Peace Be with You
As a kid, I probably found the quiet and solitude I was subconsciously looking for at the Airdrie Public Library (shout-out to the Town & Country Centre!). While I brought stacks of books home, I also enjoyed whiling away time on the low-pile brown carpets at our hometown library. Mandated silence—what a world!
Ancient books at the Klementinum Library.
Prague, CZ
I hoovered up whatever was on the shelves, from James and the Giant Peach (and any number of other Roald Dahl classics) to The Hardy Boys, MAD Magazine, Asterix the Gaul, and Sports Illustrated. I loved the Ramona series, and as I entered my pre-teen and teen years, I devoured pretty much anything remotely related to ghosts or murders or both.
My Grade 5 homeroom teacher, Mr. Howe, noticed I was quickly running out of books to read in the school library, so he brought in his own copy of Watership Down for me. I don’t recall loving it (or even finishing it), but I appreciated that an adult understood I needed more. In Grade 7, I was especially repulsed and intrigued by Robert Graysmith’s The Zodiac Killer, a true-crime story about a serial killer in California in the 60s and 70s. I then moved on to Peter Benchley’s Jaws, which scared the wits out of me in a different way.
Give a book, take a book.
Hanover, DE
Boston, USA
I hid my proclivity for the printed word in high school because it simply wasn’t cool in a small rural town to have your nose in a book, although I continued to read newspapers and magazines. I spent hundreds of hours on the mezzanine at the top and in the reading rooms in the basement of the McPherson (now the Mearns-McPherson) Library at the University of Victoria throughout my degree, and I have continued to shelter in libraries for the last twenty-five years. When my wife and I travel, we make a point to visit a local library partly to explore, partly just to find some quiet. Browsing books and leafing through magazines is a hobby, I guess.
With Canadian Library Workers’ Day coming up on October 17, here’s to the people who make these spaces possible and keep us coming back, decade after decade.
The Donut Library (closed, unfortunately)
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Budapest, HU
