and we have a room full of quietly reading people, and a kid who begs for bedtime to be extended to finish the last page, I consider it a job well done. For that day. It is really cool to see my daughter pick up chapter books by choice and read Enid Blytons. Bimbo and Topsy, the Naughtiest Girl series, The Secret Garden, Roald Dahl (for children), Six Cousins. I remember reading like a fiend and hating to study because it was time taken away from reading for fun. Also remember my mom's striking sentence, "Remember that it was the studies that taught you enough to read stories." And we had to balance out one with the other.
Summers and reading go together. Even now, it is not a holiday worth looking forward to, if there is no anticipated, unread book. I stopped from buying a few years ago, because it is okay not to own every book. It HAS to be okay for those of us whose homes are measured in square feet and love for books is not.
Libraries in India are still a luxury item. After my 'circulating' library in Trichy town....we would circulate, the books stayed in one place....the US public libraries were like fairyland. You could take a book, keep it for a good amount of time and read it for free. Oh, there is better still - say your library does not have the book, they will place a transfer request and get it for you from any library in their network. Yes, for little ol' me. Still for free.
I have seen public libraries with books stacked to the roof, with scarce people using the reading room for newspapers and pages torn out randomly. I have not been to the public library in Bangalore, because it is tough to see books be abused. The building looks really good, though. Maybe it is time to give it a visit.
Anyone been there?
The Spirit of the Marathon
12 years ago
3 comments:
The US libraries were exactly like heaven, yes. No I haven't checked out the public lib, will pretend it's as good on the inside as it looks from the outside!
Here we are obsessed with Taranauts...there's a reading by Roopa Pai at Easylib...wanna come? Oh, and Pippi Longstocking will soon be whisking away your daughter to more crazy adventures...see you Fri!
When is the reading? Thanks for Pippi....we got it from Hippo and then I made sure she didn't ready it...so she is all primed up.:-)
Nice post.
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