One afternoon a couple of months ago, I texted a girlfriend as follows.
ME: I have a sensational idea! Let’s have a Library Party!
HER: HAHAHAHA Oh my god you are such a dork.
Now, I would like to point out that this is perhaps my dorkiest friend; the one I am never surprised to run into at lectures on Victorian superstitions, or nanotechnology-themed happy hours. And SHE thought this was dorky. But I am the absolute Duchess of Dorkington, so I did it anyway.
Now, I love libraries. First off, there are giant piles of books, so that’s obviously great. But add in things like moveable stacks, and book dumbwaiters, and rubber stamps, and slidey ladders, and THE SMELL!!! That old book smell, right? It’s the BEST SMELL EVER.
My current branch is the St Paul Central Library right downtown; a one-hundred-year-old building constructed of Tennessee marble. One day, on a whim, I asked the research librarian if they ever gave history and architecture tours, and she said they could do a private tour for me, IF I could get together a group of, say, 12-15 like-minded friends.
Which is when the first domino fell into place.
Now when I was a growing up, my hometown library wasn’t very big, so they couldn’t update their selection of books very often. But I was a kid; I wasn’t checking the copyrights, I was just reading. I firmly believe that this inventory shaped who I became. When I was a tween in the 1980s, reading books about teenagers (as tween girls do,) the library didn’t have The Babysitters Club or Sweet Valley High. No, I was reading books that left me firmly convinced that by the time I was seventeen, I’d A) stop in at the soda fountain with the gang every day after school, B) set my hair and make myself a new dress for The Big Game, and C) knit argyle socks for my steady fellow, a somewhat brainy but athletic and musical boy with a flat-top named “Jinx.”
Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
And obviously, I’d be the center of a huge and sparkling social network. Fortunately I was prepared for that because the library also had several books on hosting parties (from the same era.) I read these books religiously, and they made it clear that I’d easily be voted Most Popular in my class by hosting events such as A Loony Lawn Party, Big Top Bazaar, and Old-Fashioned Box Social.
Spoiler alert: I wasn’t Most Popular.
Oh, I threw many of those parties when I was younger, and the attendees loved them, but the attendees were mostly my parents and some of my more open-minded stuffed animals. But mostly, the other kids weren’t into my personal brand of fun. I found out the hard way that most kids didn’t want to play Victorian schoolroom or World War I nurse. They also didn’t want to watch Cary Grant movies, listen to The Platters, visit historic house museums, research edible bog-plants, or pretend to be any of the following: silent movie stars, apple sellers in the Great Depression, characters from Greek mythology, characters from the Arabian nights, or members of agricultural self-sufficiency communes. So they SURE didn’t want to have a Loony Lawn Party.
Maybe that’s another reason I loved the library so much. At the library, you were supposed to be quiet and alone; and that was something I was TERRIFIC at.
But here I was, decades later, planning an entire social event around libraries! HAD I LEARNED NOTHING???
Plus, a library theme is Next Level. This isn’t St Patrick’s Day where you can just go to Dollar Tree and buy some plastic gold coins and a felt leprechaun hat and call it a day. I went through easily three dozen vintage party books at the library and didn’t see a single library-themed soiree. Not even in Dame Curtsey’s Book of Party Pastimes for the Up-to-date Hostess [©1912], and Dame Curtsey has tried EVERYTHING. This is an advanced theme, people.
So first things first: snacks. I find that people will tolerate just about anything if they’re eating. But library-themed snacks? That’s a tricky one. I thought I’d maybe aim for the feeling of a 19th century gentleman’s club. You know…the sort of place that men with names like Astor and Vanderbilt went after a long day of Titan-of-Businessing to take out their monocles and relax. But may I say from experience that if you Google “Gentleman’s Club Snacks”, that is NOT what you will find.
I decided instead to go with an abstract theme I call “Foods having a flavor profile of quiet and dim, with undertones of paper, leather and smoke.” What does that mean? I don’t really know. Earl Grey tea cookies, carrot jam, bacon jam, thyme crackers, spicy candied pecans, that sort of thing. And then there were the “libRAtions”. (See what I did there?) You can see the full-ish menu on these tiny index cards I turned into menu cards. THEME WIN!!!
I also made Smoky Caramels. They were really just regular caramels except that the cream was infused with smoked lapsang souchong tea. I got the idea from the internet, but the internet also wanted me to add liquid smoke AND smoked salt, which I didn’t do, because I was going for “reading an old book in a comfy chair in front of the fire” and not “gross candy that’s been spit out into an ashtray.”
Next up: party favors! I always like to send people away with a little treat as a way of saying “thank you for indulging me in this ridiculous party.” To that end, I made “Sensible Librarian” bookmarks, because that whole “sexy librarian” thing vexes me to no end. (Librarians don’t need to be all tarted up to be sexy. I mean, I once went out on a date with a fellow solely because he worked in the bindery, so you can imagine the irresistible magnetism an actual librarian has.)
I’d queried my guests on their favorite books ahead of time, so along with the bookmark, everyone got a list of “Recommended Readings from Reliable Friends”. Titles ranged from Carl Jung to the classic choose-your-own-adventure, The Mystery at Chimney Rock. Well played, friends!
And now for activities! The centerpiece, of course, was the tour itself. We all met in the lobby, and even though I’d told the library how many people to expect, everyone from the circulation desk to the tour guide seemed shocked that there were so many of us. (I have the nagging suspicion they don’t get asked for private tours particularly often, and that perhaps the research librarian had doubted my ability to scare up that many friends.)
After the tour, we retired to my place for snacks, a book swap, and a library trivia contest. (Do YOU know the first name of Mr. Dewey, of Decimal fame? It’s Melvil!) The grand prize: library index card socks! (The runner-up prize was knowledge.)
But I think my favorite part was when all the games and amusements and everything were done, and we were all just sitting around my living room chatting and eating one last Chocolate Melt-Away. My friend Laura said “Let’s go around the room and say one thing from the past that we wish would happen in modern times.” And everyone had something right on the tip of their tongue: masquerade balls, dressing up for airplane travel, going calling on friends and family, parlor games and stunts, the wearing of hats, and dinosaurs (there has to be an outlier, right?)
And as I sat with this group of friends, some of whom had never met each other before that day but who were now happily sharing their dorkiest fantasies, I suddenly thought: Oh!!! I get it! Other kids who wanted to do all the dorky things I liked were out there, just not in my hometown. Or maybe they were in my hometown and I didn’t know because they were also busy being quietly alone. Or maybe they weren’t out there then, but the kids who didn’t like those things grew up into people who did. In any case, it’s really, really nice to be such a dork and still have so many like-minded friends.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go plan a Loony Lawn Party. See you there!!!
Thanks specially to the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library.
Follow me on Facebook to keep apprised of the latest adventures!