“I remembered what else was on the reserve list,” Lorraine said. “New book. Guide to the Fairies.” “What is it, a children’s book?”

“No.” She took it off the reserve shelf. “It’s about the presence of fairies in our daily lives.”

She handed it to me. It had a picture of a fairy peeking out from behind a computer on the cover, and it fit one of the criteria for a book fad: It was only 80 pages long. The Bridges of Madison County was 192 pages, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was 93, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, a huge fad back in 1934, was only 84.

It was also drivel. The chapter titles were “How to Get in Touch with Your Inner Fairy,” “How Fairies Can Help Us Get Ahead in the Corporate World,” and “Why You Shouldn’t Pay Attention to Unbelievers.” “You’d better put me on the list,” I said. I handed her the Browning. “This hasn’t been checked out in nearly a year,” she said. “Really?” I said. “Well, it is now.” And took my Borges, Browning, and Baum and went to get some dinner at the Earth Mother.

Poulaines [1350–1480]

Soft leather or cloth shoes with elongated points. Originating in Poland (hence poulaine; the English called them crackowes after Cracow), or more logically brought back from the Middle East by Crusaders, they became the craze at all the European courts. The pointed toes became more elaborate, stuffed with moss and shaped into lions’ claws or eagles’ beaks, and progressively longer, to the point that it was impossible to walk without tripping over them and completely impossible to kneel, and gold and silver chains had to be attached to the knees to hold up the ends. Translated into armor, the poulaine fad became downright dangerous: Austrian knights at the battle of Sempach in 1386 were riveted to the spot by their elongated iron shoes and were forced to strike off the points with their swords or be caught flat-footed, so to speak. Supplanted by the square-toed, ankle-strapped duck’s-bill shoe, which promptly became ridiculously wide.