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Nancy Pearl signed action figures and Booklust after her talk last night. She began her speech with “I am a reader. For Better or for worse, that has been my life.” She asked the audience: “How many of you brought a book with you today, in your purse, right now, in case things get a little boring?” Over half the room raised their hands.

Ms. Pearl grew up in Detroit. Home, she said, was not a pleasant place, nor a safe place to be, and as a child she knew that. She stayed at the library from opening–she would wait outside in the morning for the doors to be unlocked–until close. Sometimes, she said, the librarians would drive her home, knowing that “she wouldn’t go back home if she had a choice.” She said as a librarian she understands what it is like having young people stay at the library all the day long, but she also knows what it’s like to be that child.

She went to University of Michigan and became a children’s librarian at her hometown library system–the same library that she spent all of her days at. She still dreams of her childhood library quite frequently.

Ms. Pearl described her adult life: “I’m known as the hermit of Seattle. I don’t like social encounters because I have no small talk.” She described some of her quirkier encounters at conferences, sometimes stuck at the head table with a group of men in certain shoes. “I am struck dumb in the face of tassled loafers.” She talked about a time that she tried to break the awkward silence with this admission: “I dream of my childhood library quite frequently.” Then, she told the audience, “if no one has looked at you in horror recently, don’t worry, you will know it when you see it. It is unmistakable.”

She told us about her path to writing Booklust. When she was asked to write it, it was on the condition that she include a section for Civil War fiction–she wrote that section first and used it as a template. One of her favorite sections was “Great first lines.”

She wanted to call the second book “Booklust: The Morning After,” but the publisher wanted “More Booklust.” The books are sets, companions–it is not a sequel.

Ms. Pearl discussed the “hazard” of being a reader. She has a “reading vocabulary,” not a speaking one, and often mispronounces words as they are spelled. She also “never knows if her memories are mine, or if they’re borrowed from a book she’s read.” She told us a few stories about times she’s misappropriated details from the lives of various characters from stories she’s read…without realizing it (“I remember our Christmas trees so vividly. But I also know that I am Jewish.”)

She told us that “a good book is any book that you like,” and not to worry too much about “the classics.”

A few other “pearls:” “Any book that you haven’t read is a new book to you.”