The Legacy of Indiana Jones

I’ve always been fascinated by archaeology. Most of the blame for that can fall squarely on the broad and handsome shoulders of Indiana Jones. I loved the movies as a child, and when Jurassic Park – both the book and the movie – gained popularity, that only cemented my desire to spend my life in the dirt making fascinating discoveries and running from death cults and rampant dinosaurs.

Obviously, that never happened. We almost never end up in the jobs we think we will, do we? I discovered that I prefer the air-conditioned stacks of a library to the dust and insects and discomfort of an outside job like archaeology. Thanks to writers like Elizabeth Peters and her Amelia Peabody series, however, I can still indulge my interest in all things Egypt while staying out of the sun.

Peters introduces us to Amelia Peabody, an independent and unorthodox British woman in the late 1880s who travels to Egypt and falls in love with pyramids, the country and its people. She also unexpectedly falls in love with an equally unorthodox archaeologist named Radcliffe Emerson. The series follows Amelia and her family through many adventures and misadventures with a dry wit and an engaging style that make for quick, fun reads.

You can meet Amelia in the first book of the series, Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. If you share my interest in Egypt, you might also want to check out the summer-long Egypt in Columbus program.

Reading a book in five minutes, or judging a book by its cover

I was at the Main Library last week for a training session on Reader's Advisory, which is the art of recommending both fiction and nonfiction books. We learned how interpret the clues from the cover art and blurbs of the book. In addition to skimming the book, those clues can give a good sense of what a book is about. This is called reading a book in five minutes.

I'm sure that's very similar to what a lot of library customers do in order to decide if they want to check out a book. In fact, that's what I did after the class was over. In the new fiction area, I found a book called Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson. I liked the cover art, and the recommendations were made by other authors that I enjoy. It turned out to be a good choice - I really liked the book and would suggest it to anyone who likes Steven Millhauser or Kelly Link.