February 12th, 2012
Wild Libraries I Have Known: Quiet Reading Room at the Amundsen Scott South Pole Station
How exciting that the Wild Libraries series hits its 5th continent with this post by Laura Conchelos, perhaps our wildest post yet (or at least most extreme). I met Laura nearly twenty years ago, and ever after, she’s been one of my most fascinating friends. I enjoy her adventures vicariously, and delight in the Christmas cards to the South Pole that our friendship gives me occasion to send.
It may not look like much but the Quiet Reading Room at the Amundsen Scott South Pole Station is pretty important to us. We work for the United States Antarctic Program which runs and supports science at the South Pole with the National Science Foundation. Unlike many libraries these days, it’s strictly books and magazines here with some audio books and CDs thrown in for good measure. For our computer needs, we use our own laptops in our rooms or go to the computer room.
This room isn’t as cute or cozy as many libraries but it is chock full of good reading for 
those with the patience to look. Most recent bestsellers can be found here, left by someone else and available for the taking. I usually end up with a stack of books from this room next to my bed that I have to return at the end of our four-month season. Usually I haven’t read half of them! By the end of the 8-month South Pole winter, the Reading Room looks grand, as somebody often has taken it under his or her wing and put energy into reorganizing and labeling the books. Most of the books are novels but there are history books, short stories, poetry, travel, religion and education sections, amongst others. Just as the books get donated over the years, the reading room has been decorated with odds and ends over time, my favorite items being the masks that were made for our wearable art show a few years ago and which can be seen here.
A locked cabinet in the room keeps most of the Antarctic-themed books and other coveted reading. Most of the knitting books get kept in the cabinet, as do the travel guides like the Lonely Planet. All one needs to do to sign these books out is get the keys from the store during its daily hours of operation.
Apart from pilfering for good reading or doing crossword puzzles here on Sundays 
(our one day off), I spend little time in this room. It does get a lot of use from others, however. As the station is such a public place, there are not many locations within it that offer some sort of quiet. People go here to read, write letters, and nap when they don’t want to make the long trek to their rooms. This room is also used by visiting clergy for Masses and church services.
January 9th, 2012
Wild Libraries I Have Known: Frances Morrison Children’s Library
Alexis Kienlen is the author of 2 poetry collections- She dreams in Red and 13. She currently works as an agricultural journalist, and writes a weekly book column for The Grande Prairie Daily Herald Tribune. She is a great lover of books and libraries and has a special place in her heart for teenagers and teen fiction.
The children’s library at the Frances Morrison Branch in Saskatoon is one of my favourite libraries. This particular space is what made me a library lover. Just look at how beautiful it is!
The giant Pooh bear has been there for years, and the entrance way and door to the treehouse haven’t changed since I was a child. I love that this library is created in a way that pays homage to a great literary character. (Note- the Disney version has never crept into this place.) Check out the decorations about the mudroom area, and the door to the treehouse storytelling area.
This space is wonderful, and always has been. This big window looks out onto the
street, and you used to be able to watch the activity at the Saturday Saskatoon farmers’ market. You can also see City Hall and the park in front of it, where my teenage friends and I used to play a creepy, made up game called “Bone Yard” late at night. If you sit up here in the window, you feel like you’re spying on people.
The Children’s Library is on the second floor of the library in its own room. The location is designed specifically for children, with a step-stool so children can sign out their own books at the check out desk, and water fountains at the perfect height for both parents and kids.
Pooh Corner is over 45 years old, and the branch held a homecoming to celebrate their 40th anniversary on November 4, 2006. All past patrons were invited to the celebration, and the library even created a blog and asked people to send in their memories of the space. (I liked the story about the family of three generations who visited Pooh Corner, and the story of the riot.)
I’ve travelled and moved a lot, and I’m convinced the children’s library at the Frances Morrison Branch is one of the best things I’ve 
ever seen. I grew up in Saskatoon and used to go here as a child to take out books and to attend story time. The story times were held in the Pooh Corner treehouse, which was shaped like a little cave. If I remember correctly, there are lights on the ceiling. It was here that you would get to hear great puppet shows and stories. (Apparently children went into the space with only a few adults. I bet that’s not the case today)
Many of the staff members have worked in the library for over 20 years. Some of the storytellers and librarians that I knew as a child are still there. And some of them were just wonderful! I remember one particular woman, Judith Benninger, who is now retired. Judith recited “The Cremation of Sam McGee” as creepy shadow puppets acted out the story behind her. All I have to do is think about her telling the story and I get chills up my spine.
One of the incredibly special things about Pooh Corner is the positive memories people have about the space. When I was working in the northern Alberta city of Grande Prairie, I met children’s writer and former librarian Linda Smith, who has since passed away. When Linda found out I was from Saskatoon, she got very excited and told me that she had loved working in Pooh corner and had fond memories of the best. “That is the best children’s library,” she said.
(As I left the library after taking pictures for this post, I ran into an acquaintance, who introduced me to his friend, who is the current director of Pooh Corner. Serendipity!)
July 26th, 2011
Wild Libraries I have known: The John Hay Library
The lovely Julia Zarankin goes looking for love in the stacks of Brown University’s John Hay Library, and finds it!
I walked into the John Hay Library without knowing anything about it. I was a freshman in college, desperately searching for a part time job and convinced that a library job would increase my likelihood of finding a boyfriend (which high school had not afforded). I imagined scenarios where the elusive boy and I would meet at the circulation desk, debate philosophical problems and run off into the stacks together to kiss passionately (preferably next to collected works by Flaubert, on whom I had a slight, inexplicable crush). And finally, life would be worth living.
I ended up getting a job at Brown University’s Rare Book library – the John Hay Library – where I was one of three female work-study students and worked with a group of middle-aged female librarians. The boyfriend I had imagined meeting was nowhere to be found.
Instead, I discovered books and fell in love with their smell, their feel, their inscriptions, and their histories. I had always been a reader, but before working at the Hay, I never stopped to consider the book as a physical and historical object. Books had merely been containers of information; now they were transforming into living beings. (I did end up meeting that elusive boyfriend, but it didn’t happen in a library, and in the end he didn’t really make life worth living, not to mention that our philosophical discussions never quite got off the ground; the whole thing was slightly underwhelming, but I never would have believed that as an 18-year-old.)
I worked at the reception desk at the John Hay Library for seven hours every Monday and Friday of my freshman year. My job should have been boring and repetitive, but wasn’t: patrons arrived, I helped them fill out request forms, escorted them into the (locked!) reading room, ensured that they had nothing but a pencil and notebook in their possession, entered the request form information into a meticulous log, asked permission to search for the requested book in the stacks, returned with said book, delivered it to the patron and repeated the process.
Sometimes, patrons came to me with research questions and I loved the job for the random conversations and chance encounters. Once, I helped a patron amass bibliographical citations for an art project about vomit in 18th century medical literature. She was a RISD student (the art school down the street) and wore a green boa wrapped around her neck. She returned months later, to thank me for my help, but I never did see her art project. The library also housed a remarkable American literature collection, a medical history collection (hence the vomit-book quest), a military collection replete with toy soldiers, an occult collection, along with all sorts of magician-paraphernalia from the ages, and a Playboy collection, among other things.
I fell in love with the library mainly for the magic I discovered in the stacks. My favorite task was emptying the returns cart and replacing all the books in their proper place. This involved taking a service elevator down into the depths of the library (most of the floors were below ground, and several degrees colder); the floors were dark, with a musty smell I quickly developed affection for, and I would walk through the stacks, turning the lights on one by one. It was there, in the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays that I found first editions of Arthur Miller, H.D., e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens. I would linger an extra ten minutes among the stacks whose layout I had memorized, opening volumes of poetry, reading inscriptions, learning the cardinal points of a literary map I was only beginning to put together in my own mind.
The Hay plunged me into a world where books mattered; every detail of their existence, health and well-being was of utmost importance. Books at the Hay were alive, and I was intoxicated.
July 17th, 2011
Wild Libraries I have known: The Southern African Wildlife College Resource Centre
In what is no doubt the wildest installment in the series yet, Valli Fraser-Celin brings us The Southern African College Resource Centre (and a lion):
The idea of a “wild library” has extra meaning for me, since since I work in a library that is literally in the wild. I work at the Gold Fields Resource Centre at the Southern African Wildlife College (SAWC), which is situated in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. We are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of hectares of wilderness and a large quantity of wild animals including lions, elephant and rhinos (amongst many more). The SAWC trains natural resource managers from all over Africa by developing their skills in areas such as anti-poaching, animal studies, conservation management, ecology and environmental 
education. The extensive range of courses allows students to return to their workplaces with a greater knowledge of how to protect the valuable parks and reserves they work in. The Resource Centre supports their curriculum through conservation management focused materials and provides a space for students to work and study.
So, how did a Canadian librarian end up in this African wilderness?
Well, I’ve always loved traveling and after having traveled to Africa a couple of times, I became obsessed with returning to this beautiful continent. While completing my Master degree in Library and Information Studies at McGill University, I continually searched for ways to combine librarianship, travel and opportunities to experience different cultures. One of the ways I did this was by joining the Librarians Without Borders McGill student chapter, of which I became the President in 
2009. In 2010, the first service learning trip to Guatemala was organized to help the Miguel Angel Asturias Academy develop their school library. This was my first experience with international librarianship and just as I imagined, I really enjoyed it! Although I loved volunteering in Guatemala, I desperately wanted to go back to Africa, so when a volunteer opportunity became available at the SAWC, I grabbed it.
Living in the African bush is such a special experience; I never get tired of hearing lions roaring and hyena and jackal calling at night, seeing beautiful African sunsets and starry night skies. The Resource Centre is really a pleasure to work in: we have huge windows that look out onto the bush, we can hear birds singing outside everyday and we have bush babies living in the roof. Not only is our collection full of materials about the environment and conservation but we also have novels and games for those who need down time from their intensive work schedules. We also have a movie area with beanie bags so that students can watch educational movies and a computer lab where they can work on their assignments.
Working in a “wild library” has made me want to enter the field of environment and conservation, but through establishing 
environmentally oriented resource centres for organizations that focus on environmental education and research. I doubt that after this experience I’ll ever be able to work and live in a big city again. Being in a place where nature surrounds you and is a part of your daily life becomes addictive and I know I’ll always be striving to work in another “wild library”.
My blog: http://whereisvalli.wordpress.com/
Blog posts can also be read at A Hopeful Sign: http://ahopefulsign.com
Librarians Without Borders: http://www.lwb-online.org/
Twitter: @vallifc
June 27th, 2011
Wild Libraries I Have Known: Brewster Ladies Library
Hamilton writer (and fellow member of the Barbara Pym Society!) Judy Pollard Smith writes about the Brewster Ladies Library in Brewster, Massachusetts:
I have a Golden Rule about Libraries. They have to carry Barbara Pym, May Sarton and Edith Wharton. If they carry all three I know they’ll have everything else that good libraries should have. And last week at the Brewster Ladies Libary, I counted several of each writer’s novels, neatly shelved and waiting for patrons to tuck them into their wicker baskets.
In 1852, when Brewster was a flourishing Cape village, Misses Sarah Augusta Mayo and Mary Louise Cobb, along with friends, raised enough money to place a shelf of lending books in the home of Captain Mayo on Main Street. Over the years the library has added a garden dripping with rich vegetation, and a fabulous addition. The original house still serves as a hushed reading room with stained glass windows and the original fireplace. If you listen you can hear the rustle of the Misses skirts as they pass by.
There is a cheerful children’s room with aquarium, story times, toys and books. There are author chats, book discussions, holiday family programs (works out well if it rains on your vacation!) and local artist’s displays.
There are 200 Senior Volunteers, four of whom were sitting gluing the pages back into books when I was there. There are cosy wing chairs, free internet and a general feeling of amicability. Denise at the Reference Desk redefines the words “pleasant, helpful, lovely.” And summer visitors can get a card for no charge.
I say, “Up with those two Misses who started their lending shelf in 1852!” They had no idea what shining threads they were weaving into the posterity of this tiny village.
June 13th, 2011
Wild Libraries I Have Known: West Vancouver Memorial Library
Reader, Editor and Poet Kate Kennedy (who has known a few libraries in her time) tells us about the West Vancouver Memorial Library.
West Vancouver Memorial is my grandmother’s neighbourhood library and she’d often take my sisters and I along to browse when we were in the city visiting. It was significantly larger than our library in Lillooet (about four hours away) and we were always a little floored by the selection. We didn’t have borrowing privileges, but between them my parents usually got down to the coast every few weeks, and if it could be ascertained that the next visit would be before the next due date, we were allowed to take a few books out on Granny’s card. (The possibility of losing or damaging one of these books once you had it home was fairly terrifying.)
It was through these visits that I read most of Cynthia Voigt’s Tillerman family series (Homecoming, Dicey’s Song, and the rest). I wouldn’t say there was any real lack of tomboy characters in the fiction I read at that age, but Dicey Tillerman (particularly as depicted on the first-edition cover of Dicey’s Song, next to her boat, in her red sweatshirt) seemed to set the bar a little higher. She wasn’t ignoring her appearance because she’d decided that was the type of person she was, in contrast to, say, the artistic character, the flirty character, the geek and the baseball star. Her mother had abandoned her and her siblings in the parking lot of a grocery store and now Dicey had to take care of them all on their long trip to find other living relatives. Dicey didn’t have time to be a type of anything. I haven’t reread much of the fiction I read back then, but I think there was an authenticity to the high stakes in Voigt’s books that wasn’t so common, and maybe isn’t now either.
Apart from the books themselves, what I loved best about the library in West Vancouver was the pair of rounded, enclosed, 
wood-panelled study carrels up in the adult section. They were reminiscent of hollowed-out trees and illuminated by inviting pot lights, and the thought of having something to study in one of them was pretty thrilling. Then, when I was in grade eight, I got to spend a year living in the city, attending a private school that went in for the full tie and kilt uniform. Having by this time moved into a lot of boarding school literature (Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers series and Kit Pearson’s The Daring Game, among others) this was heady stuff for me. I found myself one afternoon at the West Vancouver Memorial Library, in my uniform, with a friend, having nabbed one of the precious study carrels, books spread open before us, watching in confusion as this friend began an elaborate process of removing or obscuring all the recognizable parts of her uniform lest we be spotted by public school students. But we were wearing blazers! With crests! In the world’s best study carrel! What could possibly be wrong?
The ambiance of that library was in part, for me, an extension of the ambiance of Vancouver, a city that was always a treat and that I didn’t want to leave when it was time to go, but that I also never figured out how to fit into properly. I eventually came to love the Interior, and would probably now choose it over the coast, but the coast will always feel a bit decadent, full of things that we didn’t have in our town, the books we had to hurry up to read in time but that we didn’t want to ruin by rushing through.
June 6th, 2011
Wild Libraries I Have Known: Vanessa’s Bedroom
In which Nathalie Foy tells us about a wild library she has known:
It’s not a library, exactly, but I did borrow books from Vanessa’s bedroom. It was a large, cool and quiet space, with the hushed and reverential atmosphere of a library, and from its shelves, I borrowed many books. When Kerry asked me to contribute to this series, it was memories of Vanessa’s books that came most powerfully to mind.
Port-au-Prince, 1977. We were seven, and Vanessa was my best friend. We lived in Haiti, and attended Union School in Port-au-Prince. Vanessa was an only child and adopted, her pigtails were perfect ringlets and never fell out; I had an annoying younger brother and a boring pedigree, my poker-straight hair sought any means of escape from braids, ponytails or hair bands. Vanessa had a four-poster bed with a canopy in her bedroom, all frills and luxury. Bright pink bougainvillea bloomed outside her window, and in golden rows on her bookshelf sat the complete set of Nancy Drew mysteries. Every single one. All arrayed in numerical order, the yellow spines each had the cameo profile of the girl detective holding her magnifying glass: a vast, crisp expanse of potential. Even the school library did not have the whole set.
Oh, how I envied her that collection! I borrowed and read the books in sequence, but even at the time, I was aware of a definite taint to the experience. There was a limit placed on my pleasure by greed: I wanted the books to be mine. I am certain that the book buyer in me was born in that bedroom, because I do like to own books.
Somehow, at the impressionable age of seven, I conflated the wonders of that complete set of Nancy Drew mysteries and the four-poster bed with being an only child and adopted—all of which were to be envied. It was all so exotic; it was what I was not. I’ve met other only children and adopted children since then, none with complete sets of Nancy Drew, and I like my brother considerably more today than I did when he was five and a pest. I have since learned that Carolyn Keene is a pseudonym for the stable of anonymous writers who wrote the Nancy Drew mysteries for $125 a pop. My life experience has not cured me of my covetousness when it comes to books, though.
I love libraries. I love what they do and what they stand for. I love that they open up the world for us. I am humbled each time I see the crowds outside of the Toronto Reference Library, and I feel a surge of joy when I see the noble griffin protecting the doors of Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library, the branch I use most regularly. Most of the time, I check out books for my three boys, being more reliable with getting things read by the due date with them than for myself. But if we read a book and love it, I itch to buy it. My boys have the luxury of a childhood lived in one place. I moved to a new country every two or three years, and precious few books from my childhood survived the moves. I’m making up for lost time and making my own rows of delicious books to devour.
May 30th, 2011
Wild Libraries I Have Known: Binbrook Library
There are only so many wild libraries one person can know, so it is fortunate that some lovely writers are going to continue this series now that I’ve exhausted my own supply of library loves. First up is my dear friend Rebecca Rosenblum, award-winning author of Once, whose second story collection The Big Dream will be published in September.
I have to admit that my original draw to the Binbrook Public Library was the very unliterary plastic slide. I was about 4 I suppose, and this indoor slide, made out of what seemed to be orange Tupperware, was thrilling. Even better, the slide could be inverted to form a very safe version of a teeter-totter. It was hard for a four-year-old to flip this heavy thing, even with the help of her two-year-old brother, but we could do it—a very satisfying feat.
So from a young age, Binbrook Library was always challenging and rewarding me. I’m not from Binbrook—I’m from the next town over, where there’s a very nice, if slightly smaller and less modern library. That one is in a house, and when I finally went there, as an older child, I was concerned that it didn’t look like a library. Binbrook Library will always remain my prototypical library, my library-of-the-mind, and it is a good standard. Opened in 1982 (it replaced an older structure that my parents apparently visited in that pointless time before they had kids), the one-story rambling building had lots of windows, 100% wheelchair accessibility that necessitated an excellent ramp I liked to run up and down. There was also a large, light-filled open area for the afore-mentioned orange slide/rocker, as well as story times, plants, and two large decorative quilts hanging from the wall. The quilts were made by children at the local school.
I did eventually take an interest in the books in the children’s section, though I was especially keen on how many I might be permitted to take home. The librarians and pages all seemed to know who I was, and always greeted me as Becky, though I did not have my own card until I was older. An oblivious child, I did not know who they were until I was much older than that.
Obvious to any former country dweller would be that my parents always drove me to the library—there was no other way for a rural kid to go anywhere. So I guess they were there when I was running up and down that ramp, but I don’t remember their presence except for the final check-out battle over what (how much) I could take. I was sometimes left for library programs and on other occasions just to read. I guess that’s a 1980s thing parents don’t do now, but seriously, the Binbrook library was the safest place in the world.
A favourite library memory, though only loosely tied to the actual library: I was bolting across the gravel parking lot one day, anxious to get inside, and my father waved at an elderly woman walking down the drive from the retirement home behind the library. Then he turned away to do or say something, and when he turned back, she had disappeared. He sent me into the library while he investigated; it turned out she had fallen into a long-grassed ditch, invisible to the drive or the parking lot. She was quite embarrassed when my dad retrieved and righted her, but better than remaining as she was in the grass.
It was a good bit more country back then. Changes since I moved away include subdivisions, and a school friend of mine who is now a librarian walks from the subdivision to work everyday—I haven’t been back in a while, and can’t quite picture that. The other change is that the Wentworth system, which the Binbrook library was part of, has now been folded into the Hamilton one. I wish they’d done that when I lived there; when the two were separate collections, if you wanted a book that wasn’t in the Wentworth system, you had to physically go into Hamilton.
To be honest, I was scared of the big central library in downtown Hamilton—it not only had more than one room, it had half a dozen floors on which to get lost in. Worse, none of the librarians knew my name, which (obviously!) precluded my speaking to them. In grade school, I only went there for extremely demanding school projects; I continued to use the Binbrook library for most of my personal and scholastic reading needs well into my teens. I was quite happy to wander the Dewey-decimal aisles and take my research materials to the long study tables behind the librarian’s desk. As a little kid, I had only wanted to tally up how many, but as I got older I remained convinced that more is better when it comes to books—more resources, more ideas, more points of view. Binbrook’s collection was (and, I assume, is now even more) substantial for a small-town library, but eventually my schoolwork got more specialized and I had to go more often to the city library, or even subject specific ones at McMaster University. I had the Dewey Decimal system almost by heart by that point, and the discovery of the Library of Congress system was one of the many things I held against big strange libraries.
Of course, I eventually learned to use, and even love, a wide variety of libraries. But none of the others ever felt quite like home.
May 3rd, 2011
Wild libraries I have known: Lillian H. Smith (TPL Branch)
Believe it or not, the history of the Lillian H. Smith Library stretches way back to even before it was a wild library I had known. (The following information is courtesy of the library’s website.) The library opened in 1922 as the “Boys and Girls House”, and was the first library in the British Empire devoted exclusively to children’s literature. In 1995, the Boys and Girls House closed, opening a few months later as the Lillian H. Smith branch in its current location at the corner of Huron and College Streets. Lillian H. Smith had been head librarian of the children’s library from its inception, and had a fascinating career as a children’s librarian and champion of librarianship (which you can learn more about at this website devoted to Smith, to her work, and to the history of the Boys and Girls House).
My own history with the Lillian H. Smith Library begins only last fall, though I had been there a few times previously to see exhibitions at the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books. But I became a regular patron once Harriet had outgrown the Spadina Road Branch‘s baby program, and we were directed to Lillian Smith for their Monday Toddler Time. I was doubtful anything could replace Spadina Road in my heart, and truly, nothing ever could, but Lillian Smith comes awfully close. Because there’s a gryphon at the door, and a light fixture inside that hangs down over four stories, and we get to ride an elevator when we go there, down to the big room with the stars on the door. Which is significant because there are stars on the door, but also because there’s a door at all, which means that Harriet and her toddler comrades can run around in circles without danger of escaping, and we all partake in a half our of great stories, songs and games led by Joanne Schwartz (whose new book City Numbers is launching next week at Type Books).
Lillian Smith also holds a special place in heart, because it has the largest selection of children’s books I’ve ever laid eyes upon. We 
stick to the west side of the building where the picture books are, but I’ve run after Harriet through the east side enough times that I’m familiar with the chapter books too (paperbacks on spinning racks, which remind me of my library youth). On the picture book side, we always check out the selections on the featured book shelves to get our mitts on brand new books so crisp their spines haven’t even cracked yet (and/or their flaps haven’t even been ripped).
But I also love the breadth of a collection that has been growing for 90 years (and still has the old “Boys and Girls House” stamps on the inside). I used to think that vintage children’s books were only fun for hipster parents, but Harriet proved me wrong with her love of Marjorie Flack’s Angus books, Virginia Lee Burton’s Choo Choo, Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings, Curious George, Madeleine, and old-school Dr. Seuss (The Smeetches, and current obsession McElligott’s Pool).
Plus new-school obsessions: we LOVE Charlie & Lola, anything by Mo Willems, Marthe Jocelyn, Marisabina Russo, Ruth Ohi, Sheree Fitch, Mem Fox, Shirley Hughes, and Marie Louise Gay. Etc. etc. Because there are shelves and shelves to love. And I absolutely love that we can visit Lillian H. Smith so regularly, and the collection will never be exhausted– there is always something new to discover.
This library is just one of the reasons we’re so happy to live where we do.
April 5th, 2011
Wild libaries I have known: The Himeji International Exchange Center
It was one of the very best times of my life, the year and a bit we spent in Japan. The sakura bloomed every day, we bullet-trained our way towards various adventures, lived in a city with a castle at its centre, found our employment immensely gratifying, made lifelong friends, and decided we’d get married. (Not all of this is actually true, though the castle is, and so are the friends, and other things. It was much better in retrospect than it was at the time, but even at the time I knew that we’d treasure it for ever, it was all so thresholdy, and I have never been so young.)
We’d been prepared for culture shock, though that was about as useful as being prepared to have a baby. What I hadn’t been remotely prepared for was the experience of becoming illiterate, of having print disappear from my life. And of having books suddenly be rare. Japan is home to some of the best bookstores I have ever seen, stocked with books so gorgeous you want to stroke them, and I couldn’t read a single one. It baffled me. I kept going into the bookshops anyway, examining these books as though were bound up in a code I might crack– I never did.
I came to Japan after spending two years in England, where I’d buy 3 for 2s at Waterstones on my lunch break multiple times a week. In England, I got books free by buying hearty cereals and using a code printed on the inside of the box. I basically smelled like a charity bookshop, and that was fine with me. And then all of a sudden, I couldn’t read anymore, and it was like the time I was in Austria and the only book I could find was The Assassination of Marilyn Monroe, except this time, I wasn’t just passing through.
Which brings me to the Himeji International Exchange Centre (which I think was called the Himeji International Association when I lived there, just to be pedantic). It wasn’t very wild, actually, and it wasn’t even a library, though it was hush hush, all the time. But it had a library, with an English section that wasn’t particularly large, and it was a treasure to behold. And once again, I don’t remember the books I borrowed from there (except for Orientalism, and Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto, and Underground by Haruki Murakami; okay, I do remember a few), but I remember the joy of the selection, and how much more I valued books and reading when the experiences weren’t so readily available.
It was a same thing with the pile of books at the top of the stairs outside at staff room at the school we taught at. You’d add your pile of books to it when you left the country (unless you were me, in which case you’d spend hundreds of dollars sending battered Penguins home by sea). I remember reading Hope in the Desperate Hour by David Adams Richards (“a bit depressing”, my friend warned me), and Camille Paglia’s Sex, Art and American Culture.
I would have read anything, and I mostly did. (We also bought English books from amazon.jp, and trekked into Wantage Books in Kobe to buy another Margaret Drabble). I read trash, I read Manga, I read nonfiction, I read books I didn’t understand, and ones that lulled me to sleep in their predictability. Any book was always, always better than no book, which is a really interesting lesson to learn, but I am really most grateful for these libraries for keeping me from having to learn it the hard way.
Further:
- Once a really terrible thing happened to me at the Himeji International Association.
- Have you downloaded my book Spring Comes Suddenly and supported Japanese relief efforts?
