I have always loved books throught out my growing up years - there's little time to read now a days - but the love for books and the pleasure of reading the backcover and picking up a book is tempting! Hubby treasures his childhood Sherlock Homes and the many Targets, TinTins which are now torn, turned brown but locked in a safe!
Not sure if becuase of that S likes books but today when he told me that he is very excited to go to school because he has library class, I feel good - not that he will become a great scientist or a philosopher when he grows up but happy to relate to him. Just the thought of being in the middle of tons of books, freedom of picking any book you want, turning through its leaves and putting it back is - enlightening.
Obviously his interest in books is way too different from us when we were his age - he is into Nature Science, Dinosaurs, Reptiles and other graphical and sometimes gory books - I can't even stand a picture of a Gila monster in one of his books! My early books were the gentle Enid Blytons...I guess the new generation has the tendency to know and know more, perhaps moving away from Fiction.
On libraries, I wonder what libraries in schools now are like - do they have that bespectacled, qualified librarian who is super well-read and who knows the kind of books you might like, the small ladders to reach the top shelves, the 'silence please' boards which are always ignored, huge wooden long tables and comfortable chairs...and most important that smell of books. Ah, heaven...I most definitely enjoyed my school libraries the most. By the time we got to college, it was mostly limited to text books, and no time to sit and read. There were more hippier things to do, you see! And by the way, one of the "in-things" those days was also to visit the foreign libraries in town. The ones like the British and the American libraries. What fun it was visiting them - trying to look busy browsing in midst a rather hip and intellectual crowd!
Sadly, there aren't many around - and the crosswords of the world - definitely can't replace the old library charm. Hope our next generation gets to have fond memories with books and their adobe starting from school!
Not sure if becuase of that S likes books but today when he told me that he is very excited to go to school because he has library class, I feel good - not that he will become a great scientist or a philosopher when he grows up but happy to relate to him. Just the thought of being in the middle of tons of books, freedom of picking any book you want, turning through its leaves and putting it back is - enlightening.
Obviously his interest in books is way too different from us when we were his age - he is into Nature Science, Dinosaurs, Reptiles and other graphical and sometimes gory books - I can't even stand a picture of a Gila monster in one of his books! My early books were the gentle Enid Blytons...I guess the new generation has the tendency to know and know more, perhaps moving away from Fiction.
On libraries, I wonder what libraries in schools now are like - do they have that bespectacled, qualified librarian who is super well-read and who knows the kind of books you might like, the small ladders to reach the top shelves, the 'silence please' boards which are always ignored, huge wooden long tables and comfortable chairs...and most important that smell of books. Ah, heaven...I most definitely enjoyed my school libraries the most. By the time we got to college, it was mostly limited to text books, and no time to sit and read. There were more hippier things to do, you see! And by the way, one of the "in-things" those days was also to visit the foreign libraries in town. The ones like the British and the American libraries. What fun it was visiting them - trying to look busy browsing in midst a rather hip and intellectual crowd!
Sadly, there aren't many around - and the crosswords of the world - definitely can't replace the old library charm. Hope our next generation gets to have fond memories with books and their adobe starting from school!
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