The freedom of a public library

My current haul*

Joining the public library was, for me, a matter of financial constraints.  I really wanted to read the kind of books I cannot afford and cannot find in my university’s libraries.  So I trundled off with Zam that rainy Friday, and as I have detailed, it has been a real adventure (or a peri-urban adventure at any rate). 

But aside from the new experiences it has brought me before I even walked through its doors, the library itself has been a revelation.  For all the fun it is to browse in the university library, a book shop or on my kindle, I have to prioritise and decide to take only what is immediately relevant to what I study and do.  Every book I buy (or take out) must be strictly accounted for because every one is an investment of sorts that must give me finite returns in knowledge.  In addition, each of them has their drawbacks.

A book shop can only stock what it knows it is most likely to sell.  This means that certain popular series, new books and a limited selection of classics and older books that continue to sell well can be stocked.  A University library can only buy what it thinks will be relevant to serious study.  Sometimes that includes some popular fiction or science, but not often.  Searching for books on a kindle, like searching for information on the internet, is one of the most narrow and restrictive book-selecting devices.  When you search for a book, it will bring up that book, and a few recommendations that relate to that author, series or topic.  You cannot be distracted by something else from a different field of interest altogether as you can when wandering in a book store or library.  Anyway, I like to think I do not have generic buying habits, even within a genre, which is what you must ape if you browse books by category in Amazon. 

A public library, by contrast, is the accumulation of decades of government spending and the tastes of individual librarians that have been bought to cater to the many members of the public.  I only have the books for two weeks and I can return what I don’t like, savour what I do and return them.  Being able to dabble and browse without financial or category constraints is a really liberating sensation.  I feel like I have burnt my intellectual bra.

Knowing that I am one in a long line of people who will take it out a book is another benefit of reading a library book.  I have recently read editions of books that were brought out very soon after the original publication date.  The older is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a post-feminist USA where everyone lives according to someone’s twisted version of Genesis.  This fascinating and disturbing tale was published in 1985.  When I paged to the back and looked at all the old date stamps, I could not help wondering what the citizens of Pretoria made of this futuristic, puritanical state that enforces serious censorship rules when they read it during the dying, violent years of apartheid.

The other book contained Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy.  This is what is now called a “young adult” fantasy, but it is written in such wise, philosophical prose that I don’t know if I would have been able to appreciate it fully had I read it as a teenager.  I loved it even more for that reason: she assumes that her teenage readership wants to be challenged.  The edition I had read had been rebound in hardcover from so many readings, and it had a slightly unsettling, brightly coloured picture of the wizard hero, Sparrowhawk on the cover.  The pages were yellowy-orange in colour and the texture was slightly grainy from age.  Knowing that many teenagers and older people like myself have read this book gives me more faith in the human race.  I have for years been an avid fan of Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy as it is also intelligent, wildly imaginative and thought-provoking, and I am also a recent fan of Neil Gaiman.  This trilogy is still streets ahead.  These books are also older, however, and while good books stores will still stock Neil Gaiman and the Dark Materials trilogy, they seldom stock Ursula Le Guin.  It is up to the libraries to continue the tradition.

So go forth and have an adventure at (or near) your nearest public library.  They lurk everywhere there...

*From left to right: Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought, Gaston LeRoux's Phantom of the Opera, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, Michael Ondaatjie's Handwriting and Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections.

On my way to (writing about) my public library



I should like the crystal ball to shew me what my
husband will be like.

Disclaimer: In this blog, I was going to write about my new place to visit in Pretoria: my public library.  On the way, however, I became distracted by everything near the public library that I have discovered that I also love.  So this post will take you to the doors of my library, but no further.  Just so you know what you’re getting into...

 I have for many years been a compulsive book buyer.  My family have learnt to roll their eyes and find something time consuming to do if they take me within fifty metres of a book store as I will immediately find my way in and browse (and frequently buy) to my heart’s content.  Now I own a *kindle* which I love, particularly when I am addicted to a series as I no longer have to rush frantically from store to store trying to find a copy of the next exciting part of the saga.

 This year, however, as I fall deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole that is my Masters thesis, all my mind wants to do is delve not into more rabbit holes, but into popular science, economics, history, poetry and shallow popular fiction (I won’t tell you what, it is entirely too embarrassing).  I have also been the victim of the vagaries of the scholarship system and I have had nothing to spare for book purchases.  I could take out books from Wits University’s libraries, but I have often filled my card with work-related books, and every time I step into the libraries I feel obliged to take out something, if not work related, thenat least literature that is high-fibre: you know, the stuff that’s good for you.

She asked the fates to let her sons have long, long lives.

 So, propelled forward by my addiction to these shallow and air-brushed forays into the human heart, I ‘phoned the National Library Services (based here in my very own Pretoria) and found out where my nearest library is situated, which while not within walking distance, is in one of the nearby tree-ed neighbourhoods.  Zama and I set off down the road and after driving twenty minutes too far into the wild green yonder and turning around, we finally found the place.

 It is just up the road from an honest-to-goodness park, replete with a see-saw, swings and a slide surrounded by grass.  Opposite the library is a neighbourhood shopping centre: an old-school one with an Indian-owned green-grocer that sells fresh flowers, vegetables and fruits.  When I walked there from the bus stop one day I bought a punnet of fresh raspberries and ate them then and there, leaving my fingers stained pink.  There is also a pet-grooming parlour and a Chinese restaurant with an outdoor area canvassed with red fabric to protect it from the wet.  There is even a corner cafe and bakery that sells R1 orange ices so filled with sulphur dioxide that I coughed every time I took a sticky, icy bite (and yet I just kept right on eating that thing...).

 They have a car boot sale there every so often.  There are second-hand clothes, white elephant stalls and (of course) a woman with a table filled with second-hand books, left to her by emigrating relatives and friends.  I know I said I don’t have money for books this year (and that was the whole reason I joined the public library) but then I found “Stories from the Faerie Queen”, a children’s book given by The Hatfield Baptist Sunday School to Violet Cross for Attendance and Good Conduct at Christmas, 1929.

But the knight was Britomart, the fair lady with
a man's armour and a man's heart.

To misquote Hadley Freeman (who is misquoting Charlotte Bronte): Reader, I bought it.  And I am letting you share in my good fortune by peppering this post with some of its whimsical illustrations and captions (albeit in blurry photographs from my humble blackberry camera).  I hope you enjoy (and that your appetite has been whetted for my next post: what I found in my public library).

my favourite things

One of the few songs I still know off by heart is "My Favourite Things" from "The Sound of Music". In fact, musical songs, a few old hymns (and Avril Lavigne and Britney Spears gar!) stick in my head, when everything else cooler (think opera arias and Radiohead ballads) seem to leak out somehow. But what makes knowing those particular songs (barring Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne) one of my "favourite things" is singing them with my friends whenever I go back to KZN. Somehow, in the course of hanging out together, usually at someone's house, or out at Oribi Gorge, or even sitting 'round a kitchen table, we will sing together, different people taking the lead according to whoever knows the song best. There's something about the sound of all our voices raised together - even in the wholesome tones of Julie Andrews - that warms my heart every time it happens, re-establishes a connection.

So I want to write about the little things - like spontaneous singing together - that warm me. Big things are great: going overseas, meeting famous people I have admired for years, getting awarded a degree, going to a wedding or seeing the nation united in a sea of yellow. But there are little things too, the proverbial "snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes" - just like the song people! - that also make my life silly and sweet.

So here, in no particular order, are my favourite things:

1.) Popcorn and cheese
When I have had a particularly long day (usually a particularly long few days), I curl up on my narrow residence bed under my north-facing window in the sunshine or the pink cast of the sunset, and have a few bowls of popcorn and cheese. Zama (my boyfriend's sister) first told me about this, and I thought it sounded a little odd. Until I popped myself a pot of kernels (I make things the old fashioned way) and cut a few slices of cheddar cheese and discovered it was my ideal comfort food. I suppose ideally the cheese would be grated, but I don't own one (the student life) so a nibble of cheese with a few popcorn kernels and I am all set to unwind.

2.) My Kindle
When I am curled up on my bed with popcorn and cheese in one hand to unwind, I always have a book clutched in the other. That is, until I acquired my *Kindle*. Every time I pick it up, I marvel at its brilliance. I hold it lovingly, I treasure and baby it in case anything happens to it and I take it EVERYWHERE (except Central Joburg. That would be silly). I read it in shopping queues, in the car, aloud to my boyfriend, and I marvel at its light weight. Everyone who experienced the horror of my bag this holiday will appreciate how many books I usually carry with me. Now, I can carry hundreds. If I were Jerusha, I would write an adoring, rhyming poem to it.

3.) Flossing
I only started flossing in earnest last year and I am never going back. My teeth got whiter, my breath got fresher everything just feels so much cleaner. If you don't like flossing, you haven't tried the right floss. Oral B is great, and so is Jordan. The others are distinctly unpleasant. Now go forth and try it yourself...You'll thank me when you're sixty-six and you don't lose your front teeth.

4.) Grilled Sardines on Toast
I recently became a pescetarian, and somehow, I really crave the oily fish. This is a Dad thing, as my father has had grilled sardines on toast at least once a week since forever. I used to turn up my nose at it, but now I relish the crunchy, oily deliciousness. Mmmm...

5.) Psalm 107 (King James Version)
Even if you aren't Christian or even religious, you can appreciate the music in these lines.
Psalm 107:9
For he satisfieth the longing soul,
and filleth the hungry soul with
goodness

6.) Long, juicy phone calls (skype or otherwise)
I believe birthdays should be celebrated, just so that you can hear from all your friends. The best presents I receive are the phone calls: chatty, joyful with a good dose of catch-up thrown in. Of course phone calls any other time of year are always welcome (I feel as though the thirst of my very soul is slaked) and - y'all know who you are - thank-you for every phone call I have ever received. It was special.

7.) Making cards and wrapping presents
This is a Mum thing. All the years I was at Rhodes, my Mum would send me parcels (wrapped up like a fortress) full to the brim with goodies. Whether it was food, clothes, books, an interesting card or newspaper article scrap, all the little bits and piece (and fights I had with the post office people) really enriched my time in Grahamstown. When my friend Marco made me a card last year for my birthday, I was so touched I decided to do a little spoiling of my own. It's a really rewarding kind of art, because it is the kind that you give.

8.) Napping in the sun
I read recently about a philosophy professor who believes that an afternoon siesta should be compulsory. Apart from renewing all one's senses, he says that it is a form of independence and rebellion against a mechanised society that, if it could, would squeeze every drop of blood from one. I don't often get the chance, but when I do, it does feel extremely luxurious. Perhaps even more so because I feel like I am emulating Hobbes (as in Calvin and).

I often think if we all listened to Hobbes (and all other sensible tigers and cats) life would feel a lot more luxurious. Especially in the little things.