2/14/1998: My Life in the Library

A bit of childhood remembered....

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My bookshop stories will come later, but what really formed me when I was young was the library. I lived there. It was like my Cheers, everybody knew my name, and that means something to a 10 year old.

It actually started long before that. Mom tells me I was reading at two and a half, and probably a year after that I was in the library once a week, minimum. I recall them having some sort of young readers
plan (really meant for kids 10 and older) that called for you to read around 5-6 books and find the answers to some questions about the stories. So from an early age I was reading, not only to just understand words, but to understand stories. Well pretty soon I was reading all of the books in one sitting, so Mom just set me loose in the kids section while she went upstairs to the adult section. I longed to go upstairs, but more on that later.

For some reason (probably involving being a 9-10 year old male) I gravitated to all the WW books. I remember two in particular that were illustrated histories of both world wars. At that stage I was
fascinated by the pictures of the various machines, tanks, planes, fortresses (the Maginot Line is still fascinating to me. Sometimes the French as so foolish.) Not so much just the pictures, but the descriptions of what they were, what they did, etc. Later on I reread the same books, but the actual battles became more interesting, I'd look at strategy, tactics, ask if I'd have done the same (yeah a 12 year old leading the Allied drive to Berlin.)

Thoughts of tactics and strategy (and an older next door neighbor who used to pound me in it) turned me to books on chess strategies. From May one summer until the end of July, we played every day. It only
lasted until the end of July because from mid-July on he didn't beat me once, the last few games I totally mauled him (the Queen's gambit.) Man I wish I had kept up with that. I play chess against the computer
now and get whipped. Oh well

Well around age 12 or 13, I'd pretty much read every book the kiddy section had to offer me, time to move on to the real stuff. I'd already started reading some juvenile fiction (Piers Anthony's Xanth series held
me until I was about 16) and wanted to read some real books. I never read any classics before high school, just fantasy, science fiction, mysteries and espionage stuff. I never was and am not a big mystery fan, but mom devours them so every once in a while I'd read one. She's the one who created my Tom Clancy addiction. A friend gave her The Hunt for Red October, and she never got to reading it, so I picked it up
around 8pm one night and started reading. Around 4am I finished and that was that. I think I've read that book 10 times and I still love it. The tension he creates is amazing, I've never read an author who
made me physically anxious to turn the page and read what came next.

I've always been a big SF fan. Not so much for the quality of the writing, good SF writers are few and far between. Larry Niven is a favorite (I've read Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer at least 5 times each)
But my library had a rather small SF section, and I read everything that interested me pretty quickly. But I never like SF so much for storytelling as for the idea. If the book had a unique and original idea that it revolved around, I liked it. I could sink myself into that world and forget about the book, I could become my own character and do what I wanted, create my own stories and adventures. I still do this,
probably even more vividly than I did back then.

Man, I realized I never described the Lynn Public Library to anyone. It's an old building, Carnegie built I believe, but very much like a traditional library should look. Huge front with marble/granite facing.
The 4 pillars supporting the front are in themselves a story. Most pillars are sectional, and when the raise them they stack the sections to create the pillars. These 19 foot granite monstrosities are one piece. I ask once how they got them there in one piece when they built this building in the 20's, and was told by one old timer, "With great difficulty." He then told me the story about how they broke the first several one, but the architect was stubborn and money wasn't an object, so it finally got done with a lot of sweat and muscle. But as you come in the front door, you walk up a semicircular staircase on the left and enter the rotunda, a two level domed room with the circular check out desk in the middle and various rooms off the rotunda. History was one way, fiction the other, reference up stairs, etc. Unfortunately right as I was leaving Lynn for college the city started slashing their budget. Damn shame too. It was a great library, and now I understand is just a shadow of its former self. Almost make me want to cry.

So those were my formative years, spent in the library. Most of the other hours of the day were spent with friends, baseball, or some other sport. I didn't discover women until high school. Look at me now.