What can I say… I love me a bit of vocational awe.

A post that will be added to over time!

*

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik.

El describes the library at her ruthless and deadly wizarding school, the Scholomance.

Unless you’ve got project work you have to do – and several friends watching your back – the library is always where you want to be: it’s the safest place in the whole school. The bookcases just keep going up and up until they vanish into the same darkness that’s outside our cells, so there’s no place for mals to get in above. … It’s musty and smells of old paper, but that’s a trade-off we’re all willing to accept. … enclaver groups will fight each other occasionally over a table or one of the prime reading areas with lumpy sofas big enough to kip on.

There are a handful of smaller reading rooms, up on the mezzanine level, but each of those is claimed by a consortium of two or three smaller enclaves, the ones that don’t have enough firepower to claim a good section of the main reading room, but more than enough to keep out any outsiders who might want to intrude.

*

Love Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood.

A fake fictional librarian this time! Elsie is the main character: a theoretical physicist who pays the bills by providing a fake girlfriend service via an app called Faux.

The Elsie that Caroline Smith wants is someone able to fit in with people who use summer as a verb, not flashy enough to attract a better catch than Greg, and with the nurturing instincts to take care of the son she might love but cannot be bothered to know. Children’s librarian seemed like a great fake profession. It’s been fun scouring online forums in search of charming anecdotes.

“Today I found three Goldfish crackers in our best copy of Matilda,” I say with a smile. Or at least Reddit user iluvbigbooks did.

“That is hilarious,” Caroline says without laughing, smiling or otherwise displaying amusement.

*

Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

Defne is showing Mal around Zugzwang, the New York chess club where she’s been offered a fellowship (p. 61).

I nearly gasp when Defne shows me the library, something straight out of Oxford—if on a smaller scale. There are rows and rows of high shelves, fancy ladders, something that, from watching ‘Selling Sunset’ with Mom exactly twice, I believe is called a mezzanine, and—

Books.

So. Many. Books.

*

Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love by isthisselfcare

Draco shows Hermione around his substantial family library, Chapter 30

It was gratifying to be with her as she explored the library, which took up an entire wing of the Manor. It was part enormous reading room, part traditional stacks, part personal museum. Tall windows gave out onto the forest and the lake along the estate’s western edge. A fire crackled. Reading desks and oversized armchairs were placed in thoughtful arrangements here and there, lit by magical lanterns.

Granger’s gasps continued to be an enormous source of pleasure. She requested a tour. Draco provided. They wandered through the stacks and display cases. Granger queried Draco upon the classification system, on the Malfoys’ acquisition philosophy, on their weeding plan.

There was a soft light in her eyes.

*

The Other Merlin by Robyn Schneider, p.43

Emry’s jaw dropped as she pushed open the double doors of the library. Not from the chessboard marble floor, although that was impressive, nor the long wooden tables and velvet-upholstered chairs. Not even from the crests of the noble houses that bordered the ceiling, painted in what had to be real gold. She’d never seen so many books. They stretched two stories high, the second level bordered by a slim balcony with an iron railing and narrow spiral stair. It was a library in the same sense that a cathedral was a church.

*

Image assembled by me using Canva elements.