It is a great joy to use the library.
A friend suggested 'We need to talk about Kevin' by Lionel Shriver. I ordered it from the library over the interweb and eventually a message came through the e-waves to tell me it was ready. I read it and on the strength of that experience ordered two books Lionel Shriver had recommended;
'Harbor' by Lorraine Adams and
'Tortilla Curtain' by T C Boyle.
These were delivered in the same fashion and a wet Whit weekend was spent very pleasantly with my nose in books. A part of the pleasure taken in these books is that I don't have to acquire them with serious cash money, look after them, except when they are in my charge, store them, fret about them, lend them to others and forget who I have given them to. I just have to get them back to the kind folk who lend them with the additional treat at the back of my mind that they will be enjoyed, if that is the right word, by others long after I have gone to the great recycling bin in the sky!
All this and heaven too as my mother said on many occasions.
I have a modest proposal to make. Why don't we take the money we currently spend on Weapons of Mass Destruction and spend it on other useful things such as libraries and of course librarians? I would add a note of special pleading for the Stakanovites in Suffolk County Libraries they deserve an extra bob or two.
When my local library was housed in a 4m x 3m cupboard in historic Lavenham, tourists would wander in and say, without fail:- 'Books! Is this some kind of library?' despite the big sign on the door saying - 'Some kind of Library' but then we have all been there.
I never once heard the reply 'Yeah. Really subversive isn't it.' But you knew they were thinking it.
