Delaney Delights

The NELA Banquet Sunday night, October 2, featured author Frank Delaney whose latest book is The Matchmaker of Kenmare. (The third book in this standalone 'series', will be published in January 2012, is The Last Storyteller.)

What a delightful guest and talk - full of humor, perspective, retrospective and advice for librarians.

From his own website: 'The Most Eloquent Man in the World', says NPR, about the writer, broadcaster, BBC host and Booker Prize Judge, Frank Delaney.

"As natural as the night follows the day, I would become a writer", reflected the author who grew up in a small village of Ireland where his father taught the older students and his mother the youngest of the school. His tale of being present when the boxes of books arrived at the school each month, padlocked and opened to the wonderment of Frank, was rich storytelling and also spoke to his pride of being an author. "To write well, a sculpting process has to be started."

Some of the themes of Mr. Delaney's talk revolved around our important role as librarians in the process of reading, in encouraging reading, in pursuing reading and in ensuring that the culture of reading will continue in this country. "Librarians are the curators of the culture of the world of books and reading." They are its future. The process is dependent on librarians sharing reading - through readers' advisory at every level.

"The best kind of librarian is the librarian who takes a writer's passion and conveys it to his/her customers."

A second theme is that of eReading, eBooks and eReaders. Like many of us, Frank Delaney owns an eReader and purchases books from Kindle. Like many of us, however, the Kindle or the eReader will NOT replace the book. Instant publication, self-publication, instant-access to books - this new world of publishing will ensure that Mr. Delaney and others will have to be the best writers that we all crave. He does not seem afraid of the future but he embraces it is his quest to be that writer we want to read.