A review by ebazilereads
Peculiar Questions and Practical Answers: A Little Book of Whimsy and Wisdom from the Files of the New York Public Library by New York Public Library

2.0

I really, really wanted to like this book. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about what questions people ask librarians and enjoyed the illustrations. I was put off, however, by the answers to the questions in this book. It was jarring that the questions were posed in the 1960s and then answered using information from 2019. I also disliked that the answers sometimes seemed to mock the question askers. While I understand that this was meant humorously, it came off as unkind and I would have preferred an actual answer to the questions asked. I think this book would have been much more successful with answers presented as though they were from the time the question was asked, without judgement. Alternatively, I would have enjoyed seeing the questions asked without any answers at all.

With that being said, I appreciated the spirit of this book and the role that librarians play as confidential guides towards information.