So I was on my dear friend Sue Williams' blog a few days ago, catching up on her fabulous posts when another friend commented that financial constraints make them an avid library user and I thought: Damn straight. Libraries are sexy. What do I mean by "sexy"? Well, not only are public libraries economical, they are revolutionary (two of my favorite things). The idea on which they are based posits this: that reading is crucial to our human growth and that everyone should be able to read (and have access to knowledge) FOR FREE.
I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, reading was my saving grace, keeping me sane in a world that was more about survival than about enjoyment.
Not interested in the Clueless age of the early 90s (and being without MTV and extra money for the local Waldenbooks), the library opened up a universe of possibility for me; reading Anais Nin's diaries, Stephen King's tales of grey matter and the macabre, Neil Gaiman's dreamy and dark worlds, and Sylvia Plath's and Anne Sexton's verse kept me sane when I couldn't make sense of what was around me, showed me that there was more to EVERYTHING than what I could see on the surface.
Reading made me question, contemplate, challenge, and DREAM: important skills that have made me the person I am today. I owe all these skills (at least in part) to my library (and the kick-ass librarians who showed me the way).
So yeah. My point: Reading is a revolutionary, sexy act, one that is made possible by libraries. Go support your local library and the awesome people who work to bring you the books.
Also: if you know a young person, give them books. Take them to get their library card. Show them how cool it is to be in control of what knowledge they receive and to be contemplative of how they respond.
Comment on this and let me know which books changed your life and you're reading this summer!
How true, sister, how true! Lovely post. And by the way, your sidebar looks fabulous! xoxo
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in elementary school, we were only allowed to take out 2 books at a time from the school library. One of my two books was always the same: D'Aulaire's Books of Greek Myths. (Note that I also took out DOZENS from the local public libraries.)
ReplyDeleteMy high school courtship with my now-husband also involved A LOT of library time... ah, if the isolated stacks of the libraries in NYC could talk!
I shudder to think how much I racked up in library fines as a child. I also "lost" several library books that we had to pay to replace before they mysteriously reappeared on my bookshelf! The saddest lesson I learned as a child, though, is that librarians don't appreciate kids writing notes on the book's first pages about how great the book is. That is considered "damage." Oh, well.
ReplyDelete