About 20 years ago my husband, Brian, and I were in Antigua, Guatemala, when I became desperately ill with a stomach parasite. For days, I could do nothing but lie in bed in the cheap hotel where we had a room. Brian found an English-language lending library nearby that would allow you to check out two books at a time for a small fee. He brought back the first two installments of Stephen King's serialized novel, "The Green Mile," and read them out loud to me. When we were done, he returned them and checked out the next tow and so on until we'd gotten through all six. Brian and I have a long history of reading books out loud to watch other, but that one was especially bonding. His steady voice guided me back to life.
...
In elementary school, they used to hand out catalogs form the Scholastic publishing company that allowed you to order books that would then be delivered to you at school. I'd study those catalogs for hours and meticulously fill out the order form on the back, as if I could buy them. But I couldn't. I never turned in the forms because my family was too poor to pay for the books. It's such a visceral memory, aching for those books! The public libraries and school libraries saved me, as did my mother's bookshelf. I read everything that looked even a little bit interesting.
COMMENT
Not one but two library stories. The first is about the relief of finding English books in a non-English country. It helps to understand what a relief it mush be for people with non-English first languages to find non-English books in American libraries.
In the second story, a young reader is too poor to buy cheap paperbacks from the Scholastic catalog. when I was a kid I was allowed to order books and I absolutely loved getting my new stack of them. The books where printed on acidic paper and fell apart if you read them too many times, but that was mostly OK because the old ones quickly became too childish.
No comments:
Post a Comment