I had specific goals today - tidy around, write a review of Marilynne Robinson's Orange-longlisted Gilead, finish Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go - and I was up early this morning to get on achieving them. But then I remembered some important procrastinating I had to do...and now it's 4.30pm. Damn it.
Still, despite not having any cogent thoughts on Gilead to offer, I've not been entirely unproductive. Far from it, I've rediscovered the joys of public libraries.
It all begins with a heart-rending tale of student impovrishment: it's becoming increasingly clear to me that if I want to continue to pay rent, bills, water rates, buy some sort of nourishment and not saddle myself with an enormous overdraft, I have to discipline my spending. The first new budget rule = buy fewer books. {insert internal cries of protest} But because it's pretty much against my personal ethic to make do with the tomes I have (which would easily last me the next two years) and because of my Orange Prize reading project, I've turned to York Central Library and there ca be no doubt about it. Tis bloody wonderful.
Libraries weren't like this when I was younger, or at least they weren't in Wakefield. They didn't stock new releases in multiple copies, and they certainly didn't buy things because they were on prize long lists. They definitely didn't have computer access to their entire district catalogues. In my memory public libraries are the preserve of large print Romances and Westerns and shelves upon shelves of women's fiction, science fiction and fantasy limited to a little spinny carousel consistenting almost entirely of the life's work of David Eddings and Terry Brooks.
I used to go once week up to being about 10, my hand in mum's, every Monday night between 6pm and 7pm. I'd wander around the children's section, choosing my same favourites again and again - Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, the Amulet stories by Edith Nesbitt, anything by Helen Cresswell and Diana Wynne Jones - while my mum stocked up on a week's worth of Catherine Cookson et al. When I graduated into the adult section (they didn't have Young Adult then as far as I remember...I just hop skipped my way straight into the main Fiction section), we stopped going to the central library every week and started going to the local porta-cabin one every three weeks instead. The idea was that the kind librarian there would have more time (and patience) to help point out books suitable for a voracious 11 year old. Her name was Pam. I seem to remember she was a retired English teacher and I knew, after a while, that she kept horses. I decided almost immediately that she was my idol, and she probably has more than a little to answer for vis-a-vis my reading tastes. It was Pam who steered me towards the SFF section (which she kept well stocked out of her own preference) and started introducing me to High Fantasy: Eddings and Katherine Kerr and Dave Duncan. When I was thirteen it was Pam who urged me to pick up Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry, the trilogy that set the subsequent standard for my teen self, and it was Pam who encouraged me to read Jane Austen and Henry James (her favourites, and therefore also mine at the time, were Sense and Sensibility and Washington Square). Incidentally it was also Pam who allowed me to check out Diana Gabaldon's Outlander - a book jam-packed full of sex - when I was 13...and so I can blame her for my affections towards that series of historical novels as well.
Nevertheless, great as Pam was - she would call to check I was ok if I missed my monthly visit - I started to grow out of the porta-cabin. Despite her best efforts, turn-over was slow and new releases rare; when I got a part-time job I started to buy instead. Soon afterwards, Amazon came into existence and I could get hold of any book I wanted, usually at a discounted price, and all online. When Pam left Middlestown (I wonder where she is now???), I did too and my contact with public libraries all but ceased.
When I accessed York Libraries online catalogue (!) yesterday to check for Orange-longlisters still unbought and now beyond my shrinking purse, it was only on the off chance and in wild hope. To my surprise York Central had *all of them* and several copies of most (9 of Sarah Water's Night Watch!); a good number were checked out but by no means all and so I toddled off down the road with my proof of address and identity to become a member.
My delicious haul: Dreams of Speaking by Gill Jones, Minaret by Leila Aboulela and Helen Dunmore's House of Orphans (all Orange longlisters), Margaret Atwood's little The Tent, Michael Faber's short story collection, Fahrenheit Twins and, finally, The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (a book I've never gotten around to). I've placed holds on both Smiths': Ali's The Accidental and Zadie's On Beauty. Even though I won't have time to read them all before the short list announcement on April 26th I should be able to give something of an Opinion. Hurrah!
The moral of the story and the delight of delights, I've rediscovered the wonder of *free books*, the only possible poultice for not being able to buy any. All the catharsis and excitement of having bought 6 hardbacks but none of the expense, none of the guilt. It's like magic, like a miracle. And it has just the right noise of nostalgia to it.
[Of course, any talk of libraries only makes me want to join the London Library, with its millions of books and constantly updated stock. If only that were free...]
Tomorrow: I absolutely *will* finish my post on Gilead. I will. I will. ;-)
~~Victoria~~