I added a poster to the library walls this morning. It’s a quote from Terry Pratchett’s book “Wintersmith” with an elegant line drawing of a library above the text. I found it online and bought two, one for work and one for my bedroom. The text explains that librarians can tell what book you need by looking at you and take away your voice with a single word, shush presumably.

I’m not entirely certain I have fully mastered either of these skills but I’m working on it. I’m pretty good at selecting books for younger readers based on previous reads and some of regular youngsters like to test me when they return their books by looking up and asking “Next?” as a sort of dare. It’s a challenge I love.

The whole shush thing is trickier. We don&rsquo...

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