Libraries
Lisa spent many hours as a child in her local library, and her love for reading was encouraged by the wonderful librarians she was lucky enough to meet along the way. A true believer in the importance of promoting reading, Lisa is a strong advocate and dedicated fan of libraries and librarians. In her small way, Lisa tries to give back to a system which has given so much to so many, by participating in library events across the country.


Most recently, Lisa was the keynote speaker at the Southern Voices 2007, held at Hoover Public Library in Hoover Alabama. Here she is below with some of wonderful librarians — Amanda Bonner and Linda Andrews and a host of others — and also some wonderful fans!


Lisa has been to several PLA's and ALA's, is a regular at the Philadelphia Free Library, participated in the "Visiting Author" series at the Des Moines Public Library, has been a keynote speaker at the New Jersey Library Association Conference and a banquet speaker for the Oregon/Washington Library Association Conference, in addition to having visited libraries from coast to coast. In fact, Lisa was recently the keynote speaker at an event at the Ocean City, NJ library.



In short, Lisa is always eager to do what she can to promote libraries. She does her very best to visit as many as she can in a year, and her only regret is that writing a book a year keeps her from being able to visit more. However, she hopes that one way she can help is by writing the very best books she knows how. In fact, Booklist has always been a strong supporter of Lisa and her books, and had this to say about Devil's Corner (May 1, 2005 issue):
"Assistant U.S. attorney Vicki Allegretti's meeting with a confidential informant goes terribly wrong when the routine appointment turns into a bloodbath, leaving Vicki's ATF partner, Morty, dead along with the informant and her unborn child. Vicki's bosses tell her to move on to her next case, but Vicki, determined to find the killer, launches her own investigation, in the course of which she takes on an unlikely partner, Reheema, an African American woman whose mother was killed in a drug-related murder that may connect to Vicki's case. Vicki and Reheema—the former a product of privilege and private school and the latter a product of Devil's Corner, an aptly named, drug-riddled Philly neighborhood—make an unlikely but very appealing pair. The interplay between the two women shows Scottoline at her best—chatty but intelligent, biting but respectful. Although we miss the all-female Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & Associates, whose members are the heroines of Scottoline's popular series, this stand-alone thriller (inspired by a real-life case) makes an entertaining and exciting change of pace."


A Token of Affection
She is anxious to get to each and every library, but in the meantime she will gladly sign her specially designed bookplates for anyone who requests them, and she will personalize them too! Librarians, all you need to do is click here to place your request, and tell Lisa what you want them to say. She will get them out to you just as soon as she can.

Mutual Admiration
Lisa holds a special place in her heart for librarians, and admires the work they do. And based on the emails that Lisa gets from librarians, the feeling seems to be mutual. Here is what some librarians are saying when they email Lisa:
"People always are asking me for great writers I could recommend and you are on that very short list." T.H.

"You have a huge, and I mean "huge" following at this library! Including myself- an admitted Scottoline book addict." A.E.

"I work for the public library and there are a lot of your fans living around here. Whenever someone is looking for something new to read I will usually suggest one of your books." S.S.

It is also evident from the emails that Lisa receives from readers, that whether actively seeking her books out, being introduced to them through their librarian, or stumbling across them while browsing the shelves, the library is an important source for her readers. For that reason, and for so many other reasons, Lisa is deeply grateful to the library community, and librarians across the country. Here are some typical emails from readers:

"Hi Lisa: Just discovered you via my librarian. Love your stuff." S.B.

"I just wanted to let you know that I think your books are GREAT! I've got my family and friends hooked on them too and I think we're creating a rush at our local library. The highest compliment I can give you is that I hate to read yet I can't put your books down!" M.A.

"I was looking through books that had been returned to my library and came across yours. I have never read any of your books before... but I will go to the library and take out everyone of them and read like a crazed person." S.B.
Not Live, But Heartfelt
Until you have a chance to hear Lisa speak in person, we thought you might like to read a speech that Lisa gave during a recent library event.

Speech to the Pennsylvania Library Association
I am in the word business. I think a lot about words, and which ones are right, serve best, are closest to what I mean, even which are the most important. Of course, the most important word contest has changed over time. In my 20's, the most important words were "I love you." He loves me! I love him! We love each other! In my 30's, love lead to marriage, and the most important words became "I'm sorry." I'm sorry I burned the toast, I'm sorry I'm late, and ultimately, I'm sorry I married you. Now I'm in my 40's, and I know the most important words. "Thank you." Thank you is a keeper. I'm here to say thank you. Thank you, big time.

I wouldn't be what I am without librarians. All of the books I read growing up - and I read all the time - came from the library. I grew up in a loving Italian household, with bumpy meatballs and TV trays. No books around except for TV Guide. I discovered reading in my school library, where the notion of a whole roomful of books seemed extraordinary.

A librarian sent me home one day with a list of libraries - one in Bala Cynwyd, one in Wynnefield, and even the Free Library in Philadelphia - and I got taken to all of them. Of course I had no idea how to choose a book and was way too intimidated to ask anyone. But I was drawn to the mysteries, with the little silhouette of Sherlock Holmes, with his bubble pipe and stupid hat. I loved the crinkle of the cellophane cover, and the smells of other people that made you wonder.

I never used a cover to pick a book. I turned to the inside back to find the stamped card and see how many people had taken it out. In those days, there would even be a name written on the line, but that devolved to a stamp, but even that taught me that it was a good book. Lots of stamps equals lots of readers equals good book. Now these cards are promiscuous - they go with any book at all - and Italian kids are having a rough time of it. Such is life.

And there was a library card. And of course, the very fact of a library card, small and orange with a metal plate embossed with my name and very own number. I will never forget it. A library card is undoubtedly the first piece of grown up ID that any child gets, a veritable ticket to adulthood, and the message was clear: I read, therefore I matter. It is a powerful message, one that I got loud and clear and one that all of you give every day, without knowing it, to children and to adults everywhere in this state. I am here to say thank you. Thank you.

Why else do I love libraries? Why do you love libraries? Why did you become a librarian, and I, an author? I suspect its because we love books. You may think that I love books because I'm an author, but frankly it's the other way around.

First, my love for books is partly physical. I love how palpable books are. I love the heft of a thick novel. I love the softness of pages under fingerpad. I still wince when somebody cracks the dried glue of a book's spine.

Books have a power to make me feel a certain way about myself, which may suggest to you how very weak is my self-image. When I read a hardback book, in that highly literary Garamond font with a feathered edge to the pages, I feel smarter. Hardbacks say - books are a priority with me, bucko. Money must be paid! And when I read a paperback - with that chunky, hacked-off, machine-cut bevel - I feel practical. Thrifty. A mass market makes me a member of the masses.

My self-esteem peaks with a library book. When I take a book out of the library, I feel, well, American. Like a good citizen, and ecologically sound. There's something about reading what is essentially a recycled book - no waste, no nothing. If you hate it, no twenty bucks wasted.

But there is something even more lovable about books, and I will tell you what it is. I was talking to a reader of mine about one of the characters in my books, and the woman told me the name of the perfume she thought Bennie wore. I hadn't specified any perfume in the novel and in fact had pictured the character as wearing no fragrance. Then the reader told me about my character's taste in music, food, and even what books she read! I thought it was funny at first, but then I realized what my reader was teaching me:

If we are both imagining what's in the book, then it follows that no book is written until it is read by another human being.

She taught me that the reader was bringing to the book much of what she was finding in it. Not only was she imagining what I had written, what I had intended her to see, but she was bringing to my fiction her own reality and reinterpreting, expanding and even detailing it, to fit her like a custom suit. I had always guessed that readers brought their own life experience, struggles, and insights to fiction - I think I had myself, as reader - but what she taught me was so much more. That the equation isn't 90% author, 10% reader - it's truly more like fifty-fifty.

The fact is that author and reader have a true partnership of the imagination. I think it's true. We write it together. So all the books you read and shelve and carry and circulate haven't been written - until you've read them.

You can test this proposition yourself. Have you ever reread a book, and had a different impression of it? It has to me. Why? The book hasn't changed. Its four corners remain the same. The thing that changes is me, my outlook and what I'm bringing to the book that day. What I am living through, the health of my children, and my marriage. Life happens.

I think it's true. And if you see books as I do now, as something we write together, the novel is transformed from monologue to dialogue. We're making it up as we go along, as in life. Something profound happens between author and reader when a book is written, and read: We connect.

It's not an imagined connection, it's a connection of the imagination, heart to heart, brain to brain, spanning space and time. Even though I write it in my house in the suburbs, and you read it on trains or in your armchairs, on in the car waiting to pick up your kid or in bed at night. This connection of the imagination produces another somewhat paradoxical result, I have seen it from my own experience, and it is this:

If I can write something, hopefully entertaining but which contains something of my heart. And if you do read it, even a story about a completely fictional person and situation, then you will know me. Not dumb stuff like what wine I drink or how much money I make or what is may natural hair color. God forbid. You will know what's in my heart, and conversely, if you connect with the book, I will know what's in yours. I cannot explain this - I just know that it is so.

Books connect us, tie us one to the other, at soul level.

So if you've read me, we've already met.

Which brings me to my final point about books, and about troubled times like these. As honored and happy as I am to be here, it is impossible for me to speak without reference to the horrifying events of late, and to the awful loss of life, and property. I will not remind you of the other images, now burned into our mind. But reflecting on the event, on this occasion, it seems not merely a respectful digression, but terribly on point. Let me explain what I mean.

Fiction has many uses - to entertain, to educate, to enlighten, but there is one that is relevant here, and that I learned from these horrifying events - and that is to examine reality, even ones as horrendous as this one. Italo Calvino, in his essay entitled the Uses of Literature, says "In a work of literature, various levels of reality may meet while remaining distinct and separate, or else they may melt and mingle and knit together, achieving a harmony among their contradictions or else forming an explosive mixture."

I agree. And Philip Roth has said, more clearly on point, quoted in the Times, "The American writer in the middle of the 20th century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one's own meager imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist."

So, fiction gives us a chance to play "what if," and to examine the troubling moral, political, and legal issues of the day, and of the headlines, both good and bad. All of my books deal in some way with questions of good versus evil, law versus chaos. A book - a novel in particular, is the safest way we can imagine these questions - and we can hold it in out hands. We can sit in chair with it in a quiet place, or even in a crowded family room, and figure it out, through fiction. But there is something even deeper at work here, with books in these times.

Books help.

The other day after watching CNN non-stop, I kept feeling that I really wanted something to read. Really needed a good book. You all know that feeling. I buy about three hundred a week so I had tons to choose from. I wanted to connect. I wanted somebody to connect with me. I wanted to know at base level that everything is going to be all right. I wanted to fall in love with a book. Seduce me! I'm easy. So I picked up the biggest and the fattest book on my shelf and got lost in it. And I felt a whole lot better.

Books heal. Books nourish.

So turn off CNN, its scarin' the kids.

And read.