"Someday I Pray My Fears Will Take Flight..."

[psalm_onethirtyone]

Am here at the library presently.

I like to talk to the books I know. When I'm shelving books I've never read, sometimes I come across old ones that I've read before, or by authors I like, and I smile at them and touch their spines and covers and say hello. While I was shelving something by Bill Cosby, I went by the Agatha Christie section, and there was the same old row of shiny black leather covers that I'd read last year, so I brushed them all with my fingers. I knelt down to put something away in the D section and said hello to Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens. I don't even think about it; I just do it. Books are like people, but that sounds so trite. Maybe it would help if I said books were like my people. When I call any group of people 'my people', it means that they're special, that they're people I know. I like that.

When I find books I don't know that are out of place, I'm rescuing them. I'm supposed to shelve, but I also sort, and rearrange. I straighten shelves. When I do that, I talk to them also. I say Hello. You aren't meant to be here, poor thing. Just give me a moment, and I'll get you back where you belong. Just a moment.

Then I sort through, I find the spot the book belongs--often it's not just one; often it's a few. I apologise that they've been inconvenienced and had to undergo the discomfort of being shelved incorrectly. I hope that I've put them right in a proper way, and been properly respectful.

I read the children's books so regularly that when I get to put new books on the display rack, I've read them all. I know which ones I think are good, and I know how to make sure there aren't too many of one sort. I can confidently tell mothers with little children which picture books are best for what they want, which ones have more pictures, which ones are poems, which ones are best.

I can do that with a lot of the other books, too. When people check out books I know, I can say Oh, good choice! I've read this one. I think you'll like it. Have you read any of his (her) other books?

I can say Oh, wonderful! That one's so good and it doesn't get read often enough. Enjoy it. Have a lovely day.

I know my way around this library. I know where things are. I know where the books are. While I'm shelving, I pick them up and look through them, at my favourite illustrations, at my favourite passages. When I see news translations of old books, I get excited, I look for my favourite parts to see whether they're different. When books get discarded, it's terribly important that I get to look through them first and make sure nothing's going that special, that I can keep.

I know a lot of the authors, even the romance novel authors and food mystery authors, simply because I've shelved them so often. I know how to laugh at them. It's my special prerogative, and they don't mind, or they don't tell me they mind.

Welcome back, I say, when one comes back and I've shelved it often before. You're popular, aren't you? Maybe you're on reserve. Let's see.

I even know the non-fiction sections. I know Biographies, and I know Magazines, although I'm not very good with Reference yet. I don't shelve in Reference much, so I don't talk to it much.

I feel as though I were in the most magic, safe place in the world. I could live in a library, I think. I'd know where Jules Verne is and I'd know where Yeats is and I'd know where Jane Yolen and Alice McLerran are, and that would be most important. I could live on the biography of Virginia Woolf and books of Chris Van Allsburg and my guilty pleasure of murder mysteries. It would be wonderful. I would be living among my people. They would be people I knew.

I love the library.

On an entirely different note, I was shelving romance fiction and came across a book with the enticing title of Tall, Dark and Grumpy. It makes me think of Nemo. Possibly I will be tempted to read it on the sly, purely because of the title.

Because romance novel!Nemo would absolutely be tall, dark, and grumpy. And Aronnax would be a cute heroine.

Comments

[rickmangled.livejournal.com]

I wish I worked at a library. My school only recently had enough money to pay a librarian (I call her the itinerant librarian) but only on Wednesdays. So this Wednesday I scampered down to the library at lunch, and she asked me for a pass, which I didn't know I needed, but she let me in anyway, as it was my lunch hour and she saw the delighted way I looked at the shelves behind her. I just scanned the titles, made sure I knew how Dewey set out the numbers, found the psychobiology book I checked out once freshman year and greeted it, and "Verse and Universe" the book of science poetry I checked out twice freshman year, (and which I recommend highly to anyone), and on the way I found "The Canary Trainer" and picked it up and was delighted, and then went looking for Les Miserables, because I like pages more than e-text.

I looked at the model "West Division in Our School-Age Days", created by alumni of 1904 for their 1964 reunion, for much too long. But the school used to have pediments! And engaged pillars! And lovely windows all up and down the walls! (I do detest our 1950s 'brick-box' style school building.)

And then the librarian talked to me about how nice it was to be entering data for the new books she got on a grant, because she knew I'd understand. :) I'm quite disappointed we have no school next Wednesday.

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

Honestly, there is nothing in the world like a library. I'm so glad you've got a librarian, even if only on Wednesdays, and that she's promising to be a good one. ^_____^

because I like pages more than e-text.

Oh, lord, yes. Me too.

[tiamatschild.livejournal.com]

*snuggles* You are so cute.

Yes! And really, 20,000 Leagues is already inches from being a romance novel. A gothic romance novel, no less. It has everything - a huge, mysterious home, the oddly aloof yet indulgent benefactor/seeming threat, the slightly naive and quite certainly smitten protagonist...

I should write one of those summaries that they have on the backs of romance novels. It could be a new meme.

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

*squees and blushes* Thankee.

You're right. It really, really is. Everything is there. *must... resist... urge to kill self further by rewriting entire thing...*

Oh! Oh, please do! ^______^

[tiamatschild.livejournal.com]

*G* You're welcome.

Eeek! That'd be an absolutely huge project!

I will, then. :) In the morning, probably, as I should really go to bed, but I shall do so.

[mmebahorel.livejournal.com]

Murder mysteries are not a guilty pleasure. Nothing that has such lovely characters as Rory and Troy Alleyn can be a guilty pleasure. (You must read some of Ngaio Marsh - she's so rarely read in the US, it seems, and yet she's a far better writer than Agatha Christie was. Death at the Bar is the best book EVAR - well, ok, not ever, but really a fantastic piece showing good detective work. Love her theatre mysteries, too - she knows actors and police very well.)

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

I know! That's why there is absolutely no way I should let myself do it. *g*

^_^ Okay! But so do it. It's going to be fabulous.

*pokes* Go read your story, you. It took untold anguish to write.

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

Mine are. Mine are the kitty-type ones. (Eep! Well, shall look for her, then, but she's not likely to be someone I'll find at my liberry, is she? Shall I have actually to purchase her?)

indeed, not a guilty pleasure

[dubaiyan.livejournal.com]

Roderick Alleyn...sigh.

Soujin, just popping by to tell you how much I loved and agreed with this post...it sums up my own feelings rather well...I'm glad I'm not the only one to say hello to books

Re: indeed, not a guilty pleasure

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

*gleeps* Thank you! I'm so glad I was able to explain and have someone know what I meant. Oh, no. No, I'm quite loquacious with them.

[julietveiled.livejournal.com]

Shiny black Agatha Christie books, I think I know that set, my library has 'em too, and I go on a Christie binge every couple of months with them. ^_^ They're pretttty...

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

Isn't it absolutely gorgeous? They have the embossed lettering on the titles, too. Much love.

[julietveiled.livejournal.com]

And the pretty coloury inside covers, too. ^_^

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

*nodnod!* <3