Books have always figured strongly in my life.
Monday night was the night that Dad took us to the library (pictured above). I remember the thrill of progressing from the junior fiction then, once I had read that out, to the adult non-fiction and finally to adult fiction. Oh happy days - new books!
I started volunteering in the town library during the school holidays - our neighbors' daughter was the librarian. I sorted books, I shelved books, I helped people source books, I figured out the Dewey Decimal System in 2 seconds, I could even check books out - very carefully putting the date stamp on the card and then filing the card in the client's envelope and filing that envelope, in alphabetical order, in that day's section. At lunch time I headed to the research section with the encyclopedias and other big books. The crisp pages, the new information, the intoxicating smell!
In WA we had the State Library Service which provided a rotational system for all of the state's libraries. So for a couple of days a month we would back up a few hundred of the less popular books (or ones that everyone had read) and sent them back. The sadness of "unwanted" books was offset by the arrival of even more a day or two later. Can you imagine - new books and I got to look at them first!!!! Well I also covered them and stickered them and put their little envelopes with the cards in sometimes too. And then I put them on the "New Books" stand. They were always on display for a week or two before you could take them out so everyone had a chance to see what was available and put their names on the reserve lists. But if you were at the library all day every day, and it was a really good book, I could usually read it in a week of lunchtimes so waiting was avoided :-)
After the summer, I started volunteering at lunch times and recesses at the school library. I didn't get to serve many kids there but I was still really good at sorting the books and recommending books for my peers. AND, I got to take out 9 books at a time (one weeks supply). All of the other students could only take out two fiction and one non-fiction!
4 comments:
Ahhh ur writing made that memory real to me, I can almost smell the books... :)
I remember living in Canberra, being awfully lonely and spending my time in the national library drawing dogs from books... I was little enough to curl up anywhere and no one bothered me...
I loved this memory you invoked...ta love
Wonderful post, mg. I love to find out how friends of mine [and I count you as one] relate to books. Thank you.
I really do try and respect all people in this world but I just don't understand how you could go through life and not read ... maybe not as passionately as some of us, but at least 3 or 4 books a year. Sigh - mind you more secondhand books for me lol
You sooo sound like me! I worked in the library in high school. Of course the school library didn't have nearly as good of a selection as the public library.
I got my love of reading from my grandmother. She was a voracious reader, and when I was younger, so was I. She'd take us to the library, and I'd check as many as I could carry, often finishing a whole Nancy Drew or Trixie Beldon novel in one day and starting on another. I used to drive my mother crazy, begging her to take me back to the library for more books.
I don't have the time now that I did back then, but I still work in a few novels here and there. Even managed to start a new one while on vacation, and am about 3/4 the way through it.
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