Awful Goth Book

A few weeks ago I was at the Fargo Public Library, and saw the book to the right: it was so naiively incomplete, I had to take a few pictures. Everything You Need to Know About the Goth Scene is a tiny book full of pictures with only the slightest superficial information on Gothness, including a connection to Wicca I'd never really heard before, so I planned on panning the book here. When I got home, however, I saw Hang Fire Books had linked to the Awful Library Book blog, so I thought I'd send it to them instead and get their take on it.

The reason those librarians found the book to be awful were largely different from me. I had thought it was a book focused on parents trying to come to terms with their weird-dressing child, but their research saw the book as mostly filed under "young adult" categories, which I could see in the simple language and unassuming blandness of most of the content. It probably is better suited for kids than parents, but I found it filed in the adult shelves, so my assumption was based largely on how it appeared on the shelves than its content. A book mostly of pictures with simple language and general statements definitely is more suited for a 10-year-old than a parent — had I found this in the kid's section, I wouldn't have questioned the Everything book's uneverythingness. That brings the Awful Librarian's thoughts more into light: a librarian is often less a judge of content, more an overseer of how information is filed and presented to the potential reader.