Nothing better than a good book & a cuppa

Hmm, so I feel like today's post might be a little bit of an effort as my fingers seem to be refusing to type the right keys in the correct order to make these things called words. I'm going to blame the massive curry I just ate that seems to have made my brain go all lazy.

Anyhoo, in more important news; today I made my second trip ever to the local library that I joined two weeks ago. I returned Iain Banks's The Steep Approach to Garbadale (good twist at the end, but if you're a Banks fan then you'll figure it out beforehand), and checked out The Black Tattoo by Sam Enthoven after a student recommended it. Review to follow soonish.

So, I haven't been a member at a local, public library for at least 5 years. Of course I was automatically signed up to my university library when I was a student, but that's different. There you're forced to join, and forced to use it or else you'll probably fail the course you're paying thousands of pounds for, and knowing that reality and placing so much pressure upon 'the books' kind of takes the fun out of it.

I feel now, however, that I'm over the scarring experience of the university stacks where you eat, sleep and breathe books and can actually get back into enjoying them. I'm also trying to make a conscious effort to rebel against these new kindle do-dad's as I'm a traditionalist and I like my books to have pages rather than just one screen. Anyone that knows me will see that I apply the same argument to my CD collection too, but how that's organised and categorised is a different story.

Since moving into my house I've been eyeing up my local library, but it's taken me since September to actually join. I can't actually believe it took me so long to do, but I partly blame it on there obscure opening hours as well as my laziness.

Usually when you move to a new place the only things you get to sign up for is the doctors and the council tax - neither of which are fun, but I had this total sense of geeky excitement when I got my library card and practically skipped home and paraded said card in front of house mates saying that I feel like a "proper member of the community now I've signed up." There's also still that air of pomposity about being a member of a library, that naturally comes along with books and being 'well read', even though this is a ridiculous thing to think in this day and age as books don't make you any more knowledgeable than logging on to Google. Still, I like to think of those connotations and stereotypes that if you've got a book in your hand then you look that little bit more educated than the empty-handed person next to you. We'll blame my middle-class upbringing for that one. 

Going back to my geeky excitement of being an active member of the community and using their resources, I guess that's what it's all about for me: it's nice in a city as massive as London that you can find some sort of place where you might actually be able to strike up a conversation with a stranger. God forbid you should ever try it on the bus or tube.

Originally coming from a small Leicestershire village, when I was younger the library was pretty much the centre of the community and everyone had a library card, and used the service, so you were more than likely to see friends/people you knew and end up in a conversation. That's hard enough to do in London, and I'm not saying I'm short on friends so I'm going to hang out in the library, I just think it's cool that they can still evoke that feeling of belonging to a community even in a place as big as the smoke.

My final geeky admission in this post is that I've always quite fancied being a librarian. In my gap year before uni I even went for an interview at a library but sadly got turned down because they wanted someone a bit more permanent. I remember feeling gutted at the time.

I'm not totally sure why I'd like to be a librarian? There's nothing sexy about it, like I don't want to be one of those that has the big specs and the tied up hair, then when I take the glasses off and let down my hair I'd be like a beauty behind the geek. I just like the sound of the combination of being able to chat to anyone and everyone and...well I'm not sure if there is an 'and', it more just boils down to me thinking it'd be a cool job and I like books and surely that's reason enough?

With that in mind I'm off to start the first chapter...

RoseC