Book Review

How to Teach: A Practical Guide for Librarians
by Beverley E. Crane

This book is pretty basic compared to some of the others I've read on library instruction, but it is very clear and well-written. It's real strength is that is covers just about every instructional scenario a librarian could have to deal with: one-shot sessions, face to face courses, online courses both synchronous and asynchronous, blended classes, and self-paced instructional materials. It's good one stop shopping to get the basics on how to do all of these, plus provides an overview of learning theories and basic teaching techniques. It would be a great place to start for librarians just starting out with teaching.

Book Review

The Crimson Petal and the White
by Michel Faber

This long, amazing novel is set in the mid-1870s and follows Sugar, a London prostitute as she rises from a cheap brothel to mistress of soap and cosmetics heir William Rackham and then finally makes a bid to escape prostitution altogether. Woven into Sugar and William's story are those of his increasingly mentally ill wife Agnes, his pious and repressed brother Henry, and Henry's beloved friend, the reformer Emmeline Fox.
Faber's writing is incisive, often witty, and very evocative. He brings late Victorian England to life effortlessly, giving us a clear and stirring picture of not just the atmosphere and objects but of the mores, attitudes, and ways of thinking of the people. The characters are equally well written - every one of them is fully developed and complex, and Faber says a lot about Victorian society through them. Sugar is a great protagonist - she's smart and resourceful and extremely able at working with what is given to her. Agnes could be frustrating in her self absorption and extreme naivete, but I nevertheless felt a lot of sympathy for her. I think it was pretty clear that she was intelligent and creative but ultimately warped and crushed by the strictures of Victorian womanhood. Emmeline was, I think, my second favorite character. She was heavily involved in social causes and thus surprisingly pragmatic and clear-sighted. Albeit in a very different way, Emmeline, like Agnes, is prevented from being what she could be by the constraints of her time. Henry and William are both in turns endearing and annoying, but in very different ways. Henry is blinded and hamstringed by his sexual repression, guilt, and self-castigation. He is an intelligent and truly decent man whose inability to deal with his own sexuality proves to be his downfall. William, on the other hand, is undone by the way he views and treats women as existing primarily to serve his needs and fulfill his vision of how things should be.
Faber weaves in a lot of very pointed observations about the sexual hypocrisies of Victorian society and its treatment and exploitation of women at all class levels. This kind of insight and ability to weave it all into extremely good storytelling kept reminding me of George Eliot's novels. Faber provides a very similar multi-layered reading experience.