On Libraries
An ode to quiet, free caring spaces for stories and people
Losing it
A few weeks ago, I nearly lost a library book.
It was a copy of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, a book I had been told to read. I don’t normally respond well being told what to do in my day to day life, especially with regards to my thoughts and free time, but this was a book I wanted to read. I had to wait about a year for it to appear in my local library though, because I imagine lots of people who normally don’t like being told what to do or what to read were also, willingly, moving towards this beautiful, tender and clever book.
With Hamnet, nearly finished, I had gone to a free art gallery by the sea, to see a photography exhibition about protest and resistance. My bag was a bit too small to safely contain my notebook, my water bottle, plus Hamnet anyway. For the bag search on entering, I was carrying the book in my hand.
It wasn’t until I was crossing the harbour a while later that I realised my hands were freer, my handbag zipped up easily. Hamnet was missing. I hurried back to the gallery, opening my lighter bag for the search, and rushed back to the only place I could think I had left it.
Pushing open the white swing door to the toilets, there it was, in her slightly worn plastic cover, waiting trustingly on the edge of metal sink. Someone must have entered my stall, where I had left it balanced on the metal pallet fixed to the wall, brought it out and placed it somewhere relatively communal, trusting it would be respected.
What a sweet, lovely, social gesture.
Loving it
This is what I love about libraries. I was panicked about losing Hamnet - because the book doesn’t belong to me: it belongs to my whole neighbourhood. I believe that the care we take over library books or shared items reflects the care we take for each other.
I love how even in losing it, the book was looked after. She was placed carefully: a message. There is something about that slightly worn plastic sheath which makes us all take care - of the object and of each other. It tells me that stories matter. That other people believe in the things I believe in.
If there is one piece of activism everyone can engage in with little personal cost but infinite social, spiritual and personal gain – it is join a library.
The local council-run library has been a refuge, cave of wonder, safe space, a study and so much more to me, ever since I can remember being able to read. When I was in primary school, the local mobile library, which was shaped like the horseboxes that we’d always see on the lanes between the farms, or shaped like the mobile caravans that you normally see parked in someone’s drive or field.
I have never felt calmer than in that little mobile library. I don’t remember one book distinctly, one feeling. But I do remember delight and satisfaction – a serene, serious, inquisitive pleasure, unspooling like a completely smooth untangled thread.
Living it
Decades later, I love going to my small local library. I like challenging myself to get a book I might not like (hi Caledonian Road - sorry babe couldn’t finish ya). I pick books based on covers on names on authors. I wonder if this is how people who like wine feel in a posh wine shop. It’s ok if I don’t read the book. There’s no report to write. I don’t have to like it, and I’ve lost nothing by giving it a try. Maybe I’ll get the same book out next year and love it (has happened to me several times). I can read recipes, Buddhist maxims, self-help, poetry, London history, tarot, local authors.
There are so few shared places where you can just be in London. Where can you go, indoors, and not spend money? We are too cold for plazas and terrazas and the easy social spaces of the Mediterranean. Especially between October and April, libraries are one of our few free public spaces left, and instead of bottles, trash and hungry crows it is books. Quietness. Craft groups, village notices, people coming in from the cold. Libraries are a space for people to use a dignified bathroom; to have access to sanitary products; to take refuge in more ways than one.
It makes me sad to see that my local library only opens for half-days. I’m sure decades of austerity is to blame. The international news reminds us that book bans and library closures are uncomfortably close in our current political cycles.
So even if you never take out a book, please join a library. Show that you care. For the people looking for safe free spaces to be with their children; for the granddaughter taking her ageing nan out for the day to do something she loves; for the unhorsed person who wants to read and use the bathroom; for the teenager who cannot study anywhere but here; for everyone who comes for community and care.
Join a library.