I always loved them, as buildings, as spaces: the dark side of the single standing shelf in the one room woman’s club library in Shinnston, WV, where the grown up books were. Where I met Dostoyevsky.
The awesome lion-guarded 42nd Street Library in New York far more like the Metropolitan Museum than the library where I first took out books. But in some weird way libraries never became my preferred source of books: the books I loved most were in people’s houses (my mother’s set of Charlotte and Emily Bronte with the Rockwell Kent woodcut illustrations; a book of cartoons in my aunt’s house in Scott County Tennessee that were like a twisted version of New York to me– drunk flappers and street urchins, pigeon breasted matrons). I liked to own books. I bought all the Black Stallion books, $2.00 each of birthday and holiday money over several years.
Why did I never bond with libraries? It wasn’t about ownership as much as about intimacy, perhaps. I know people who read constantly from libraries, sometimes visiting several branches in a day to get enough books to tide them over their vacation. And I DID sign out books, stacks of books, but they weren’t mine. I had to return them. There was a vague anxiety about getting them back in a timely fashion, unsoiled, with no dog ears.
Partly, I think I don’t like the social aspect of running into people I know. Reading is deeply private to me. When I read, I leave my body here, and go elsewhere. I trade books on Paperback Swap; I buy cheap used books via Bibliofind and the other places for used books. I look through my husband’s mysteries and thrillers if I’m really at a loss. I hope soon, finally! to have an electronic reader, access to all books, all knowledge, all entertainment, all experience.