My library day had a special tick much like a friendly clock. On those days, I never wanted to linger in bed. After having a fortifying breakfast, I walked to the bus stop. Waiting for the bus had an exciting purpose. The town centre library, a stately Victorian building, spoke of serious purpose. The librarians, all female, were middle aged plain looking women, wearing cardigans and high neck blouses, plaid skirts and stout shoes. They had muted voices, with slow precise movements. The library seemed sacred then. The rituals there much like a religious service, with solemn incantations.
Fiction had the lion’s share of the bays rows. Poetry, drama, and music, squeezed in miserably with fiction. History, geography, travel, had capacious shelves mostly for the taller books. For a frequent user the book bays were predictable. That Saturday morning ritual set the tone for the week. I walked home from the bus stop, carrying a bag full of thrilling stories.
My sister also an avid reader, scathingly pushed me from L.M. Montgomery’s, Anne of Green Gables to Leo Tolstoy’s, Anna Karenina. Kid’s books were passé. She was in a Russian literature phase, reading Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy. If there were no town library, I doubt that our lives would have been quite so enriched or our reading eclectic. If anyone asked what my favourite book was then, there are too many. Whichever one I selected, would feel like a betrayal of the others.
If a castaway, however, on the BBC Desert Island Discs radio programme, given the choice to take a favourite book, I would have Anne Shirley. Alone on a desert island, Anne would generate optimism and laughter. Over the years of engaging with books, those read in childhood resound most like bells.
Fiction had the lion’s share of the bays rows. Poetry, drama, and music, squeezed in miserably with fiction. History, geography, travel, had capacious shelves mostly for the taller books. For a frequent user the book bays were predictable. That Saturday morning ritual set the tone for the week. I walked home from the bus stop, carrying a bag full of thrilling stories.
My sister also an avid reader, scathingly pushed me from L.M. Montgomery’s, Anne of Green Gables to Leo Tolstoy’s, Anna Karenina. Kid’s books were passé. She was in a Russian literature phase, reading Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy. If there were no town library, I doubt that our lives would have been quite so enriched or our reading eclectic. If anyone asked what my favourite book was then, there are too many. Whichever one I selected, would feel like a betrayal of the others.
If a castaway, however, on the BBC Desert Island Discs radio programme, given the choice to take a favourite book, I would have Anne Shirley. Alone on a desert island, Anne would generate optimism and laughter. Over the years of engaging with books, those read in childhood resound most like bells.
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