To get into Le Boudoir, the cocktail bar of Chez Moi in Brooklyn Heights, you enter a “secret passage” via a bookshelf door. The door is, they say, a replica of a bookshelf in Marie Antoinette’s library, though the books upon it cannot be books she read — they are all in English, and published long after her death. Thanks, Brooklyn Blowback!

I recently learned of several projects involving reading on subways.

In the United States in 2016, a Miami-based ad company created an “underground library” on New York City subways, providing excerpts from ebooks and encouraging the use of the New York Public Library. Here’s a brief video about the project. Swipe for a free read!

Perhaps the company was inspired by something similar in 2013 in Romania : accessible ebooks on the walls of the Piata Victoriei subway station in Bucharest.

Also in 2013, a London “creative” organized a project she calls Books on the Underground, leaving books (regular books, not ebooks) all over the stations and trains. She documents the project here.

Craig Conley of oneletterwords sends me these images from the 1893 issue of Cassell’s Family Magazine:

The library in Parks and Recreation is a bad, bad place. In Season 2, Episode 8, we learn that the Pawnee Public Library is “diabolical,” made up of “the worst group of people ever assembled in history.” The librarians are “punk-ass book jockeys” who are “extremely well-read, which makes them very dangerous.”

In Season 3, Episode 4, Ron Swanson’s ex-wife Tammy, a librarian, sends a collection agency after Ron for his supposed overdue book, It’s Not the Size of the Boat: Embracing Life with a Micropenis.

I’m sure there will be more library shenanigans to come, or anyway I hope so, but I’m only partway through binge-watching the series.

The Champaign Public Library in Illinois created a life-size version of the board game Candy Land in March of 2016. They did it the year before, too.

Thanks, Joan Petit!

Click the image to read about eight library bars, or bar libraries, in the U.S. and England. I wonder if anyone ever reads any of the books. Probably not in the bar pictured here, since it doesn’t look like the books are removable. Thanks, Kathleen Kirk!

Addendum, February 19: more library bars in London here. Thanks, Diane Westerfield!

The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) at the University of Reading found a dead mouse in its 155-year-old “perpetual mouse trap.” Rest in peace, little mouse. Your deed shall live forever in the records of the museum. Thanks, Lynne M. Thomas!

“Weird Eddie” keeps track of unusual books donated to his library here.

I might try to make this:

Thanks, Suzie DeGrasse!

The Bodleian Library at Oxford University has released a digital coloring book of images from their collections! Apparently, it’s a trend — the Wangensteen Historical Library at the University of Minnesota is doing something similar, as are many libraries. Thanks, Lynne Marie Thomas and Marianne Aldrich!

Yet another real-life meme, where it’s difficult to find the origin. The t-shirt is for sale here. Thanks, Daniel M. Shapiro!