Story Archive

A Good Work of Fiction

Chuck Finley was such a voracious reader, records show he checked out 2,361 books from the East Lake County Library in Sorrento, Fla., in just nine months — 3.9 percent of the library’s total circulation. From children’s books to Steinbeck, armloads of books a day were checked out — and usually checked back in within an hour. Finley — named for a retired Major League Baseball pitcher — was made up. Branch supervisor George Dore and library assistant Scott Amey created the persona to ensure good books had a checkout record so they wouldn’t be discarded. “The general rule of thumb,” says Jeff Cole, director of the Lake County Public Resources Department that oversees libraries, “is that if something isn’t circulated in one to two years, it’s typically weeded out of circulation.” Dore was put on administrative leave, and the county’s clerk of courts’ inspector general’s office, which is auditing the entire library system, recommends he be fired, saying that any fake library card “amounts to the creation of a false public record.” (RC/Orlando Sentinel) ...Sometimes, great books need to sit and wait for someone to be ready to read them.