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I Love the Library

                           


Therese, soprano, never uses a library. ‘Oh, no, Iestyn. Unlike you, I pride myself on always buying my books.’

I agree with Helene Hanff, who said that buying a book you haven’t read is like buying a dress without trying it on.

‘How do you know the dress will fit, Therese?’ I asked.

‘I always know what’s going to fit me, book-wisely speaking. I tune into asking the universe what it needs me to read for the greater good, go into the bookshop and find that I’m drawn to a department, then a section of carpet, then the particular shelf and there will book the book, in a sort of outline of almost light picked out from the others around it.’

‘But there are billions of books out there, Therese, in umpteen shops, divided into squillions of bits of carpet and…’

She was giving me her look: a nurse at my hospital bed telling me the prognosis was far from ideal. ‘Yes, but with me it’s narrowed down quite a bit to begin with. I only ever buy books about the development of the soul.’

Catching me smirking; she snapped the nurse’s empathic smile shut. ‘At least having purchased my books pristine, rather than borrowing them from one of your beloved libraries, I can be sure they’ve not been tainted with anyone else’s snot, piss or jizz.’


I concede she’s right about being drawn to books. I’ll be ever grateful to my own book angel for (among others) Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady; A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Augustus Carp, esq, By Himself. But I can never agree with her on books needing to be pristine.

While I’m not saying you should write in library books, I loved finding this in the margin of an historical novel: Calm the purple prose the fuck down already. That’s the second time and counting you’ve used that periscope in the swamp analogy. 

This in a vocal score of Tannhäuser: Forget any spiritual glow — let alone orgiastic tinge — to the sound; just take a bloody big breath like a stampeding horse and vomit those high notes.’

Or this in a crime novel: Here’s the link for you to donate to my crowdfunding campaign. Follow it. Donate. Don’t make me have to tell you the all-clarifying clue you’re missing in the family argument about that malachite table, bitches.


#books#reading#library#libraries#atreegrowsinbrooklyn#florenceking#confessionsofafailedsouthernlady#bookstagram#author#augustuscarp#reader#publicspeaker#speaker#talkbooktalk


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