When I was a schoolboy, I used to borrow books from libraries. I read hundreds. In my last year of primary school I used to use my parents library cards and go through four or five novels a week. (My own cards only gave me access to the childrens library.)
I read less in high school, and even less afterwards, partly due to lack of time due to studying/work, partly because I was less interested in fiction.
Now I have lots of time on my hands, and I want read all the classics I've not read yet. My local library is a newish five store multi-million pound building. A third of the second floor is devoted to non-fiction and a third of the fourth is devoted to fiction. (The rest of the building space is for cafes, "learning studios", creche etc.) Within the section devoted to books, there are some groovy (i.e. curvy) low book cases that seem to be explicitly designed to minimise the ratio of shelf space to floor space, i.e. minimise the number of books that can be displayed in the tiny part of the building devoted to this purpose. In a recent trip to reinvestigate whether the library was worth using, I found the same thing as last time: it doesn't actually have any books I want to read. In fact I looked for books I knew I liked as well as ones I wanted to read in future. There was no Dostoevsky, no Melville, no Orwell, no Austen, no Bronte, no Jack London, I forget what else I looked for. There were a couple of minor Tolstoys, but no "Anna Karenina" and no "War and Peace." Overall, the library is of less use to me now than my state primary school and private secondary school libraries were to me in the 1970's, and they in turn had far few books than the public libraries. And those libraries were in small towns, not London.
Are libraries just a waste of space these days? I've bought the next six books I intend to read online, will the library accept them as donations when I've finished with them, or is it public library policy not to actually stock any worthwhile books these days?
I read less in high school, and even less afterwards, partly due to lack of time due to studying/work, partly because I was less interested in fiction.
Now I have lots of time on my hands, and I want read all the classics I've not read yet. My local library is a newish five store multi-million pound building. A third of the second floor is devoted to non-fiction and a third of the fourth is devoted to fiction. (The rest of the building space is for cafes, "learning studios", creche etc.) Within the section devoted to books, there are some groovy (i.e. curvy) low book cases that seem to be explicitly designed to minimise the ratio of shelf space to floor space, i.e. minimise the number of books that can be displayed in the tiny part of the building devoted to this purpose. In a recent trip to reinvestigate whether the library was worth using, I found the same thing as last time: it doesn't actually have any books I want to read. In fact I looked for books I knew I liked as well as ones I wanted to read in future. There was no Dostoevsky, no Melville, no Orwell, no Austen, no Bronte, no Jack London, I forget what else I looked for. There were a couple of minor Tolstoys, but no "Anna Karenina" and no "War and Peace." Overall, the library is of less use to me now than my state primary school and private secondary school libraries were to me in the 1970's, and they in turn had far few books than the public libraries. And those libraries were in small towns, not London.
Are libraries just a waste of space these days? I've bought the next six books I intend to read online, will the library accept them as donations when I've finished with them, or is it public library policy not to actually stock any worthwhile books these days?
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