full circle

[the_siobhan]

I went to the library today.

Some of the people on my f-list will be shocked and appalled at this news; but it's true, gentle readers. I have not set foot in a library except to use the photocopier since I graduated from University, some 15 years ago.

The Toronto Reference Library was built in the '70's and you can really tell when you walk inside. It's all curved space and glass conference rooms and big open atrium all carpeted in earth tones. There's even a waterfall in the very back by the staircase, the sound of which makes me have to pee immediately I walk in the door.

Of course the area of the main floor that used to be taken up with rows and rows of card catalogues is now full of computers. And so progress marches on.

I browsed for a little while before I went and copied the material I had gone there to find. Picking books off the shelves and leafing through them reminded me of something markeris said when he was here, that there is a very different part of the brain used by reading words from a book than there is from reading them from a computer screen or a newspaper. That theory really resonated with me. it felt like a true thing, that the physical act of lifting the page, of scanning the words on a paper surface, would engage slightly different synapses or engage the same synapses in a different way than the act of reading those same words on a lit background.

For one thing, I find the urge to use the word "asshat" arises with much less frequency.

When I was a kid I read every single book in the children's section and got written permission from my parents to check out books in the adult shelves. When I hit high school I read every book in the fiction room by the end of first year, by the end of third year I had finished every non-fiction book on any subject that interested me and was working there after school.

Now I mostly read textbooks of one kind or another. Reading for the simple enjoyment of it has been relegated to spare time I never seem to find.

I think that's a loss. So I made a promise to myself that I would be back.

Before I left, I got myself a library card.

Comments

[ravensee.livejournal.com]

I used to spend every day after school at the Downsview Library as a teenager. I read until my eyes started drooping for sleep.

It's hard to read to the kids just before they go to sleep because they're especially hyper at that hour, but I try. I hope they pick up the love of books too because there is no greater escape than learning and making worlds in your head from books.

The Toronto Reference Library has some amazing sections I need to go explore soon.

[disastrid.livejournal.com]

havin fun ain't hard when you gots a library card.

Re: full circle

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

For one thing, I find the urge to use the word "asshat" arises with much less frequency.

*laugh*.

i go much less to libraries now, because i can find a lot of stuff on the web when i go on random research rampages. but there is something really cool to being in the stacks of a good library, and i miss it (no such library is close to me now).

[melete.livejournal.com]

that there is a very different part of the brain used by reading words from a book than there is from reading them from a computer screen or a newspaper

I completely agree with that theory. Or at least will agree that my brains processes things differently depending on what source I read from. If I really want to make an article stick in my brain I have to print it out. I also generally need to scribble little notes to myself as I read. Something about the physicality of those two things makes it stick.

I miss libraries, I should go poke through one more often. Generally everything I need from the library, except for the occassional text, is online. I need an afternoon of wandering the fiction section.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

:)

Aren't libraries lovely? My favorite is the High Park Library on Roncesvalles. When I first lived in Parkdale, I took the streetcar down Roncey every day to go home, and at least once a week, I'd pop into the library and read for an hour.

Now that I'm back in the hood, I try to make time to go back to the library. It feels like a silly luxury, and I have to smack myself out of that.

So, what's on your reading list?

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I have some books on the psychology of family dynamics.

Give me time, I have to work my way back in slowly!

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

*laugh*

If you could only see my piles of unread books! I was unpacking some boxes of books last week, and I was amazed at how many books I'd had for years that I *still* haven't read.

Does that stop me from buying more books? Of course not!

I'm not addicted though. Really. I can stop anytime I want......

[razorjak.livejournal.com]

I'm widdling down my personal library for the first time.

I've got it down to triple rowing each shelf of two six-foot tall bookcases.

I'm still working on it.

[razorjak.livejournal.com]

I'm going to miss the Buffalo Library system. I've never lived more than a mile from a library since I moved here.

When I was a kid, there were many days in which the library was my babysitter. I was allowed to walk from school to the library and read until my mom picked me up around 5:30 or 6.

I tell people of that and they think my folks were irresponsible. Fuck man, I grew up in a town were that shit was SAFE to do.

[melete.livejournal.com]

I used to do the same thing. But I also lived near in the middle of nowhere in a place where _nothing_ ever happened. We would bike everywhere after school. Most days were spent in the library.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I used to do the same. Half the time they'd have to come and get me.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Irresponsible to hang out in a library? Hell, them my parents were the most irresponsible people on earth. I spent damn near every weekend afternoon at the library, and several evenings after school too.

[razorjak.livejournal.com]

Yeah I know. I take their comments with a grain of salt because they are the type of parents who putting 30 pounds of padding on their kid before he can skateboard ... in the driveway only. He's not allowed to go on the sidewalk.

[kest]

The kids in oakland do that. And they sit there and chatter and mess around with the games on their cell phones and eat cheetos and the librarian yells at them to shut up and it makes me shake my fist like an old person.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

One of the few redeeming features of Regina is that the public library was (still is?, I don't know) an utterly excellent public library. I'm pretty sure that it was a 99% contributory factor to my not killing myself until I was old enough to leave.

After not using a public library for years, I got a library card when I moved to Bristol. Because the threatening to topple over and kill them hamster pile of books I've *bought* isn't enough. For the 5 years I was in Manchester I worked at the university and thus had access to the third biggest academic library in Britain.