Libraries -- Yes I'm calling libraries temples. They have enriched my life. Every book I read allows me insights, escapism, knowledge and hours of enjoyment.
Reading Public Library
I was around 10 when I discovered the children's room at the Reading Public Library. I fell in love with the twin series, stories about how twins, who were my age, lived in different countries such as France and China.
Foot binding? Wow.
Looking back, the stories were rather racist or xenophobic with a bit of reality, but it did add to my desire to see the rest of the world.
My favorite kid's book, "Summer at Buckhorn" I took out several times to read about five children spending their summer vacation on a farm. From time to time, I've looked for a copy, but a three-figure price is more than I want to pay to relive a memory. The five Rose children still run around barefoot in my brain.
The library had a special meaning when my mother insisted I break my engagement. I was 20. My future husband and I planned to elope, but first I needed to escape. I pretended to go to my summer job at Pleasure Island, a encapsulated Disneyland. The plan: my college roommate Betty would pick me up and I would wait at her house until my future could get leave from D.C. where he was at the Naval School of Music.
While she was driving from Springfield, I hid upstairs in the library. There was a very uncomfortable wooden chair, but I could see the parking lot where she would come. During the time it took her to arrive I read "The Man with the Golden Arm."
The library has been converted to the town hall and the new library is in my old Highland Street School where I went to 5th Grade.
Kelley Barracks Library Stuttgart, Germany
I was worried about reading matter when I moved to Stuttgart, Germany to join my husband who was in an Army Band. As a PFC and then a Spec4 money was so tight, that there might not be enough money for food at the end of the month. Buying books wasn't in the budget.
However, Kelley Barracks had a wonderful library. I feel in love with Taylor Cadwell and also was able to enjoy "Atlas Shrugged" which I didn't like when I was in junior high. I reread it five years later and decided it was pure crap. The library was small but had more than enough books to keep me in reading material for two years.
Back in the States I became an English major/History minor at what today is Lowell University. The name has changed several times. Between classes I was usually at the library. Between being a full-time student, working almost full time at a dry cleaner, every minute was precious.
When my brain needed a break, I would take a few minutes break and read "Punch Magazine."
It was there a made a good friend who shared most of my classes. We studied for exams together and discussed our studies. She helped me through a modern French drama class, that I had no business taking. I think my B was for my courage for taking the course.
Although we went our separate ways, we have reconnected, visited on the Cape where she lives and met up in France several times. In our emails we're still discussing books.
Boston Public Library/Parker Hill Branch
As a student I used the BPL to research papers including on the loss of colonies of the British Empire for Dr. Patricia Goler, probably one of the most brilliant teachers I've ever had. When I moved to Boston, I would love going into the periodical room and reading old "Time" and "Newsweek" magazines.
However, it was the Parker Hill Branch around the corner and a block up the street from where we lived. The staff were friends and their hours were such that if I were in danger of running out of reading matter at 6, I could run up the streets and renew my supply of books.
Brookline Public Library
My daughter's first job at 16 was at the Brookline Public Library. I would pick her up at night when her shift was over. They had the magazine "Paris Match" and it increased my desire to move back to Europe.
I was writing "The Card" and although I tried to find a lot on Danny Cohn-Bendit and the student revolution that brought down DeGaulle for a scene where one of my heroines meets him, there was almost nothing. Little did I know decades later would I have coffee and regularly chat with one his co-fighters who lives in Argelès.
My daughter worked at the library off and on until her mid-twenties.
When I first moved to Switzerland, I lived in Neuchâtel and my books were those that were shared among the Anglo community.
What a joy when I moved to Geneva to discover the English library. They have over 10,000 books and they keep buying English and American books as they are published.
And...
In 2018 I started keeping an Excel spreadsheet on what I read and the number of pages. It has been between 31,000 and 39,000 each year. I do it partially because when I pick up a book by a prolific author, I can check if I have read it before. The page numbers were started because I was curious.
My reading is eclectic, everything from chic lit, misery lit, literature, mysteries, history, biography, politics, poetry and whatever catches my fancy and is available.
I should read more French, but I'm lazy. I will admit when I do read French, it has to be fascinating and I savor every word in a different way.
I don't care if a book is pre-read and I love it if the previous reader made notes. When I lived on Wigglesworth Street in Boston, we exchanged books with our neighbor Hiram Manning. In one book, which was under-wonderful, he'd written "not another damned chignon."
We don't keep all our books. We share them with the Anglo community. Also it is a matter of space. Sometimes I buy a book several times having given it away too often. I've bought Alice Walker's "Horses Make a Landscape More Beautiful" three times and I'm thinking of making it four times.
E-books are fine. There's a certain security in knowing I can get whatever I want when I want it. They don't take up space or need to be dusted. On the other hand, my Kindle, even in its pretty case can need to be recharged at the wrong moment and there are those extended energy failures from storms.
And paper has a feel to it. An old book has a special smell better than any perfume or maybe an incense.
My gratitude to my mother and grandmother for reading to me from infancy on until I learned to read myself, although the boring Dick and Jane books of first grade could have turned me off reading forever.
I have lived so many more lives, known so many more people real and fictional, seen so many different places, learned so much through books.
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