I Have The Rage

Save Libraries

February 5, 2011 at 2:16 pm (Random) (books, libraries, library closures)

I can’t remember how old I was when I started going to the mobile library, but it used to park up in a layby behind my house. I’d go down after breakfast and sit on the kerb with my books in my lap, waiting for it to arrive. The aim was to choose my six books first thing and have one of them finished before the mobile library left at the end of the day, so that I could go back and get another. It was very important to me to have my full, unread allowance of books by Saturday evening, or else there was every likelihood I’d have run dry by Tuesday.

It’s fairly typical for people to describe themselves as ‘voracious readers’ but that’s what I was. I was greedy for books, gobbling them up so fast they barely touched the sides. I’d spend all weekend wandering around with my finger holding my place in my book, looking for the next quiet spot where I could sit and read. If my parents wanted us to go somewhere on a Saturday (remember how stuff didn’t used to be open on Sundays?) I’d sit in the back of the car, quietly resentful at all the reading time lost.

For any child growing up before the end of the Net Book Agreement (a fixed price arrangement which meant bookshops couldn’t offer huge discounts), libraries were the only means we had of feeding that appetite. At that point, children’s books cost roughly about £2.99 and at the rate I was getting through them, I’d have cost my parents hundreds of pounds a year if they’d had to buy all the books I wanted to read. These days, children’s books cost anywhere between £4.99 and £6.99 – imagine buying six of those a week to keep your child away from the television.

We moved house when I was 11 years old and the nearest town had a proper library with a much larger selection, and when I started working there at age 15, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. Six years later I got my first job in a bookshop and began spending most of my money on books, determined that my house would be chock-full of them, determined that my future children would have access to the best that publishing had to offer. And you know what? My house IS full of books and my daughter DOES have some of the most amazing children’s books available. But we still go to the library once a week, where I’m able to try things out with her. If she doesn’t like that book about fish, I can take it back and get one she will like without having wasted £5.99. And on more than one occasion, she’s loved a book so much that I’ve had to go out and buy it, a book I’d never have considered were it not for our ability to borrow it in the first place.

I won’t go into the romantic wonders of reading; everyone who reads a lot knows what a magical thing it is but I think what people forget as they get older and have less time for reading, is how books have already shaped you. When I was a child, my world was tiny. We didn’t live in a particularly multicultural area, we didn’t travel, we didn’t go to the cinema much or out for dinner or anything like that. I went to school, played with the kids on my street and read. It was books that taught me how big the world was, books that taught me about different cultures, books that taught me that every person and every place was different and books that taught me what a wonderful, exciting and incredible thing that was.

Even if I’d never picked up another book, those childhood years spent reading shaped me for the future. They broadened my mind, taught me empathy, understanding and acceptance but without those libraries, even the small, mobile one, my access to books and therefore all those different ideas and experiences, would have been limited. Which would have limited me.

Closing libraries effectively limits the ability of every person in this country to improve themselves, whether it be to increase their knowledge, their understanding or their tolerance. There are tough times ahead and we need the best and brightest sparks to help us through them; there isn’t much of a future for a nation of angry, intolerant dullards.