The library bar: part 2
Ms P and I were talking about why we like libraries so much. I am a big fan of good quality public libraries with sociable opening hours. Libraries that have great photography reference books and biographies and unexpected cartoons and DVD range and great depth of contemporary novelists and regularly displayed new release books that you wouldn't normally consider browsing through. The library is the life of the mind and you're actually seeing an interaction between people, living and breatheing people, who are also dedicated to their inner spaces, interior spaces, their introspective spaces. People who think as well.
I snapped a photo of Mr Right when we were in the Barossa, lit up by a good quality lamp, sitting in a semi reclining chair reading the paper. When we first started going out, we'd sat in a bar fighting over who could read the newspaper. Weekends are spent breakfasting and reading the paper. I've gone camping and had barefoot elderly hippie men ask me to share the business pages of the Weekend Australian. I love how when you are camping, any kind of intellectual prop is eagerly recognised, cherished and shared amongst people: you make friends because you can share a pen, or rustle up some writing paper for the long art of letter writing. If you can lend a book that someone else hasn't read, even if it's low art, you're sharing the book club pleasures of reading.
There is something very companionable about being quietly together, alone together, respectful of when company is needed but not conversation, or when conversation might bridge the separateness. When you are reading you do not need to raucously drink, but you might want to sip a wine or drink a beer or get slowly tipsy to see if the words or the rhythm change in what you are reading. You might want to read aloud! Mr RIght has helped me fall asleep by reading out loud; I have made Ms P laugh by reading out loud my favourite short story by Michael Wilding. I amused friends at a poetry party (unintentionally) by reading out loud Edna Everage poetry whilst my young friend Lachie had everyone in tears reading out The Black Book poems. Imagine being a 10 year old kid that has a room full of grown ups listening to your every word?
When I'd bump into P at the Hobart library, it was always amusing and unplanned. Amusing to think that we were in such synchronicity that we didn't need to plan an encounter, it would happen. I'd bump into her or Sab or Noah (generally returning his daughter's overdue books) there, would borrow books that my flatmate would read after me and discuss in turn (Girl walks into a bar; Good Man Hunting). I love reading a book that you then lend to a friend. The Vanessa Woods book that both me and Splatty read was so much fun to discuss and critique. She was so conceited but it was like roadkill to read the accounts of a highly driven overachieving narcissist (sorry VW if you're actually a sweet person).
Another example of how you feel a sense of kinship to fellow readers, is when I lunched with TR at the buddhist vegetarian cafe on a return visit to Adelaide. Hours later I found her sitting at a table for one, reading and drinking coffee, just as I planned to do the same for myself. Helen Garner writes about this in The Spare Room, as she depicts the history and quality of her friendship with the character Nicola. That they'd spend weekends together in the bush cottage, reading out loud and laughing; just as in Monkey Grip she'd describe afternoons with Javo when they'd lie across her bed and she'd read French novels aloud to him. Hearing the word is such a compelling and pleasurable past time. I would have loved to hear Shelton Lea recite his poetry, just reading it is fascinating and his biographer does such a great job to depict the emotional history that inspired his words.
Recent bookshop discoveries have been the 2 Potts Point bookshops on MacLeay Street. Both are open long hours. ONe is a skinny narrow shop closer to the Kings Cross end, filled with as many books as can fit into the shelving space. I bought NEW YORKERS there. The other shop, Potts Point bookshop, is on the east side of MacLeay Street, another 200metres? further north. This shop is a bit more polished and spacious, has a wider range of childrens books and nice coffee table titles, but falls just short of being too pretentious. The staff here aren't as addicted to books I thought; however the man at the first shop admitted to being a slow reader and not all that word-consuming (he showed me the books under his counter that he was currently working his way through, when not testing himself on the Australian Citizenship quiz).
Because that's the thing; in these sorts of bookshops you would be catering for addicts, for book nerds who come seeking a book the day after it is released for publication. OR maybe I'm just the book nerd! Can remember in my Adelaide days that I'd eventually feel the whiff of recognition from the book shop staff; and appreciated the staff members who cut out the book review sections from each broadsheet and knew their stuff. I am the sort of reader who requests a title by word association: "A book about people affected by the wars, by WW2 or WW1?" really means "Bright young people" (a hard copy title about the 1930s generation) which the Potts Point staff can be commended for finally recalling.
The other good thing about libraries, besides being places which provide a meeting spot for civilised cerebral people to gather together in a non home non work space, is they stock the titles that might not be current and stocked in bookshops. But sometimes they don't. I am simply desperate to track down a copy of Weetzie Bat, by Francesca Lia Block and may have to get JRSM onto it for me.
I snapped a photo of Mr Right when we were in the Barossa, lit up by a good quality lamp, sitting in a semi reclining chair reading the paper. When we first started going out, we'd sat in a bar fighting over who could read the newspaper. Weekends are spent breakfasting and reading the paper. I've gone camping and had barefoot elderly hippie men ask me to share the business pages of the Weekend Australian. I love how when you are camping, any kind of intellectual prop is eagerly recognised, cherished and shared amongst people: you make friends because you can share a pen, or rustle up some writing paper for the long art of letter writing. If you can lend a book that someone else hasn't read, even if it's low art, you're sharing the book club pleasures of reading.
There is something very companionable about being quietly together, alone together, respectful of when company is needed but not conversation, or when conversation might bridge the separateness. When you are reading you do not need to raucously drink, but you might want to sip a wine or drink a beer or get slowly tipsy to see if the words or the rhythm change in what you are reading. You might want to read aloud! Mr RIght has helped me fall asleep by reading out loud; I have made Ms P laugh by reading out loud my favourite short story by Michael Wilding. I amused friends at a poetry party (unintentionally) by reading out loud Edna Everage poetry whilst my young friend Lachie had everyone in tears reading out The Black Book poems. Imagine being a 10 year old kid that has a room full of grown ups listening to your every word?
When I'd bump into P at the Hobart library, it was always amusing and unplanned. Amusing to think that we were in such synchronicity that we didn't need to plan an encounter, it would happen. I'd bump into her or Sab or Noah (generally returning his daughter's overdue books) there, would borrow books that my flatmate would read after me and discuss in turn (Girl walks into a bar; Good Man Hunting). I love reading a book that you then lend to a friend. The Vanessa Woods book that both me and Splatty read was so much fun to discuss and critique. She was so conceited but it was like roadkill to read the accounts of a highly driven overachieving narcissist (sorry VW if you're actually a sweet person).
Another example of how you feel a sense of kinship to fellow readers, is when I lunched with TR at the buddhist vegetarian cafe on a return visit to Adelaide. Hours later I found her sitting at a table for one, reading and drinking coffee, just as I planned to do the same for myself. Helen Garner writes about this in The Spare Room, as she depicts the history and quality of her friendship with the character Nicola. That they'd spend weekends together in the bush cottage, reading out loud and laughing; just as in Monkey Grip she'd describe afternoons with Javo when they'd lie across her bed and she'd read French novels aloud to him. Hearing the word is such a compelling and pleasurable past time. I would have loved to hear Shelton Lea recite his poetry, just reading it is fascinating and his biographer does such a great job to depict the emotional history that inspired his words.
Recent bookshop discoveries have been the 2 Potts Point bookshops on MacLeay Street. Both are open long hours. ONe is a skinny narrow shop closer to the Kings Cross end, filled with as many books as can fit into the shelving space. I bought NEW YORKERS there. The other shop, Potts Point bookshop, is on the east side of MacLeay Street, another 200metres? further north. This shop is a bit more polished and spacious, has a wider range of childrens books and nice coffee table titles, but falls just short of being too pretentious. The staff here aren't as addicted to books I thought; however the man at the first shop admitted to being a slow reader and not all that word-consuming (he showed me the books under his counter that he was currently working his way through, when not testing himself on the Australian Citizenship quiz).
Because that's the thing; in these sorts of bookshops you would be catering for addicts, for book nerds who come seeking a book the day after it is released for publication. OR maybe I'm just the book nerd! Can remember in my Adelaide days that I'd eventually feel the whiff of recognition from the book shop staff; and appreciated the staff members who cut out the book review sections from each broadsheet and knew their stuff. I am the sort of reader who requests a title by word association: "A book about people affected by the wars, by WW2 or WW1?" really means "Bright young people" (a hard copy title about the 1930s generation) which the Potts Point staff can be commended for finally recalling.
The other good thing about libraries, besides being places which provide a meeting spot for civilised cerebral people to gather together in a non home non work space, is they stock the titles that might not be current and stocked in bookshops. But sometimes they don't. I am simply desperate to track down a copy of Weetzie Bat, by Francesca Lia Block and may have to get JRSM onto it for me.
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