Letter #10: Nine Feelings I Have About Library Books
The free thrills, the nostalgia, and the resentment
1. My grandmother, in her old age as I knew her, always had a large stack of romance novels she was working through. She carried a hand-sewn cloth bag the size of about 2 paper grocery sacks to the Willie Morris branch in Jackson, Mississippi; returned the books she had finished; and chose a new stack of mass-market paperback novels from the spinning racks.
2. The hardest part for her was figuring out if she had already read them, since all of the books looked about the same. If she’d read it already, the book would be useless to help her pass the days. The days were so incredibly boring; there was so little her old body could do, compared with her younger body. She had lived in the country and passed the time sewing, crocheting, gardening, cooking, and writing letters. Now she lived in town and she couldn’t even make eggs. Books for her were one kind of survival.
3. Now, when I make a special trip to the library to pick up a book or two, I am thrilled. All of my ethical values and my penchant for nostalgia are titillated by picking up a book from the library.
4. The librarians at my Asheville branch are tough as nails in their silence. I’m the most extroverted person in the room, just for saying, “Hello,” “Do you need my card?,” and “Thank you.” I imagine another person with more personality than me (likely a Gemini) bringing big bouquets of flowers for them, writing exaggerated notes of appreciation, sliding a fat tip under the glass with a returned library book. I leave feeling notably neutral, holding my books close to my chest.
5. The books tick away the weeks sitting in a neat pile under a little pilea plant beside my comfy pink chair. During this time, I come to hate the book I have borrowed. I hit the button for online renewal—3 renewals left, then 2, etc. Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self Regard. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. These were books I admired and desired before they came to imply that I am a sub-par intellectual, because they are only here for a limited time and I can’t bring myself to finish the book I’m currently reading and give them what they deserve.
6. The library ended late fees last year; this changed nothing about my process. I still receive the due date reminder email, and I still hit “renew.”
7. There was one exception: I read a library copy of Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri. The book was still relatively new to hit the shelves, but I got on the waitlist and got a copy early. It’s a thin first-person story taking place in Italy (my favorite), bearing a sun-dappled cover. I read it in the sun on my covered patio, and as a result, I do not hate but instead hold a loyal, outsized love for that book. Because it was a library book that I read in a timely manner.
8. My grandmother loved books because they passed the time, but I love books quite differently. When I read a good one, I feel time is passing not flat, but whole. My brain urgently ticks and sparks with ideas I want to write down. I feel I am living both my normal life and a life of the mind. Or not mind. More like a life of the emotions. I’m feeling. And it isn’t separate from a normal, visible life. It enhances it. It fills it from below.
9. For many years, I have ordered most of my books used on Alibris. (This is all you can afford when you work as an indie bookseller or graduate student instructor of writing). 2 dollars or less, plus 3.99 shipping. Just recently, Alibris raised their shipping to 4.49. This is still worth it for me to avoid the library book cycle. Yet I will still (I know) keep trying to use the library. Because perhaps once again, the day that I pick up the book will be the day that I start the book, with fever and excitement. And when that does happen, I will love that book like my own child, because what is more magical than a book I share with the entire town, that I cannot write my name in, and that I can love only for a short, special time?