SEATTLE — In the two years since an action figure modeled after Nancy Pearl first went on sale, owners of the 5-inch plastic toy have sent Pearl photographs of the mini-Nancy at the Eiffel Tower, the base camp of Mt. Everest -- even atop a wedding cake.
The Pearl figurine outsells models of Da Vinci, Einstein, Freud and Houdini, and currently runs second in sales only to Jesus Christ.
Not bad for a librarian.
It is a measure of Seattle's bookish soul (and perhaps its appetite for kitsch) that an action toy of a bespectacled city librarian could be such a hit. Complete with its "amazing push-button shushing action," the figurine -- whose sales have passed 100,000, according to the distributor -- has just been issued in a "deluxe" form, with book cart, desk and computer.
Despite the toy's movable index-finger-to-the-lips feature, Pearl says she can recall shushing patrons just twice in her 38-year career. Both times were in her early years in Detroit, she recalled with a laugh.
But Pearl, 60, has gotten people's attention in other ways. She is author of "Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason," and "More Book Lust," chatty compendiums of her reading recommendations -- roughly 3,000 books in all, grouped under sections with quirky headings such as "Sex and the Single Reader," "It Was a Dark and Stormy Novel" and "Physicians Writing More Than Prescriptions." They are published by Seattle-based Sasquatch Books.
As director of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library, Pearl drew national attention for her 1998 program "If All of Seattle Read the Same Book," which has become an annual event and has been replicated in dozens of communities globally. She also offers book recommendations on National Public Radio.
Passionate about books and reading as she is, Pearl has a rather surprising revelation about her own reading habits: For every book she finishes, she says, she gives up on roughly 10.
"Life's too short not to enjoy whatever you're reading," she said recently at the apartment she shares with her husband of 39 years, Joe, who she says is more of a movie fan than a book fan.
Her rule of thumb is that you have to try a book for at least 50 pages before you give up on it -- unless you're older than 50, in which case the magic number is your age subtracted from 100.
If you're 90, she explained, you've earned the right to set a book aside after 10 pages.
