Something startling has happened at the local library! It's so startling, in fact, that I need a few paragraphs of rambling narrative before I can work up the courage to even skirt the issue!
Having given up on Neal Stephenson's excessively Forrest Gumpish (but otherwise quite good if you can stomach that sort of thing for 2700 pages) Quicksilver (also, no Pietro), I went to the library to pick up a couple Charlie Stross novels (it would seem I'm something of a fan).
I looked at the "Young Adult" graphic novel/manga section, where I found Hope Larson's Gray Horses, Paul Sizer's Moped Army, and Linda Medley's Castle Waiting.[1]
But I've also checked out non-Young Adult graphic novels from there. Because I wanted to check the New Books shelves for any of those, I looked on the computer to find which Dewey Decimal number they're filed under. I searched for Jimmy Corrigan, which I knew they had in the stacks. Instead of the 741.5 W I would have once seen, a mysterious new pair of words appeared:
Yes, my library now has a regular graphic novel section.
After walking around for about five minutes, I noticed a collection of strangely shaped books in the third least obscure corner (of eight, spanning two floors) in the stacks, immediately to the right of the Science Fiction Zs. I painstakingly endeavored to count the books in that section, that I might present the glorious figure to you, my readers. The number nine is considered glorious in certain numerological systems, right? Comic strip collections are still unfortunately hidden among the 741.5s.
Far more interesting than that, however, was that Chester Brown's Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography is now shelved under B RIEL, which means it's in the Biographies section. That might make it a bit harder for me to find any future comic book-style biographies that aren't heavily blogged about, but at least the thousands of people looking to read about crazy Canadians[2] and unable to search the catalog by computer will find that one.
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[1] One feature this section seems to share with that other library's graphic novel section is a lack of a "New Books" division. Recently acquired graphic novels (like those three) go straight to their own section rather than languishing on the New Books shelves for a year like all other books in both libraries.
[2] I'm only kidding! There's no such thing as mental illness, apparently. Canadians, also.
Super-sekrit comic link of the day.
