Book Nerds

The Book Nerd’s Guide to Dream Jobs

Welcome to the Book Nerd’s Guide to Life! Every other week, we convene in this safe place to discuss the unique challenges of life for people whose noses are always wedged in books. For past guides, click here.  
For probably too many years of my life, I held onto hope that I could still attain the job I held in higher esteem than all others: archivist at the legendary Disney Vault. The vault was the place where everything I loved as a child went to hide from me. Because this was before I understood the concepts of supply and demand, my perception of the vault was of a cinematic Atlantis, a hidden and inaccessible Eden that obscured Lady and the Tramp from viewers like me for years on end.
Likely to quell my inevitable disappointment, my parents assured me the vault was a metaphor, simply a state of being for Disney movies, not a physical location. Since then, I’ve been vindicated by the knowledge that the physical vault does exist, but I still haven’t been tapped to tend it. Granted, I have no qualifications and my idea of what the job would be is mostly the same as the guy from the warehouse scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark—but with vigilantly rewound VHS tapes.
Still, it stings a little to watch your dreams turn to dust. And it’s not the first time. I’ve had a number of dream jobs slip through my fingers over the years.
For example, I’ve written about the Macaulay Culkin vehicle The Pagemaster more times than, quite possibly, anyone else alive. At the very least, it extends past the point of good taste. Nevertheless, after watching a young boy come to realize all genres of literature are worthy of merit—thanks, primarily, to Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Stewart—I had a new calling. I wanted to be The Pagemaster, lord of fiction, wizard of alternate realities, herald of otherworldly adventures.
What you remember upon rewatching this classic of cinema is that this wizardry is actually a viable career path. We call it a librarian, someone who routinely opens doors to other worlds, albeit not always ones with Leonard Nimoy on the other side. It turns out I’d let this ideal career pass me by without noticing; I’d been trying to defy nature and grow a majestic beard when what I needed was a master’s degree in library science.
Other opportunities, however, have yet to appear in the marketplace.
It bothers me on a spiritual level that companies will pay thousands of dollars to sponsor video-game players but no such reward exists for people who read with such a ferocity as to be noteworthy. Where are the adult Summer Reading Challenges? Where are the sponsorship deals and merchandise when I complete my yearly reading goals? Why is 100 books in 365 days not enough to awe and inspire the hearts and minds of venture capitalists? They used to give me medals for this kind of thing. Now they just give me advice to get more vitamin D. 
Of course, I’ve also yet to meet a real-life library cop, a la Seinfeld, or someone who sniffs books professionally (and not on their lunch breaks). Do I just dream too big? Maybe, maybe not. But as long as there’s a novel in my hand and a bookmark somewhere in the bottom of my purse, I’ll keep hoping and wishing and dreaming.