Not long ago, the public library was a place for the bookish, the eggheaded, and the studious–often seeking refuge from a loud, irrational, crude, outside world. Today, libraries have become free-for-all entertainment complexes filled with rowdy teens, deviants, drugs, and even sex toys. Lockdowns and chaperones are often necessary. What happened? Don Borchert was a short-order cook, door-to-door salesman, telemarketer, and Christmas-tree-chopper before landing a job in a California library. He never could have predicted his encounters with the colorful kooks, touching adolescents, threatening bullies, and tricksters who fill the pages of this hilarious memoir. Borchert offers readers a ringside seat for the unlikely spectacle of mayhem and absurdity that is business as usual at the public library–cops bust drug dealers who’ve set up shop in the men’s restroom, a burka-wearing employee suffers a curse-ridden nervous breakdown, and a lonely, neglected kid who grew up in the library and still sends postcards to his surrogate parents–the librarians. In fact, from the first page of this comic debut to the last, you’ll learn everything about the world of the modern-day library that you never expected.

Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library PDF

The list of books you might like