Borrowing Books

[poliphilo]

I haven't been to the town library for years. In fact last time I went it was housed in a completely different building. The old library was Victorian and full of people who didn't wash (sorry, that sounds snobbish and I suppose it is). The new library is full of daylight and bright, young, unemployed men sitting at computer terminals; also it seems to contain fewer books- not that I counted. 

It was Ailz's idea that we should join again. I was sort of dragging my feet. I remembered the old library as a depressing place- the sort of place that used to give me a migraine. But I'm glad I let her win.  It's delicious to go round picking odd things off the shelves. It's not like going to the bookshop- where budget restrictions mean you have to pick and choose with extreme care. Instead you can be promiscuous, daring, irresponsible. I wound up with a graphic novel by Alan Moore, a biography of the Victorian spirit medium Daniel Dunglas Home, a big Taschen picture book about Luis Bunuel, and a pamphlet by the poet Geoffrey Hill. If I don't like them I can whizz  them all back and replace them- as indeed I shall whether I like them or not. I used to have this rather grim thing about wanting to own every book I liked; not any more; I've worked out- and it's taken me long enough- that I can't take them with me.

Comments

[internet-sampo.livejournal.com]

When my wife and I moved from our big house in Ohio to our small apartment in New York City we had a lot of culling to do with our books! In Ohio, we actually had a library in our house. The culling went in several stages. One stage was when we realized how wonderful the Queens borough and NY City libraries were. Oh, the local branch of the Queens library is like all of the other libraries across the US, fully of street people and the elderly. But both the Queens and NYC libraries have online catalogs which you can use to order books from any other branch. The librarians know us by name now.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We have books everywhere. In fact I think the only rooms without substantial numbers of books in them are the kitchen and the bathroom. There's even a bookcase in the entrance hall.

As Virginia Woolf (I think it was her) once said, "Books do furnish a room".

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I do like your blog. Apart from your interesting, eclectic and well-worded musings, you get a better class of comment here, I think.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)