NOTE: what you are about to read is a FICTIONALIZED account of Kristin’s day on 7/3/25. For the most part, this whole shebang is made up.
Also: possible content warning for brief mentions of gross stuff.
7/3/25
8 hours until vacation
Have you ever noticed that as a vacation approaches, the days get longer, and seemingly more ridiculous, and maybe just generally less bearable overall? Welp, my vacation starts when I get off work today, and that’s how I’m feeling. It’s giving survival story vibes at this point. So I thought I’d share some of my favorite recent survival stories with you while trying to make it through this, my last day before vacation, alive and with sanity intact.
7/3/25, 10:00 am
7 hours until vacation
Our PA system has ceased to function, and a vendor is on scene repairing it.
My layperson’s understanding of what is going on: there are some cables in the walls of the building that are connected to nothing, and some are connected to each other that shouldn’t be. It is apparently a confusing situation, even for the people who are meant to be fixing it because it is unclear why this is only just resulting in a broken PA system now.
Like, why? We don’t, to my knowledge, have wall gremlins that plug and unplug wires in the night…and yet, here we are!
PA testing commences with staff on hand throughout the building to identify whether they can hear or not as things get tweaked in the background.
They can’t.
I repeatedly make announcements as wires are connected and disconnected in many iterations. Resolution: more investigation needed, PA system still non-functional.
To be clear, JCLS is lucky to have a great crew of support staff who make sure our buildings work as intended ALMOST all the time. Sometimes things break. This is OK and not the end of the world.
BUT VACATION IS COMING AND I HAVE A BLOG TO WRITE.
To that end, books about specific things going wrong in the world around us is one fun sub-genre of survival books.
Want to read about surviving a Cascadia event? Take a look at Tilt by Emma Pattee. The pregnant main character is shopping at the Portland Ikea when the quake hits. It’s OK if you want to pass on this. Not every PNW resident can handle the stress of walking through what a real Cascadia event may feel like to survivors. It is possible this one will be just a little too real for you. If you’d like one less likely to happen to you, try LITERARLLY ANY OTHER SURVIVAL STORY.
I’ve provided a list, but for a great recent outdoor survival story, try Heartwood, in which the main character goes missing while through hiking the Appalachian trail in Maine. Is she just an inexperienced hiker, or is something more nefarious going on? Only the Maine State Game Warden assigned to the case can find out!
7/3/25, noon
5 hours until vacation
Lunchtime. Oh, wait. First, a problem in the restroom.
Suffice it it say, this happens sometimes, and cleanup is no one’s idea of a good time. It is also highly necessary, as we know all our patrons appreciate the clean nature of our spaces. We deal with it so you don’t have to! You are welcome!
Did you think that last paragraph was gross? Did you mind? If not, you might be interested in reading a survival story SET INSIDE OF A WHALE. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.
(Actually the existence of this book should not be surprising, as we at Library Connect Blog love this book and have blogged about it. Twice.) If you want to experience the gross survival/horror experience as oxygen runs out and things get increasingly, er, gooey, check out Whalefall. In addition, Whalefall has a really appealing and readable format that partially inspired this blog post. It’s a bit more high stakes though: the countdown is to the point where the main character runs out of oxygen.
7/3/25: 1:00 pm
4 hours until vacation
Someone hands me this thing right here:
It’s definitely a piece of the roof.
True story: you are not a library branch manger if you don’t have one or two random pieces of the building you manage just hanging around your office. Now I’ve got another one. This one can wait until I get back and our amazing colleagues from the county (who manage our facilities) will be able to tell me what the heck that thing is. Can you tell building stuff comes up a lot in library management? We do not get classes in these sorts of things in library school so we tend to learn what we know on the job.
Want to read more about survival when things are falling apart? I recommend the very excellent Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Set against the backdrop of the 1980s NASA space shuttle program, it features a fictional malfunctioning space shuttle (and an amazing sapphic romance).
7/3/25: 2:00 pm
3 hours until vacation
So, every library the size of JCLS has a system called an “integrated library system” or ILS.
These are pretty complicated systems that keep track of all the materials we own and where they are (whether that be on the shelf or with a patron). They also do all sorts of other complicated library-specific things. The main thing you need to know about them to understand the rest of this paragraph is that they are:
- Complicated
- Need to be functioning as intended for libraries to function as efficiently as you expect them to
And currently there are AI BOTS that are making ours run slowly and/or stop altogether (I am not making this story up, this happened, just mostly during June and not today, 7/3, as I write this).
Yep. We’ve reached a point where I can describe a library-related problem that sounds like it’s straight out of science fiction. Of course, there is nothing very pacey or exciting about library technology not working. It’s mostly just annoying and frustrating when an ILS stops working.
BUT, if reading about robot-based survival sounds fun, why not try Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries series, starting with All Systems Red. While I’m pushing the definition of a survival story here a little bit, if you want to read about a Murderbot saving a bunch of humans, this may be the series for you. If you’d like something a little gentler in the bot-based genre, try Becky Chambers’ very lovely, cozy non-survival story A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which introduces a secessionist group of self-aware robots trying to reconnect with the human world.
7/3/25: 5:00 pm,
VACATION TIME
Let’s call this a day, make sure away messages are set, and head home to curl up with my doggo and a good book. I’m thinking Sunrise on the Reaping, because of course I want to know how post-apocalyptic teens survive the quarter quell. Haymitch, you old goat, how’d you get to be the way you are?
Even if you AREN’T on a vacation next week but maybe want to recreate that feeling of last-day-before-vacation-ness, take a gander at these recent survival stories that will evoke the feeling of getting through your last day of work before you can unwind. There’s near future cli-fi dystopian all the way through the bare bones historic survival. I hope there’s something in this list for everyone to love.
Seriously, I do find books like these enjoyable, and really, it’s because I find myself feeling grateful for the great things I have in my life, including this job that is really less manic than the day I just described!
May the odds be ever in your favor!