I felt the hollow thud-thudding of his heart, the pain of resurrected hope. He reached towards the book and the book reached back towards him, because books need to be read quite as much as we need to read them, and it had been a very long time since this particular book had been out of the roll-top desk in the Special Collections room.
Dark fingers touched green-dyed cloth, and it was like two sundered halves of some broken thing finally reuniting, like a lost key finally turning in its lock. Every book in the library rustled in unison, sighing at the sacred wholeness of reader and book.
Agnes was in the rows of computers, explaining our thirty-minute policy to a new patron. She broke off mid-sentence and looked up towards the 900s, nostrils flared. Then, with an expression halfway between accusation and disbelief, she turned to look at me.
I met her eyes—and it isn't easy to meet Agnes's eyes when she's angry, believe me—and smiled.
When they drag me before the mistresses and burn my card and demand to know, in tones of mournful recrimination, how I could have abandoned the vows of our order, I'll say: Hey, you abandoned them first, ladies. Somewhere along the line, you forgot our first and purest purpose: to give patrons the books they need most. And oh, how they need. How they will always need.
I wondered, with a kind of detached trepidation, how rogue librarians spent their time, and whether they had clubs or societies, and what it was like to encounter feral stories untamed by narrative and unbound by books. And then I wondered where our Books came from in the first place, and who wrote them.
There was a sudden, imperceptible rushing, as if a wild wind had whipped through the stacks without disturbing a single page. Several people looked up uneasily from their screens.
A Witch's Guide to Escape lay abandoned on the carpet, open to a map of some foreign fey country drawn in sepia ink. A red backpack sat beside it.
Alix E. Harrow is a part-time historian with a full-time desk job, a debilitating re-reading habit, and authorial ambitions. She and her husband live in Kentucky under the cheerful tyranny of their one-year-old and border collie. Find her at @AlixEHarrow on Twitter.
This was absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much <3!
I've read every Apex story for the last three years and this is one of my very favorites. Thank you for writing it!
This was lovely!
As both librarian and reader, I needed this today. Thank you.
What a fantastic story! I was smiling the entire time I read it. =)
Great story!! I absolutely loved it!
More please.
Omg this was beautiful!!!
A beautiful story, and so very true. Thank you.
This was marvelous and ever so true. I speak from experience as a librarian of the second kind.
This is amazing! Where is your other work? I need to read it now.
Every time I read stuff like this it breaks my heart. Because my lived reality of librarianship is so different from how people write about librarians that on bad days it makes me feel mildly nauseous.
I do not spend my day hooking people up with the books they need. I spend my day returning books, dealing with people's overdues, telling people where the justice of the peace is, apologising for our crappy self-issue system that management bought without thought of the customers. Or shelving, because despite us being in charge of the highest-use collections in the library we're not allowed to poach one of the shelvers from the upper floor. We do have shelvers, but they struggle to keep up. One of the former Head Librarians referred to us as being like checkout operators but for books, which is just about the level of contempt we are treated with by the rest of the staff.
I am vaguely good at finding the right books for people. For that special kind of mother who wants a book with no violence and no kissing and no dystopia and no magic and not a graphic novel for that eight year old with a reading age of fifteen. CYA has given me a brief outlet for creativity. But I get, at best, an hour a day on that and try to be creative in that time.
(There have only ever been two kinds of librarians in the history of the world: the prudish, bitter ones with lipstick running into the cracks around their lips who believe the books are their personal property and patrons are dangerous delinquents come to steal them; and witches).
This made me gag a little, as did the line about renewals. You know why we have renewals? Because without them, people keep their portals to other worlds for about six months. I try to be flexible on this but books are there for other readers too.
Also that line is incredibly ageist and frankly a bit sexist as well. Those older librarians have been through the fucking trenches. Technological changes, budget cuts, do more with less, do better with less, be the public face of the bad decisions of the suits who make the choices who demand their 10% return even though patron numbers are dropping. They are tired. They are stressed. They are not here to be your goddamned savior. Maybe they're not smiling because ANOTHER patron has abused them over a .20 fine.
"When they drag me before the mistresses and burn my card and demand to know, in tones of mournful recrimination, how I could have abandoned the vows of our order, I'll say: Hey, you abandoned them first, ladies. Somewhere along the line, you forgot our first and purest purpose: to give patrons the books they need most. And oh, how they need. How they will always need."
Oh. Fuck this smug self-righteous attitude completely. We did not forget our purpose. It was taken from us. This is a happy lie told by people who don't work in modern libraries.
I want to help all the runaway kids but I can't. I'm legally not allowed to. Should I lose my job because I can't live up to someone's savior fantasy? We're not social workers. We can't always do what we want because we're stretched, emotionally and practically. This job takes and takes and takes and don't bitch at us for having nothing left to give.
I can't be the librarian that popular culture wants me to be. And if I slip for a moment, then I am a Bad Librarian, a terrible person who acts like a dragon with a hoard. And I am well aware that I am a BAD LIBRARIAN some days, because I do not sit easily on this pedestal that popular culture puts me.
I am a person with a job to do who manages to do it acceptably most of the time. But stuff like this makes it clear that so much more is expected of me than I am able to give.
Books are about living adventures and changing lives, escaping from the inevitable realities that face us daily. Did you forget that somewhere along the path? I'm sure that somewhere there was a book that changed your direction and made you CHOOSE to be a librarian.
But I do wonder though, because I'm surprised you didn't catch the beautiful story structure and language, or the level of description, the concise word choice, the clever interlacing of familial fantasy books, the heart that all of us felt having connected with a book or experience similar to this.
I don't know… maybe you are the first type.
I've worked at a bookstore for a very long time. I consider myself a degreeless librarian. I haven't loved every minute of it, because customer service is a tough industry all around. But sometimes, on good days, I very much feel like I am the gateway between the seeker and the story. I connect people on a daily basis with what they need and they thank me – sometimes with a lot of enthusiasm. I smell books and touch books with a deep appreciation and sense for what's inside them. And I even let myself think once in a while that I have the power of escapism.
I think we shouldn't forget that this is a fictional story, and as such is not reality though it may attempt to reflect or comment on some parts of it – or in this case, provide an escape from it. This story certainly portrays a very fantastical and romantic notion of librarians, which most people are probably aware is not the real truth. Libraries are full of regular people, who are not all dreamers or sensitive thinkers. Some people just need to use the printer; some people go there to use the computers to play games or answer emails. I'm sure there's alot of customer service involved with libraries that can be taxing as all customer service is.
At the end of the day, a librarian is still a job, so we can't blame you for not fulfilling slightly unrealistic expectations of it. But I think this story doesn't have to be another reminder of that; if the story is about providing the right kind of escape for a troubled boy, I think the story itself can be taken as the right kind of escape from what can be the mundane dreariness of life. Librarianship isn't all that the story portrays, and we don't all succeed in being who we want to be. But with that little bit of spark and romance in the story, we can find the kind of escape that free our souls a little bit so that we can still face whatever we have to face.
So maybe your day can be a little brighter, a little more magical, if you believed in this fiction of a reality even if it isn't the whole truth. Maybe you can make a small difference that you might not even realize is significant. We can't all be heroes or witches, but we can try our best, and we can dream a little.
I loved this story, but I feel a lot for your comments here. I can understand how painting librarians as magical saviors can feel like a demand, an expectation, from a group of hard-working, put-upon people that too damn much is expected of already.
I hope there are authors writing your story, too. <3
I completely agree with your analysis of this story, though I'm coming at it from the other perspective–I was the skinny, bookish black kid with an apparent failure of a home life.
For me, this story, while beautifully written, was a horror story with an utterly devastating end. I don't have enough fingers to count the number of librarians and English teachers, always white and almost always women, who tried to live out their savior fantasy through me.
As you said, librarians are not social workers. This seems to be something that many bookish white women don't understand. It is not a librarian's job to sort out a kid's life or make them whole.
To the librarians out there who identified with this story: You are a librarian. You do not have the training to fix a child's life, no matter how bad those social workers appear to be. If you must suggest a book, don't try to subvert the child's parents–they know better than you what the child needs. Don't try to plant ideas in that child's head–you don't know what cocktail of ideas you're making or how they will react to each other.
Stay in your lane. That is what a good librarian does. Have some humility.
I had an English teacher in high school who saw me, a depressed, skinny black kid just like in this story, and tried to make me her pet. She offered to call CPS to get me out of my home. She told me I could stay in her classroom as long as I needed, whenever I needed. She was constantly giving me books to read that she thought would change me for what presumed to be the better. I read the books she offered and declined everything else.
She was fired the following year for sexually assaulting a student. I am now a grown man with a lovely life. I've forgotten the books she had me read, and I've read so many (and written some) since.
To me, this story read like what would have happened if I'd taken up my predatory teacher's offers to stay after class; she would have used me to fulfill her savior fantasy, but she would have only separated me forever from the people who actually loved me and had my back.
This comment isn't to knock the author; she did a wonderful job. This is mainly for the white lady librarians and English teachers who don't realize how much damage they may be doing while trying to do what they think is right.
M, when I recommend a book to a kid I not indulging in a savior fantasy I'm more on the books side – it deserves/needs to be read…
Elementary school librarian and old white guy.
Thank you. Avid readers romanticize librarians instead of seeing them as people in a challenging profession. Respect to all of you who work hard to give the patrons what they need, no matter what it may be, whether computer time, a friendly smile, a lesson in sharing (returning overdue books), or a comfortable chair off the street.
Boy, someone got up on the wrong side of the bed!
Oh, I love this. I loved the story too, but it needed to be said that librarians are not some sort of savior that just watch patrons and magically prescribe them books to fix their ailments.
I'm a high school teacher, and I hate my job more than I love it. I don't know you but it seems like maybe we're in a similar boat. I became a teacher because I love to learn new things and share them with others. Guess how much I actually get to do that.
I considered becoming a librarian because of my love for books and stories. After talking to a few librarian friends, I quickly realized it's not for me. I had this romanticized idea that I'd get to read at work and discover wonderful new books and authors. Yeah, right.
My friends told me they spend way too much time dealing with members of the public who clearly have mental health issues, trying to get projectors to work for community movie time, answering dumb questions, catching creeps watching porn on the computers, asking parents to get their kids to stop running and screaming, getting yelled at because they can't magically locate items people are looking for even though the people don't remember what it's called, etc. And they have to get a masters degree to do it. In fact, at least where I live, I'm making about the same in my first year of teaching with a bachelor's degree than a librarian makes with a master's and 5 years experience.
Stories like this, while lovely, just perpetuate mistaken ideas about what it means to work with the public. I still loved it though.
This is such a wonderful story. I immediately shared it with every library devotee and librarian (all of the 2nd sort) that I know. They loved it as I did, so thank you.
Holy shit. I cried. I really did. Wow, this was so good. Thank you for this story.
My favorite from Apex so far.
This is no exaggeration. This is literally the best short story I have ever read in my life. Period.
First encounter with both Apex and Alix, and holy sh*t was that a good start. I'm in library school and came across this story shared by one of my classmates and friends, to a core group of five of us from the same program. It's a hell of a tribute to the power of a good book at the right time. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
an apprentice book-witch
Also, the part that really sparked for me? Was the Akata Witch reference. I'm currently tearing through the collected works of Okorafor and just finished that one two weeks ago – and would recommend it eagerly. Thank you. 🙂
This is perhaps one of the best if not the best short I've ever read.
This story is astounding and fittingly transportive. The language is fresh, startling, and vivid, and our sense of character for these two straining souls (who never introduce themselves to us) is tremendously deep. Beautiful, excellent fiction!
Like all the best speculative fiction, this manages to be original and traditional at the same time. Loved it. Well done Alix, and well done Apex for finding this.
This is a beautiful amazing story. I'll be re-reading it many times, and plan to study it as if I were in a workshop! I wish I could thank whoever linked me to it, but I can't recall who that was. :/
As someone who's worked in a library for several years, I really enjoyed this interpretation of the job. Giving a patron a recommendation and seeing their eyes light up doesn't happen nearly as often as it should, but it can be very awesome when it does. Matching the patron to the book is a very relatable yearning.
Absolutely great story. It's sure to be on my list of award nominees.
As a librarian in a poor community I really appreciated this story.
I enjoyed the prose, craft, and structure of this piece immensely and I think the idea of a library witch is absolutely fantastic.
That said, this piece is very white female gaze centered. While I realize this story is about the Witch's decision to do the right thing despite breaking the witches code of conduct, the marginalized characters in this piece are never named or ever allowed to have any agency whatsoever.
So much of this story centers around how the Witch percieves this child yet she never asks his name or asks what he likes or how he feels. In fact, he hardly ever speaks throughout the entire piece. All of his likes and dislikes are filtered through the gaze of this well meaning white saviour librarian. He really comes across as a cardboard character who is a plot device to help work through her feelings around following a code of conduct or doing the right thing.
I acknowledge the feel good aspects of this story particularly the idea that books can be an escape and the magic power of librarians. I just wish that the boy was given a chance to speak, to have a space finally in his life to say I like this or I didn't like that. As it is, the central relationship in this piece is very one sided. I have to take the witches interpretation of the feelings given off by the books as an indication of how this child feels. The truly trangressive act here would have been to let these books help the child find his voice. Not assume and impose what you think he might like. Why not ask him if he wants to escape through the book.
The writing here is uttely lovely but it centers the experience of a priviledged white female librarian and diminshes marginalize characters turning them into projects whereby the protag can feel good about herself. So much missed opportunities here for real human communication and trust building. Something the child needed. I aprreciate the sentiments here but this story unintentionally further disenfranchises marginalized characters to score feel good points.
I must correct myself. She does ask him what he thinks of a book once in the beginning.
I 100% agree that this story is wholly centered on the librarian, not on the child.
I interpret the story very differently than you do, though. I don't think this is a savior narrative; I think it's a tragedy. It's about how society has failed this child. About how the only help the witch can offer the child, is to let him escape this reality for a different one.
At the beginning of the story, the narrator won't give the child a Narnia book, because "this was a kid who wanted to go through the wardrobe and never, ever come back." By the end of the story, she's let him do exactly that. That's not triumph; that's failure.
Not to say I disagree with your point. It's no more a white librarian's place to give up on the boy's behalf, than to declare him "saved." I especially take to heart your note about all the boy's feelings and desires being filtered through the narrator's perception. I very much read this as "Librarian gives boy book; boy makes decision to use it," which would give the child full agency — but we don't actually see that, or go into detail about how the books work. I think it's heavily implied that escaping was the child's own choice — but it's not explicit, and the *way* it's so heavily implied is by the librarian's interpretation of what the child wants.
So in conclusion: I think you're right to note that the story is faced on the (white) librarian protagonist, and I can definitely see why that bothers you. In a story that went "I am Good, I will Stand Up and Do The Right Thing" story, that would bother me as well. I see the focus of the story as something very different, though. I see it as being not about the child, but, essentially, *about* the white people and society which have failed him. Sympathetic white people, perhaps — but being sympathetic isn't really solving anything.
(Which, again, doesn't make your criticism less valid! You can *still* say "I'm less interested in a story about White Guilt than I am about Black Agency." Personally, I think there's a lot of value still in good stories about white guilt or complicity — and, in parallel, we 100% need stories with great black agency as well. Does that make sense to you?)
I read it as her not giving him a Narnia book because it *didn't* meet his needs, not because it did. She recognizes that he wants to leave, and so doesn't try to give him books with endings that contradict what he wants.
I guess it can be read that way as well 🙂
But I think my reading is closer to the text. The paragraph immediately previous, where the librarian explicitly explains her motivation, is:
> I hoped sixteen volumes might act as a sort of ballast and keep his keening soul from rising away into the ether.
She's trying to help keep him grounded; her big worry is that he's liable to float away.
And then I'd read Narnia as "needing to be ignored," not because of the end, but because of the beginning. That the idea of escaping into a different world from this one, is what she's avoiding.
(Actually I guess the Narnia kids do wind up getting to stay in Narnia, at the end… And in the context of this story, that can be a pretty dark thought…)
Wow. This really, really gripped me. I love libraries and librarians of the second kind, who certainly helped me more than once in tiny Deer Park, WA (which is, I think, where and why I found The Handmaid's Tale and LeGuin), and I love escapes and the feeling of finding a true love of a book. I want more from this author!
Wonderful writing, and a wonderful story. I enjoyed it tremendously. Everything about is screams out love of books and love for others. Thank you Alix E. Harrow for the delightful tale. I'll be waiting for your debut novel 🙂
Wonderful! Congratulations on your Nebula nom, well-deserved!
The best librarians are somewhere between witches and revolutionary anarchists. They speak to the hidden needs of the soul, and fulfill those needs.
That was a great story. Really great. And I say that as someone who has read thousands of science fiction and fantasy stories, from hundreds of authors, and across several decades. A houseful of books. Countless yearly subscriptions to Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. I really enjoyed that story. It reminded me of the magical feeling I used to get when I was young, going to the library, and being able to wander the rows and choose from hundreds and hundreds of books. Tom Swift. The Hardy Boys. And on and on… Seriously, thanks.
I haven't read something that hit me so personally in a while. I see a lot of myself in the kid, (as I'm sure do countless others) recalling my own childhood spent devouring every fantasy and scifi book I could get my hands on, chasing that carefree high of immersing myself in one fictional world after another. The conclusion left me more than an a little jealous and unexpectedly teary-eyed, but I loved every word!
This is beautiful! Love it! As a librarian, a fantasy lover, and, once-upon-a-time, a kid who needed the public library and books as an escape from reality, this story had me in tears by the end. Books, the shared, open space of a library, and the kindness of a stranger can really save a life. I'm sending this to all my like-minded colleagues, thank you! <3
I was privileged to manage an elementary library for 10 years. I have a teaching degree, however, not a Library Science degree so instead of a Librarian, I dubbed myself a Library Goddess. My FAVORITE part was matching my students with their new favorite book. Soon they were excitedly sharing with each other, " If you liked THIS book, you'll LOVE THAT book!" It was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. This story brought back many of those memories and happy feelings. Thank you!
This was absolutely fantastic, impossible to choose between it and the George Washington teeth story for the Hugo and Nebula, but I guess I'd give it the slight nod.
Loved it.
My favourite of the Hugo shortlisted short stories.
I must 'sing' its praises at the Worldcon in Dublin next week.
Watch out for the late-night 'filking'.
I bought the magazine in electronic format. I hope to subscribe. This story is only one of the reasons why, but it was the most powerful reason. Thank you.
This story feels like a celebration of all of us who love speculative fiction, the yearners. The very same readers who have read the stories (or similar) mentioned here.
Oddly enough, (and bear with me for a moment) it reminds me of what Josh Weltman (co-producer of Mad Man) called Mutual-Love-and-Respect Ads. From his book, Seducing Strangers: "Mutual-love-and-respect ads, or shared values ads, are about the unique traits, backgrounds, styles, behaviors, habits, and tastes that make one company's customers different from all others… I think of them as thank-you notes or inside jokes…These people are family… Often these are the people the product, service, or company were made for."
That's why, to the author and the publishers, thank you very much for sharing and popularizing this celebration of all of us, fellow yearners and readers.
Kindred soul. My heart just broke to a thousand peices😭😭
As both a lifelong user of the library and now a librarian, this story hit me in so many different ways that it nearly made me cry. This story is beautiful and celebrates the mystical qualities of stories and how they can provide people with things that didn't even know they needed. Thank you so much for writing it. I'm going to share it with everyone I can make read it.
Perfect Perfect Perfect! Perfect in every way.
Excellent article. My favorite is The Count of Monte Cristo. A really classic work.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Assuming no markings or other features of interest near the landing are found . . . Dahl turns to Memphisto and Lisglen and suggests the party start to the north, in which case Dahl (crouching while Albin holds the torch over him) will peer down the east corridor to see what can be seen. The party could then assess and decide whether to continue north or head east.
jcfato: Sure. Of course, Dahl's intelligence is less than stellar.
Wouter: Dig the maps!


text:
|Home > Apache Geronimo v1.1 > Documentation > Apache Geronimo v1.1 - User's Guide > Sample applications > Geronimo Tomcat Host Level Clustering - Sample Application
|Geronimo Tomcat Context Level Clustering - Sample Application
|Sample applications
|JMS and MDB sample application
This web tier clustering sample applies to a Geronimo with Tomcat distribution.
Example Overview
This example demonstrates how to use host level clustering with the Tomcat web container in Geronimo. It contains the necessary attachments for setting up cluster members on three separate physical machines. The cluster configuration will allow the three cluster members to replicate httpsession data via memory to memory multicast communication. Also, a load balancer can be used to spray the incoming requests to the available cluster members. In this example, we recommend Apache HTTP server and Apache mod_jk.
Installing the Example
This example contains 6 attachments:
Each geronimo cluster member must have a unique jvmRoute designation. The jvmRoute attribute allows the mod-jk load balancer to provide "sticky session" (sending all requests for the same httpsession to the same cluster member). This is possible since the load balancer places the jvmRoute value in the session cookie (or encoded url) that is returned to the web browser.
To set the jvmRoute attribute edit line 70 of config.xml above. Remember that the jvmRoute value must be unique for each cluster member and the server must be stopped when updating config.xml.
Also edit line 161 of config.xml with the ip-address of the cluster member. The appropriate spot is identified in the plan with AA.BB.CC.DD. Note that the deployment plan is for v1.1.1 of Geronimo server.
Now start the geronimo server (e.g. bin/geronimo.bat|sh run) and deploy the example on each of the cluster members. For this example, the applications are slightly different for each cluster member. The difference is merely to indicate the current Server number (e.g. Server 1, Server 2) in the output of the application. This will be useful when trying to determine which cluster member is servicing the http request from the browser.
Install the attached applications to the appropriate cluster member using the common geronimo-web.xml deployment plan.
Once you get the applications installed on each cluster member, you can test httpsession replication by hitting the application with your favorite browser. Probably something like: http://localhost:8080/servlets-examples-cluster/servlet/SessionExample . Note that the output page contains the ID of the server that is servicing the request. In your browser window, fill in the appropriate input fields and hit the submit button. The console dialogue (the prompt where you started geronimo) should show that that httpsession data is being transmitted and received between the cluster members. Note that the transmit/receive confirmation messages in the log are only present for Tomcat 5.5.12.
Load Balancing and failover
Now you are ready to setup the Load Balancer. We recommend using Apache HTTP server and mod_jk for this example.
Install Apache HTTP server - instructions and downloads available at http://httpd.apache.org/
Install Apache mod_jk - See http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/balancer-howto.html
Configuration tips for mod_jk:
Note that worker.nodeXYZ values should agree with the jvmRoute values that were used in the config.xml for each node.
Testing Load Balancing and Failover
Once you get Apache HTPP Server and mod_jk setup correctly.. You can test load balancing and failover by requesting the following URLs on port 80 (Apache HTTP Server default port).
http://Yourhost/servlets-examples-cluster - HttpSession is not used here, hence no sticky session
http://Yourhost/servlets-examples-cluster/servlet/SessionExample - HttpSession is used here, hence sticky session should be in effect
You can test failover by stopping the geronimo server that owns the sticky session and seeing that the next http request will failover into the remaining cluster member. The httpsession data from the previous request should be recovered and displayed in the refreshed browser window.
Also, see http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.0-doc/cluster-howto.html for more information on tomcat clustering.
Special Acknowledgement to Jeff Genender for developing and supporting the Tomcat clustering GBeans for Geronimo!!
Back Button Sample applications


text:
I've been a Marathon fan since 1998 or so, but never bothered to register for this particular pfhorum.
I got back into the series in 2015 when I started speedrunning M1, going off Fennecey's runs. A bit more recently I started collaborating a lot with TBCR and learned to run the other two games, and now I have the fastest time in M2 on Kindergarten and Infinity on both Kindergarten and Total Carnage. TBCR and I also routed and ran M2 and Infinity on co-op, which was fun. You can find some videos for that on his youtube. More recently still, I added individual level leaderboards to the speedrun.com pages for the games and there's been some activity there. Oh yeah, and I routed and speedran Pathways Into Darkness just for kicks. I have the "record" but only because nobody else has bothered to try.
I'll be showing off Infinity on Total Carnage at Summer Games Done Quick later this year, which I'm pretty excited for. Should be the largest audience the game has had in decades.
That's about it!


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Orchid Hybrid: Phalaenopsis Firehouse
(This name is currently accepted by the RHS.)
Phalaenopsis Firehouse is an orchid hybrid originated by Arnold J.Klehm in 1991. It is a cross of
Phal. Arlington Amethyst
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Phal. Arlington Amethyst
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Phal. pulcherrima
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Phal. lueddemanniana
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text:
Today investigators are heading back to the scene to determine what caused a plant explosion in Omaha that has caused at least two fatalities and left almost a dozen injured. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez reports.
Four people were killed and 18 others were injured, at least four of them critically, in two separate explosions at industrial plants in Nebraska and Oklahoma on Monday, authorities said.
Two died when the three-story International Nutrition Inc. animal feed plant collapsed and burst into flames about 10 a.m. (11 a.m. ET) in Omaha, Neb., officials said. Four of the 17 other people injured there were critically wounded, interim Omaha Fire Chief Bernie Kanger said Monday night.
Witnesses described hearing a loud noise and then seeing a fireball seconds before the building collapsed.
Six hours later, two more people died and a third suffered head burns when a furnace exploded at the Mid-America Steel and Wire facility in rural Madill, Okla., the Marshall County Sheriff's Office told NBC News. The condition of the third person couldn't immediately be determined Monday night.
Both of the victims of the Omaha incident were on the second floor of the International Nutrition building. One of the bodies was recovered late Monday afternoon, but the second remained at the scene Monday night. Operations to recover that body were suspended Monday night because of severe weather.
The victim whose body was recovered Monday was identified by the Associated Press as Keith Everett, 53. The second victim, whose body was still trapped, was identified by the Omaha World-Herald newspaper as David Ball, 47.
All of the 36 other employees who were in the building when it collapsed were accounted for, Kanger said. Ten were taken to hospitals, four of them with critical injuries. Seven other people with minor injuries were treated at the scene.
About 50 Omaha firefighters battled the blaze, Kanger told Reuters.
A view from back side of international nutrition. Thoughts and prayers to all involved. #OPD pic.twitter.com/kTQRgERuFl via @OPDofcBossman— Omaha Police Dept. (@omahapolice) January 20, 2014
Investigators said the cause of the collapse remained unknown. The recovery and investigation were moving slowly because the remaining structure was highly unstable, they said. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will investigate the cause, but it could be weeks before they finish their investigation.
"There was a third-floor collapse and a second-floor collapse onto the first floor, so there is substantial damage," Kanger said. "We've got tens of thousands of pounds of concrete, reinforced concrete and steel" to deal with.
The blast knocked out the lights in the building, the AP said, sending workers to scurry to safety in pitch-black darkness.
Kari Cook told NBC station WOWT that her fiancé, John Broderick, sent her a text message at 10:09 a.m.:
"Major accident. I'm hurt and trapped. I love you."
Broderick, who works on the second floor of the building as a supervisor, was rescued and taken to the hospital with broken ribs and a deflated lung, Cook said.
NBC News
Few details were available in the explosion in Madill, in southern Oklahoma about 100 miles southeast of Oklahoma City.
A Marshall County emergency dispatcher said the agency received a call that a furnace had exploded. The scene was blocked off and had been cleared by 10 p.m. ET
The Omaha company has been fined at least twice before for safety violations, according to records of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which will be in charge of the investigation. The first citation came in August 2002, after a rotating part killed an employee who fell in a mixing tank. The second came in November 2011 after a safety inspection identified six "serious" violations.
No violations were on record for the Oklahoma steel plant.
NBC News' Elizabeth Chuck contributed to this report.
Watch the top videos on NBCNews.com
This story was originally published on Mon Jan 20, 2014 9:21 PM EST


text:
Visit us At 5th and Market Streets on Independence Mall
May 28, 2013By guest blogger, Valerie V. Gay, Executive Director, Art Sanctuary
"Naturalize: intransitive verb: to become established as if native" (Merriam Webster)On a beautifully blustery spring morning, I was privileged to witness 47 people from 31 countries become "established" as US citizens during a simple and elegant ceremony held at the National Museum of American Jewish History.In fact, it was a day of privileges: I was asked to introduce and sing "God Bless America" during the ceremony. Prior to this occasion, I hadn't given much thought to the fact that Irving Berlin, born, Israel Isidore Beilin, immigrated from what is now Belarus to the United States. I always thought of him as one the most important "American" composers: an important American composer. Period. So my first privilege that day was to remind these newly established Americans that immigrants like them have made incredible contributions to our country and the people who live herein. The 2nd privilege that day came as a surprise. As a participant in the program, I was asked to stand in the receiving line and shake the hands of each person as s/he walked across the stage of the auditorium having first received his/her Certificate of Naturalization. The smile never left my face as I shook each hand, looked each person in the eye and said, "Congratulations!" I was privileged and honored to be one of the first to welcome these new citizens, and I don't think I will ever forget the look of gratitude on the face of one particular elderly woman, who has undoubtedly experienced much in her life. The tears in her eyes mirrored my own, as I felt a sense of accomplishment and pride for a group of people I'd never met before and will probably never meet again, but with whom I now share a profound memory. I know all is not right with our country; there are so many societal ills and injustices within our borders. One can easily wax on about a plethora of systems that are broken; however, even with all of our messiness, I'm glad to be an American and can choose to join others to fix the broken. My ancestors did not choose to come to this country, but once here they no doubt aspired to have the freedom we enjoy. Which brings me to the 3rd and final privilege of this experience: being reminded that I have a responsibility to those who came before me (many of whom did not have the opportunities I enjoy), and those who will follow, to exercise my inalienable rights as an American citizen, not just for my benefit, but for the benefit of my family and community.
Valerie V. Gay is the Executive Director of the Art Sanctuary in Philadelphia. Having been named one of Philadelphia's "101 Connector Leaders," Ms. Gay serves on the Board of Directors of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, the Marian Anderson Award and the Blues Babe Foundation, is a Trustee for the Concerto Project of New York, is a member of the Arts Rising Steering Committee, Fresh Artists Advisory Council, and Virtuoso Committee for the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.


text:
Self Smear Test Kit by Hakan Gürsu
Hakan Gürsu Exhibits The Self Smear Test Kit Self Smear Test Kit
Hakan Gürsu, the thinktank behind the awarded work Self Smear Test Kit - Self Smear Test Kit by Hakan Gürsu says, Cervical cancer is the 5th most common cancer in women worldwide with approximately 471,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Approximately every 2 minutes a woman dies of cervical cancer. %80 of the cases occur in low-income or middle-income countries. Unfortunately, many women don't have access to routine tests such as Pap smears. Self Smear Test Kit allows personal user to perform smear test at home which enables early diagnosis, thus treatment. It is an economical and hygienic product that provides 6 caps to user, which is enough for a 3 year period of testing, once in a six months..
Self Smear Test Kit by Hakan Gürsu Images:
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