In one of yesterday’s HaBOs, Amanda wrote about being grounded from the library for reading romance novels as part of her request to find her lost book – which was found because y’all know pretty much everything, including, I suspect tomorrow’s lottery numbers. Maybe.
After Amanda’s lost book was identified as Silver Fire by Sally Stone, the discussion that evolved afterward was all about your memories of using the library, either the one at school or the one in your town.
Aelily wrote,
…Amanda’s story about being grounded from the library reminded me of a time I got grounded from my books. I wasn’t doing my homework (cause I had books to read that were far more interesting) and my grades were suffering, so as a punishment, my mom took all my books away. It was a rough month;I had to smuggle in reading from the outside,and read ahead in my lit textbook.
LML has an even more chilling memory:
My mom would call the school library and the public library and tell each that I was not allowed to check out any books that week because I had misbehaved. Sooo embarrassing…
Seriously. I just got the shivers thinking about that. YIKES. That’s hard core punishment right there.
I asked the ladies here in Bitchery HQ if they had any library memories, and two of us, who wish to remain nameless because of deep-seated shame, took books out of the library without checking them out (GASP) because we weren’t sure we were allowed to read them and didn’t want anyone to know. I’m not naming names, but I bet that’s true of a few of you, too.
(Please don’t hurt us, wonderful librarians! We are sorry!)
Liz Talley said in the comments yesterday that,
I thought I was the only one who’d ever been punished by taking away a book. My mother was infamous for hiding my books until I did whatever chores she’d set before me. I remember the first time she did it – I had hurried home from school, excited to get to that next chapter, and my damn book was gone! My mother sauntered in, fanned with it and said I’d get it back when she could see the floor in my room. I’d never been so absolutely incensed in my life.
I begrudgingly cleaned up and she finally gave me the book. I learned how to hide my books after that. Probably under all the clothes.
I’m kind of relieved I’m not the only one who had a very messy room with books hiding in the clutter.
Carrie has lovely library memories – I wish my library had had one of these:
I have a lot of library stories but my most visceral library memory, the most physically clear early childhood one, is of being in our old yellow kitchen listing to Dial-A-Story on the white phone that was, brace yourself, actually attached to the wall, and playing with the cord while a recorded librarian read stories to me.
It’s what my mom would do when she was busy and I was bored. “Go call Dial-A-Story!” and you never knew what story you would get. Amazingly, even in the youtube era, the library where I live (same one I grew up with) still has “Dial-A-Story.” Only for kids – you can’t call and hear a random excerpt from Outlander.
Elyse says that her husband had an awesome teacher who changed his life with a book:
She gave him a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ( A ) to keep because she believed he was a reader even though he struggled.
It lead to his lifelong love of scifi and books and also his eventual diagnosis of dyslexia – and his job in a bookstore where we met and fell in loooove.
All together now: Awwwwwwwww!
Elyse also has memories of being scared to look at the romance in her library:
I loved the library as a kid. When I got to middle school and found romance novels, I was traumatized though because the paperback romances were right in the middle of the main room in full sight of the doors and ANYONE COULD WALK IN AND SEE ME LOOKING AT THEM!
I know that feeling. I KNOW IT WELL. In my library growing up, after I was introduced to romance, the only place I could find them were the spinning metal racks that were directly across from the circulation desk. *shudder*
At least the librarians never said a word to me.
Vicki wrote in the comments to yesterday’s post that she had to sneak past the librarians:
By the time I was eight, I had read my way through the children’s section at the Vancouver Public Library and started on the adult section. It wasn’t my mother who tried to keep me out, though. Mom just dropped us off and went shopping. It was the librarians. I would wait until they weren’t looking and sneak in. Read the early Mary Stewart that way.
I had no idea Canadian librarians were so fearsome! Good gracious, Canada!
RedHeadedGirl says her library habit was formed at a young age:
Libraries were the only way to keep up with my reading habit. It’s where I discovered a lot of the romances that I remember fondly (for better or for worse) and during the summers, dad would either trot me down to various branches or I would ride my bike when I was old enough.
And in Boston we are lucky enough to have this amazing villa of a main library that made studying and writing papers more tolerable.
Smart Bitch Amanda (and wow there are so many awesome Amandas that hang out here- hi guys!) has a really touching library story, too:
My love of the library didn’t happen until into my late teens. After high school. Which was a super rough time for me. I was trying to go to school and my mom sort of left for a while. I won’t get into the details. My dad travels a lot for work and my brother was around 14 or 15. I love my brother, but I was very depressed having to take care of him as a mom would (taking him to school, making dinner, etc) and take a semester off of college.
My solace became the library and GoodReads. I discovered a few groups on GR that did romance reading challenges, like read your way through the month (example: If it was January, the first word in the title or the author name would have to correspond and spell out the month). It gave me a sense of structure, which I know I need in general. I’d make reading lists and put books on hold at the library to pick up. We lived in a rural area then, and I’d make the hour drive to go get them. I’d probably pick up three or four books at a time and be done with them in a week or two. Rinse and repeat. I probably would have lost my mind if it wasn’t for the Alachua County Library.
Thank you to everyone in yesterday’s comments for the suggestion – your stories are lovely to read! So what about you? Do you have a library story you’d like to share?
I was already in love with books by this time but as a quiet twelve year old I found solace in my school library. At the the time our junior high shared a building with the high school. It was one long building and no upstairs. Just a long hallway were everyone congregated along the sides. I am and was extremely introverted and just didn’t really fit in. We always got to school early and I spent most of my mornings in the library. They had a great selection of old harlequins from the 60’s and 70’s and since I was in that building for four years I spent many morning hours going through them. When they built the new high school, my junior year, I hated saying goodbye to that old library. Sadly the harlequins did not make the move.
Our family went through a period of emotional and financial disaster when I was a teen and money was extremely tight–no movies, no phone service, no meals out, no new clothes, no doctors except in emergencies. Fortunately, I lived within walking distance of the public library. I’d go down there every day in the summer and after school because they had two things I craved: books, and air conditioning.
I read my way through the science fiction and fantasy section, from Lloyd Alexander to Roger Zelazny. Then I discovered novels with romance, mostly Barbara Cartland, Taylor Caldwell (anyone remember Testimony of Two Men) and Anya Seton.
Some days I felt poor, but most days, I felt very, very privileged.
I give back by tutoring young readers, and by serving on our library foundation board. Public libraries and reading kept me sane, healthy and strong.
Library stories? I got a million of ’em. My town’s first library was located in a house on the street behind the Elk Grove Bowl, Jarosch’s bakery and my pediatrician’s office. Too far to walk or ride a bike, but it made that visit to doctor worthwhile. The book drop was an old mail box, and the first book I ever checked out was Put Me In The Zoo by Robert Lopshire.
When they built the new library, much closer to my home, they had a seven book limit which we cleverly got around by checking out the max going back in the stacks after parking the checked out books at a table with a friend. We’d then check out another couple stacks, because the librarians never realized it was us again. Yes, we were naive, and they were awesome.
My most recent library story would be pulling up to the drive through window -yes, the GBPL has a drive through. It is every bit as awesome as it sounds. I digress.- and the librarian looking at my card and excitedly saying, “Oh, you’re Donna!” To which I cleverly responded, “Um, yes?” She went on to explain that apparently my voracious reading habits and use of the reservation system was a topic of discussion around the GBPL, but she was never at the window when I came through, and it was nice to have a face to put to the name.
LIBRARIANS TALK ABOUT ME!!
I loved Dial-A-Story! It still seems bafflingly wonderful to me that you could get a story read to you over the phone whenever you wanted…. There are so many ways to find stories on the internet now, but none replicate that cozy intimacy of making a phone call and hearing a story in your kitchen, just for you. Plus, it was good practice in learning to use the phone. My kids really don’t get the whole dialing thing since you just touch names or pictures these days. Actually, they almost never actually talk on the phone–it’s all texting or FaceTime.
In middle school, I was uncoordinated, shy, and wore glasses, so I utterly hated recess (tetherball, anyone?). One day, I discovered that the punishment for not doing my math homework was having to spend recess ‘quietly reading’ in the school library. I think I read every science fiction and fantasy book in that library before my teacher caught on.
Or maybe, looking back, since my math grades remained pretty good without the homework, he was just a very compassionate man!
By the time I was ten, I’d read every book in the children’s section of our local library at least once–some of them multiple times. Granted, the place wasn’t huge by any stretch of the imagination, but there were probably 1500 books. My dad, who always encouraged my imagination, took me to the library, and introduced me to the head librarian. He requested that Mrs. Lake add my name to his library card and told her I was allowed to check out any book in the adult section. Glory! I spent two days perusing the shelves before I finally picked Mary Stewart’s THE MOONSPINNERS and Ian Fleming’s THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. Those books still remain in my top 25 favorite books ever. Skip ahead over 30 years later. When my dad died, he had library books checked out. To help out my mother, and to get away for a bit, I returned those books to the library (long since relocated to a much bigger facility). I checked them back in, and told the librarian of his death. She pulled out his library card, and my name was still listed on it. Sitting in my car, that’s when I finally succumbed to the tears. And now my own books are in that library. I wish Dad had been alive to check one of them out.
My family has a long history with libraries, and I remember long hours in them, both public libraries and school. Librarians knew me well enough to suggest books they thought I’d like. But my strongest library memory is from when we moved back to Georgia after 5 years in Texas. We were all getting our library cards (my mom and 4 kids) and the librarian asked her if she wanted to limit what we could check out (I think they could restrict kids to kid books) and my mom looked appalled and said loudly “I would never restrict what my kids read! They can read whatever they want!” and it was true. I’ve never felt like there was a section I couldn’t go into (including romance).
We were all big readers (and introverts), so when we were punished there was not being sent to our room, where we could read happily in solitude. I remember being told to sit on the couch in the middle of our busy house, not able to do anything, read, or talk to anyone. It worked!
As a bookworm teen, both my local public library branch and my middle school library knew me by sight and greeted me with waves and smiles. My three favorite memories are:
–Very seriously asking a public librarian if the (extremely tame) teen historical romance I was considering was “suitable”. In my defense, I was 12, and my mother had caught me paging curiously through my grandmother’s Harlequins and thus scrutinized every book I checked out in case it was giving me ideas. The librarian assured me that it was, and gave me several other recommendations along those lines.
–The repair/bindery folks at my library very kindly took my copy of Watership Down, which has an inscription on the inside cover from a departed friend, and fixed the peeling-away cover and loose pages.
–When I was 14, I had scoliosis surgery and wasn’t able to participate in gym class (yeah, I was so very broken up about that). The librarians invited me to stay in the library every gym period for that entire grading period, cleared it with the administration and my parents, showed me the new books that weren’t even processed yet, and let me help out by shelving a cart here and there. It was awesome.
My love affair with the library started when I went to College and discovered the university library. I never considered that I would find Romance books there. I just used the library for math & science text books. But one day, I noticed those little revolving racks full of paperbacks near the check out counter and started reading. When I finished all the Romances in that rack, I knew there had to be more where those came from. I tracked the shelves containing fiction and romance. And that was it, I was unstoppable. I felt like a child in a toy store with no parent to stop me from getting what I want. The university libe had a 20 book limit, and we could borrow books for up to 6 weeks before returning them. I loved it.
I also got punished through book deprivation. The worst was when I was around 14 years old, and my dad found my Romance novel stash and he took all the Judith McNaught, Jude Deveraux, and even Jane Austen books away. He wouldn’t tell me where he kept them, despite my trying to explain. As far as he was concerned, those books were worthless and I shouldn’t be reading them. I think that’s how I began to feel ashamed about reading Romance.
@Kat:
I have to tell you – I love the name of your blog. “The Book Barrio” is awesome. And I’m sorry you had a parent who shamed your romance reading. You’re definitely not alone in that.
I adored my hometown library, it was the most beautiful building. It was built in the 1850’s and was red sandstone and looked like a castle with a tall clock tower and a sculpture of the goddess of Wisdom over the door. When you walked in there was a tiny vestibule with bronze busts of the founder of the town and his daughter, who founded the library, and a mosaic of Perseus taming Bellerophon on the floor. The main reading room had a tall arched ceiling that I used to imagine was the hull of a ship turned upside-down, and lined with cases containing artifacts brought back by some Victorian adventurer from all over the world. The original stacks were two stories with tall windows that formed arches on the top and lovely carved woodwork shelves and railings. Whenever my family got to be too dysfunctional for me to stand, I would go there and hide in the arched window embrasures on the second floor, usually in the history section, and read whatever I found. My mom fondly remembered the children’s library being tucked into the tower off the second floor stacks, but by the time I came along that room had become the city archives and they had built a new modern wing; the children’s library was in the basement of that wing, and I don’t think I ever got through all the books in it. It was a really magical place for me but being on the other side of town not easy to get to on my own until I was old enough to drive.
My school was also over 100 years old and didn’t have a library, but they did keep a bookshelf with about 50 age-appropriate books in each classroom that you were free to check out. One year they decided they were going to replace all the books so they let each kid in the class pick one to take home and keep. I was desperate to grab my favorite book, which I had checked out multiple times, but another kid who had never read it grabbed it first. I was just heartbroken. I should see if I can find it online somewhere now.
I had a job in the college library as a work-study all four years and I loved it. My favorite thing was re-shelving books because I never knew what I would stumble across. Everything from the complete and unexpurgated Arabian Nights to a sixteenth-century cookbook that I still use recipes from.
My mother was terrible at being consistent about the library so whenever we went we had late fees and so we would often go to a local bookstore (couldn’t have been cheaper but I guess bugged her less?) and the proprietor at that shop has always stayed with me. She knew my twin sister and I well and would handpick wonderful books for us, give us ARCs of books, and also chose a wonderful selection of age appropriate and age wholly inappropriate material for us.
Now I work for a university and one of the best perks is being able to get nearly anything through ILL and have it delivered straight to my office!
Also I live adjacent to my town’s main branch of the public library which makes me look forward to having kids who have that at their disposal right next door! <3
I consider myself lucky – my parents are responsible for my love of both reading and the library. My first romance came from the library, and while I bet my mom was a bit scandalized by it (it was Hollywood Kids by Jackie Collins; I was maybe…12? 13?) she didn’t say a word. When I was working low-paying jobs after college and couldn’t afford new books, I’d browse the stacks the same way I’d browse the shelves at the bookstore. I ended up reading a number of unknown authors that way. And I love the librarians of my public library system – give ’em a couple key words and they can find just about any title. They’re amazing.
But I hated the libraries at my colleges. They were either these super dark and foreboding places or completely sterile and bland, full of computers and not enough books.
As a teenager, I worked at the public library part time. I used to love shelving books, or shelf reading (making sure the books on the shelves were in correct order). They were the best ways to find good books to read. That is how I discovered The Flame and the Flower (yes, I am old). I could read a book a day back then, and read many, many books. I remember one summer I read our entire collection of Hollywood movie star biographies, so I am now really good at 1930s and 1940s movie trivia!
I was an early and voracious reader. By second grade, I was reading at the fifth grade level, along with several other kids in my class. During our weekly visits to the library, the librarian would quide us through the “older kid” books and help us make appropriate reading selections for our age and reading skill. Over the years, she introduced me to the Little House stories and Marguerite Henry’s horse books, along with many of classics.
I loved reading these stories, some are pretty sad but some are just sweet.
I loved the library because none of the librarians EVER cared what I read unlike my mom, and I met my best childhood friend there. She was glaring daggers at me for sitting in HER favorite spot (on the floor, in the back, wedged between two bookcases).
I have so many library stories, libraries and books have shielded me and sheltered me from many emotional and physical difficulties during my school and college years. I actually lived in one of the college libraries when I was a sophomore. I worked as a waiter, had scholarships and grants, but could not afford housing. I would pull a couple of club chairs together read a little romance or YA then sleep during library night hours. It was crazy.
It was the senior reference librarian that gave me housing above her garage where I lived until I finished all my training….eight years!
I can’t imagine what life would be like without libraries and librarians. I still use the library, my husband and I go to the library these days instead of prowling around bookstores. Our main branch has a great cafe!
As far as “taking” library books…..SPL library had a section in all branches that you could just take cuz they weren’t in the catalogue. On the honor system….man oh man do I have a lot of books that I kept…..It’s how I found Carla Kelly and Georgette Heyer!
Another, naughty, library memory comes from my college education at an urban university. The school had a huge library over several floors and full of obscure books. It also had several corridors of study rooms, tiny offices with tiny windows. Since most of us were commuters, there were few private places so the rooms were sometimes used for makeout sessions. If there was paper taped in the window, you knew the room was occupied long-term, one way or another. I only knew of these things through rumors. Cough-cough.
I have wonderful memories of our small town (less than 8,000 pop.) library. My dad, who was the county ag agent, had his office next door. So, easy access. My mom went to the library every Saturday morning and spent plenty of time checking out books. The librarians always, always, always saved her the new mysteries. And I remember getting my very own library card. I had just turned 6 and was starting school in a couple of weeks. And that was 1960. I did have to get permission to start checking out books that were geared toward teens–you know, Cherry Ames, etc.–but my mother never restricted me on my literature. By the time I was 10, I had a book in my binder, so yeah, ready to go.
We had the best small town library ever. It was a wonderful place to go.
I will say that as a sixth grade reading teacher, I occasionally held a student’s book hostage until an assignment was turned in. I guess that was kind of mean, but hey! I got the assignment so no zero for my little reader.
I’ve always been a big reader, & I have memories of several libraries when I was younger – I remember winning a reading slogan contest for my elementary school – but it’s middle & high school years that have the lasting library memories for me. Our city library was within walking distance of our home, and I was left in charge of my younger siblings due to my mother’s work schedule, so we were at our library at least every other Saturday. I would sign them up for the free kids’ activities, we would pack a lunch to eat on the front steps outside (no food in the library, after all!), & sometimes we would catch the afternoon movie as well (on film reels!). We always came home with full bookbags….
My mother was grateful for the kindness of the librarians there – when she would bake us something sweet, she would always take extra for them, and she even brought them a microwave when she heard that theirs died! (Somehow we had an extra microwave, I don’t remember why) I eventually worked there – it was my first real job that didn’t involve babysitting – through high school & college until we moved out of state…:(
To this day, a few of those ladies are my FB friends and we exchange Christmas cards & notes. The reading never stops in my house thanks to gracious souls like them….
My first memory of going to the library was lying on the floor in the picture book corner of the children’s section reading ‘Orlando the Marmalade Cat’ and ‘Madeline’ while my mother made her choices in the adult section. The library was in Headington House, which had been one of the local ‘big’ houses and around it was a park with a playground which we would visit after we’d picked our books. I don’t remember what other equiment it had, because we always went on the slide, the best I ever used, about twelve foot high, polished smooth by thousands of rear ends with a very long ‘tail’ so you could safely get up a good speed, I still played on it as a teen though it’s long gone now. Then we would go home, via the baker where if we were lucky we got cakes (individual ones), then have tea while looking at our books. My niece had her Saturday and summer job in that library, lucky lass.
Not a library story but as a kid my mom used to admonish me to read less and get outside more. So I kept a Tupperware full of books in the woods out by my house. She’d kick me out and check me for books, I’d go out back and read there instead.
When I was a kid, the library back home had a little goldfish pond (with fountain!) on the main level next to the big staircase INSIDE! It was so relaxing to listen to the water fall into the pond. The building was built in the 50s or 60s. They built a new one a few years ago and moved. No more goldfish pond. My mom took me to the library pretty much every weekend as a kid – the Fear Street books, Vampire Diaries, and other paranormal/horror of the teen variety in the mid-late 90s were my reading staples. I also read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy (Mercedes Lackey, Joan Vinge, etc) and occasionally managed to sneak a Heartfire romance in with my books – purely for the history of it all, of course.
I always wished we’d lived close enough for me to walk there.
And yes – when I got grounded, my mom didn’t send me to my room. She took away my comics and books – sometimes for weeks, depending on how severe she deemed the infraction.
I also got in trouble in class for reading under the desk when I was supposed to be taking notes and listening to the teacher.
Both of my parents were readers (Mom was a school librarian) and expected my sister and I to read as well. Every Saturday we would go to the city library and check out stacks of books that would be returned the next week. The only time a librarian questioned my reading habits was when I brought up a History book on the Holocaust to check out. Mom was quick to say we could read anything we wanted, and I never worried about what I was going to check out again. I loved the library – so many adventures await!
For about a decade after college I didn’t go to the library, instead I bought my books. But after I bought a house I couldn’t afford my bookstore habit so I started back to the library. It is still odd for me to have many branches of a library to pull from (thanks to reserves) instead of One Big Library, but I love finding referrals on this and other sites and reserving them online. Both my mom and my sister worked for a time as library pages at our closest branch, so when I need help the librarians know me.
Mom started a tradition of the “New Year’s Elf”, who bought books to good little girls on New Year’s Eve. The magic left when she started taking my sister and me to B. Dalton’s and Waldenbooks to select our own books on December 31st, but the books still appeared under the Christmas Tree on January 1, so maybe an elf was involved!
I’m another one of the ‘punished by taking away my books’ crowd. My Mum used to regularly take my book off me if she caught me reading well after bedtime. And I can remember new books being hidden away until I had done chores, or whatever. Oh, that glorious day Mum was out, and I found a stash in the linen closet! And then, ugh, the horrendous guilt.
But! Libraries! My Mum isn’t a reader, but she used to take me and my little brother to the public library every fortnight, and I got to use her card in addition to mine, to increase the number of books I could borrow. (Although, there was always some awful choice to be made – which to take home? Which to leave, and hope would be there next time?!) When I was older (and the borrowing limit had moved from three to five, to seven to more), Mum wouldn’t have to stay in the library with me, and would leave me there for a glorious hour (or more) when she went to the supermarket. By this time, we’d moved from Tai Po to Fo Tan – and this means nothing to anyone not familiar with Hong Kong’s public libraries – so the Sha Tin public library was the one I was going to, where the children’s and YA sections were downstairs, and the adult fiction was UPSTAIRS. I can remember the first time I went upstairs, convinced I would be found out, and sent back down to the kiddie books. That’s were I discovered M&B, and my love of Romance began. The (perceived) language barrier probably helped a little, as did the fact that I looked older than local kids my age (I’m mixed race, and didn’t necc look like I spoke Cantonese), but not a single librarian there ever gave me any problems about ‘inappropriate’ reading materials.
Neither, to be fair, did the librarians at my secondary school (where ‘Junior Fiction’ was for the first three years, and ‘Fiction’ was for the older students, but I was given official permission in my first term of my first year to borrow anything at all), or the librarian at the club (who wasn’t a librarian at all – stamping the books was a small part of her job running the pro shop, which was just as well for me, because the fact that she didn’t care what I was borrowing meant I got to read all the Julie Garwood, Amanda Quick/JAK, and Judith Krantz my little adolescent heart could desire).
I don’t know who I’d be, without my love of reading, particularly Romance, and so I have a lot of women to thank, not least of all my Mum, who never understood my voracious reading, but enabled it (apart from the times she’d take my book off me because it was after midnight, and I had school in the morning).
Oh! One more library story, which I think you’ll all appreciate.
My uni (in the UK – and where I was when I discovered SBTB, tennish years ago), DIDN’T USE THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM. My mind, it was blown, the first time I went in there. They used (and, I assume, still use), their own alphanumeric system. First a letter denoting subject (I still remember a couple – A for Philosphy, H for Politics, G for Economics…no prizes for guessing my first degree!), then some numbers for the ‘subset’ of the field, and then the first three letters of the author’s name. No lie, having to learn a new library system was one of the reasons I decided to stay at the same uni for my Master’s.
I’ve just checked, and JAK’s ‘Dangerous men and adventurous women’, which I can remember borrowing, the summer I was supposed to be writing up my MA dissertation, is shelved as M 39.3 KRE
When I was eight, our small, rural town library formally instituted a new rule solely based on my book greed – you can only check as many books at one time as you can fit into a paper grocery bag.
I don’t think anyone else in town suffered as a result (although you never know), but I could gobble down a bag’s worth of books more quickly than my mom was willing to drive me over to the library. So I began to walk the four mile route and became a familiar sight, trudging along past fields, orchards and woods, carrying my packed paper bag of books.
Oh man, I have soooo many library memories – from my childhood all the way through high school and college and then ending up working for the library system in the city I live in now. But in light of Elyse’s story (and seeing how I got engaged this past Saturday) – I actually met my fiancé when I started working for the library almost four years ago. We found out we had a lot in common. We’re both total bookworms – not to mention utter sci-fi/fantasy geeks. We just started out as casual friends. We just liked talking to each other whenever our paths crossed at work (and found out there was A LOT more that we had in common). I eventually got another job, but we stayed in touch (thank goodness for Facebook!)
About seven months ago, he asked me out, we started dating, and we’ve been nigh-on inseparable ever since. Now we’re planning on getting married in February! So, of all my favorite library memories, that certainly has to be the best! 🙂
My senior year in college: as a senior, I had to finish exams, papers, etc., early so they could establish the class rankings. Since I finished early and had time to read what I wanted, I went to the library and checked out every gothic novel they had – I’m talking about Mrs. Radcliffe’s “The Italian OR The Confessional of the Black Penitents,” “The Monk,” “Melmoth the Wanderer” … ALL OF THEM. At one point, I had an angry underclassman – a friend – pound on my door and insist that I return the books so she could check them out for a paper she was trying to write; she was having problems because I had almost all the books she needed.
She helped me gather up the books, we walked back to the library together, explained the situation and the librarian checked the books in and immediately checked them out to her.
The Maple Valley library was the scene of many, many sneaked-out-under-my-mom’s-nose romances, most memorably Johanna Lindsey’s Silver Angel and every godawfully-covered Zebra of the early 90s. She didn’t approve of romances for her 13 year old, so I became extra-skilled at looking at the cassette tapes on the shelf on one side of the aisle and then spinning back to the romance paperbacks and grabbing the ones that looked racist.
This was also back in the day where you could fill out a request slip and the library system would SEND IT TO YOUR HOUSE! That summer was a lot of Lindseys and gangster rap cassettes (hell had no fury like my mother when she heard me listening to Snoop Doggy Dogg). We lived at the end of a quarter mile dirt road and the mailbox was at the paved road, so if I knew I had something coming, I walked there every day to get the mail and beat my mom to my library contraband. It was a long summer at home but I made it through with the help of South Central LA and various turgid manhoods read with a pillow at the ready to hide the cover.
Two years later I started working at another library part-time, and now, almost 20 years later, I’m a children’s librarian in the next library system over. I stopped hiding my romances years ago and even turned my mom onto Nora Roberts last year.
I owe all my early upper body strength to one rule: “You can only check out as many books as you can carry.” It’s astonishing how many library books an 8-year-old can carry!
Every week, during our Saturday evening trip to the big public library in downtown San Francisco (this was in the early 70’s), I’d scour the shelves for books I hadn’t already read. I’d plow through every one of them that week, and be ready for a new batch the following Saturday. I quickly graduated from “children’s books” to myths and legends, and devoured the stories of every culture I could find.
That early immersion into multi-cultural storytelling still informs my thinking, and my writing, today. Thank goodness for libraries, and for parents who trust their kids to read whatever interests them!
I used to go to the Pearl Harbor Navy Library every day after school for 2-3 hours, and wait for my mother to get done with work. I was supposed to be doing my homework, but I read books instead. I was like a junkie in that place. It got so bad that it started to really impact my grades. My mother actually took me to the checkout desk one day and asked for all of the librarians on duty to come to the desk, and she then proceeded to tell them all that I was not allowed to check out any more books. She then made me hand in my library card. I was so humiliated! But I still had to go there every school day. So I started reading while I was there and if I didn’t finish a book, then I hid it somewhere in the library until I could get back to it. I eventually started “borrowing” the books without checking them out and sneaking them home in my book bag. I always took them back. It went on for some time, but here’s the thing….the library was a new library, with new technology that I had never heard of (this was 1977 btw) and every time I would leave I would hear a little ding sound. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that they had a theft detection system there. But no one ever stopped me. They were always so nice to me after that horrible incident with my mother. And you know, when she told them not to lend me any books, she never told them why they shouldn’t. I suspect that they knew or maybe suspected what I was doing and chose to ignore it because of the incident with my mother.
I had plowed through the entire childrens section of our library by the time I hit 6th grade. My mom (who later went back to school to become a librarian) gave the head librarian a written permission slip that said I could check out whatever I wanted. If I brought home a book she wasn’t familiar with, she’d read it as well so if I had any questions or concerns we could discuss. She never censored my book selections. 🙂
I so love this, and I’m loving hearing everyone’s stories. I actually have tears in my eyes. I get my love of reading from my mom, and since we didn’t have a lot of money when I was a kid, we pretty much lived at the library.
We had a very small library, and by the time I was about 10, I had read all the books in the kid’s section (fiction and non-fiction) several times. The librarian asked my mom if I could have an adult library card, and since she never censored what I read, she was happy to give permission. That opened up another whole new world!
When I was 16, the same children’s librarian asked me to work there as a “page” in the children’s section (she knew I knew it VERY well!, so that was my very first job. I shelved books for a few hours a day, a few times a week while I was in high school. I still remember I got paid $1.90 an hour! Don’t be jealous! 🙂
I honestly don’t know if I would still be alive and/or sane without books.
When I was growing up, we didn’t have a television from the time I was nine until I was 22. It was all books and classical music! We went to the book-mobile every week. I don’t know if you had a book-mobile when you were growing up, but they were the best thing ever as far as I was concerned. They brought the books to you! And once a month we went to the main branch (which to me seemed huge!). I got my first romance novel at the main branch.
We read so much that the local newspaper did an article on our family. We all knew the maximum number of books you could have out at one time (50) because we had all reached that limit at some point. Reading is still one of my favorite things to this day.
Growing up, the local rural library was too far away to walk to, but when I was a bit older it was bike-riding distance and all summer long I would ride there once a week to take out as many books as I could carry home. The librarian definitely knew me (it was a small rural library, after all!).
When I got older, our rural township amalgamated with the nearby city and our small library was closed. Fortunately I could drive by this point and was able to visit the library in town once a week all summer to feed my addiction. I used to pick an author – Mary Stewart, Agatha Christie, and Ellis Peters are some that I remember – and read everything that they wrote that the library had.
At this point, I still love the library. I went back to school a year ago to do a Masters degree, and the university library has big sunny windows overlooking the ocean with comfy chairs that are perfect for curling up in to read – and I can usually get a table near to a window if I need to get computer work done. I also use my public library cards to borrow e-books (usually romance or YA – my fluffy reading as compared with my school reading) to read at the gym or when waiting for the bus or ferry.
The Santa Rosa Public Library was my favorite place as a girl. My mom and I would take the bus to the library and spend all day there in its air-conditioned, silent bubble.
I recall going through a hardcore Indiana Jones phase and I was obsessed with books about Egypt, archaeology and mummies. I was probably seven or eight and was fascinated — yet frightened — by books containing photos of mummies.
Reading all these makes me glad my parents never thought to take away my books as punishment. That would have been awful. Would have totally worked though.