In fourth grade, my homeroom teacher conducted a game where every student had a fictional $1,000 to bid on fictional items. Apparently she was preparing us for our futures as eBay bidders. (As I think back on it, this was one of the rare examples of public school teaching me something useful.)
One of the lots up for bid was a room full of books. I went up against a couple of girls (most boys pretended to not enjoy reading so they wouldn’t be labeled as nerds) and ultimately got outbid. But I later coughed up $500 so I could “live until 100” — no one else bid on that, but I figured I could read a lot of books by age 100.
Society has mostly moved onto the Internet, but books remain a fairly successful industry. An author, J.K. Rowling, was even named Entertainment Weekly’s Entertainer of the Year in 2007, and I don’t know anyone who preferred to read “Harry Potter” digitally.
In my town of Sedalia, Mo., Wal-Mart is the only place to buy CDs and there is no youth music scene to speak of. However, this modest burg does have a nice little bookstore (Sedalia Book & Toy) and two libraries.
My hometown of Fargo, N.D., recently opened a huge main library — forget $1,000 for a room full of books, this is a modern palace full of free entertainment. It’s state-of-the-art in the sense that it’s clean and spacious and packed with computers and DVDs and automatic checkout stands, but it’s also packed with books.
A lot of those books are old and well-thumbed. As Giles once said on an episode of “Buffy,” “Knowledge should be smelly.” You could glean identical information from the Internet, but somehow it’s more tangible coming from something you can hold in your hands.
The two Sedalia libraries — especially the city library, an old, White House-looking building that’s on the National Register of Historic Places — are practically as old and smelly as the books, and I mean that in a good way.
Now, given the choice I’d choose the Fargo library because it has more selection. (And it has a good number of DVDs. In the Sedalia libraries, VHS tapes outnumber DVDs; who says time travel is impossible?)
But nonetheless, I love my new old libraries. They have books that are mostly free (the regional library is only free to out-of-city county residents, but I paid the $25 yearly fee to double my book-borrowing power), and I haven’t read 90 percent of their catalogue, so it’s probably a little ridiculous of me to complain about the selection.
The main thing though, is that it’s a great feeling to be surrounded by books — old, smelly, packed with knowledge — and to know that libraries are still going strong in the Internet age.
Any other library lovers out there? What’s your favorite library?