When I worked in a second-hand bookshop — so easily pictured, if you don’t work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios — the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people.
George Orwell - Bookshop Memories (1936)
For myself, public libraries possess a special horror, as of lonely wastes and dragon-haunted fens. The stillness and the heavy air, the feeling of restriction and surveillance, the mute presence of these other readers, “all silent and all damned,” combine to set up a nervous irritation fatal to quiet study.
Kenneth Grahame – Pagan Papers (1894)
We had a fine public library when I was a lad. Just as well, the school library was utterly pathetic. But then it could afford to be pathetic because we had a fine public library.
ReplyDeleteA bit hard on my classmates from the outlying villages, perhaps.
The things I paid no heed to were the newspapers and the magazines. My father, having spotted my interests, subscribed to New Scientist, RAF Flying Review, and a motorcycling magazine, name long forgotten. We also took Readers' Digest which was a bit elementary for adults, perhaps, but pretty good for young teenagers.
dearieme - when I was a lad our public library wasn't very good, but my parents also enrolled us in a commercial library which was much better for young people.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading Readers' Digest, so presumably we subscribed to it for a while. The only part I remember was something to do with improving your vocabulary and a regular selection of weak jokes.
I subscribed to a motorcycling magazine as a teenager, may have been Motorcycle Mechanics. There was an interesting series of articles written by a chap trying to make his way in the world of motorcycle racing on a very tight budget.