Scan barcode
A review by meghan111
The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family by Josh Hanagarne
3.0
A compelling story about an unusual librarian with an interesting life and background. Josh is extremely tall, has Tourette Syndrome, and was raised in the Mormon church. As his illness progresses in his teens and early twenties, he struggles but then ultimately succeeds in building a career and starting a family. He finds solace in an extreme form of strength training, coached by an odd man he meets online who gives him cryptic advice in between talk about guns and weaponry.
These elements are somewhat framed by the "librarian memoir" genre. Most chapters start with funny anecdotes about patrons in the Salt Lake City library. The useless adventure of library school is summed up in a single paragraph or two, in which he describes a class taught by a woman who appeared to have "spent the night in a car rolling downhill", who then wandered into a room to talk about databases while drinking from a bottle of Dr. Pepper. That's all he says about library school, which is hilarious.
The main problem I found with this was that it was about really disparate elements of a man's experience, but they weren't unified. The story of his faith, the story of his illness, the story of working in a library, the story of strength training - at points he's struggling to make libraries fit into this, by pointing out how a library is a challenging place to have uncontrollable vocal tics. I would have enjoyed this more if it were a series of tightly edited essays, in which the connections between faith and libraries and family and Tourette Syndrome wouldn't really have to exist as much.
These elements are somewhat framed by the "librarian memoir" genre. Most chapters start with funny anecdotes about patrons in the Salt Lake City library. The useless adventure of library school is summed up in a single paragraph or two, in which he describes a class taught by a woman who appeared to have "spent the night in a car rolling downhill", who then wandered into a room to talk about databases while drinking from a bottle of Dr. Pepper. That's all he says about library school, which is hilarious.
The main problem I found with this was that it was about really disparate elements of a man's experience, but they weren't unified. The story of his faith, the story of his illness, the story of working in a library, the story of strength training - at points he's struggling to make libraries fit into this, by pointing out how a library is a challenging place to have uncontrollable vocal tics. I would have enjoyed this more if it were a series of tightly edited essays, in which the connections between faith and libraries and family and Tourette Syndrome wouldn't really have to exist as much.