I haven’t been a member of a library since 2005; not unless you count my membership at the Wellcome Library, and I don’t, because I just go there because they have nice big desks with powerpoints and free WiFi (much of my book was written in the Wellcome Library - I’d be pounding out paragraphs about love affairs and look around at the social scientists and medical specialists who surrounded me and feel perfectly daft).
I don’t belong to a library because I don’t need to go to one for my leisure reading needs. Do I? I don’t: when I moved last week I had to get rid of 40 books, and that was only eight months after the last time I moved and I sloughed off about 100. So, no: I don’t go to the library.
And before you gasp in horror, please know that I am confident that I’m not alone - the chat amongst my booky friends is all about procuring proofs and buying 1p copies on Amazon and perhaps shopping at one’s local bookshop (ethical) but not of going to the library.
And what a pity that is. I stepped into the Islington Central Library yesterday, just to check out the architecture, really (the architecture is disappointing - the collection is housed in a new build behind the gracious original building).
But as I passed through the detectors that beep you if you steal a book, my heart skipped a beat and I had exactly the same feeling that I used to on Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons when my parents would take me to the local library and I would cross the threshold and just feel so excited by so much goodness and potential and joy. Libraries! Who knew?
(Which is really all to say that I am going to get a library card, tout de suite, even if it’s just so that I have the right to handle some plastic-wrapped hardbacks that smell of other people’s stale tea.)
