This week’s Booking Through Thursday questions are about libraries: What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have any funny/odd memories of the library?
My earliest memory of a library…hmmmm. I’ll be honest (which I say a lot anymore, as if you thought I was lying? as if I’m honest Abe? I don’t know why), I don’t remember the first time I set foot in a library. Our local libraries were small town libraries, with the one in our hometown (three miles away from where we actually lived in our home “village”) actually on the first floor of a small house. To supplement the small collection, they had a county bookmobile stop by, which added a little more to the collection.
The library in another nearby town in the opposite direction even had newspapers and magazines. Whoa, although I don’t remember anything too radical there like The Nation (talk about whoa), which is now in the town library where The Wife and I live. Surprising, because where we live is decidedly conservative Republican.
The library in the county seat was a whole three stories– in a Victorian-style house/mansion. If you were into biographies, you had to go all the way to the third floor; and they not only had magazines and newspapers, but sci-fi, fantasy mystery/thriller paperbacks on revolving book thingies (sorry, I can’t think of the word right now; it’s been a long day). Wow!
The county library, meanwhile, which, for some reason, was– and is– out in the middle of nowhere, next to the county prison and the county retirement home, was a one-story building and seemed to have even less books than the county seat library. I’m not sure if they’ve ever expanded, but whenever I drive by (we now live nearby), it doesn’t seem like it. To be honest, our county library was always a disappointment.
As for who took me? My mother. She took me to all the libraries and introduced me to authors such as Agatha Christie, Clive Cussler, Frederick Forsyth, Alistair McLean, Robert Ludlum, to name a few– and I still love Agatha Christie and delving into the spy/thriller masters every once in a while.
I really don’t have any funny/odd memories of libraries– as most of the time when I’m at a library, even a small library, I’m usually overwhelmed by all the possibilities. So I don’t have time for funny or odd moments.
![WG Spock[5]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3199/3287415141_51d509b1af_m.jpg)
5 Comments
August 21, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I remember using the bookmobile during the summer. It amazed me that people would drive books to me!
August 21, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I too love Agatha Christies even now. Not to forget Perry Masons! I own a lot of those!
Library memories
August 21, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I always wished for a book-mobile like I’d read about in books, but I guess our tiny town was a little too big for a book-mobile!
Thanks for visiting my blog. I haven’t yet reviewed the snake-handlers book but WILL very soon!!
August 22, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I remember my mother taking me to the library and I would leave with a huge stack of books. The librarian would always ask me if I could really read the whole stack…and I always did!
August 23, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I can’t recall my first library moment either. My mother took us from the time we were small; going to the library was as much a fact of life as eating dinner every day. You just have to have books.