Mobile libraries and memoirs

I like the carpark at the new National Library. It's spacious, it has high ceilings, it's brightly-lit, and it isn't crowded on a weekday evening. Parking costs just two dollars - per entry - after five, which means I can go in at 5:30, hunt for a mystery novel, and then zero in on an empty armchair where I can read till whenever (a pity the library closes at 9, which tampers with my "read till whenever" plans). Last Wednesday, I borrowed two novels, the first two books of the "Mobile Library" mystery series by Ian Sansom.

I finished both of them by Saturday. They're easy and entertaining reads, filled with quotes and literary trivia from famous and not so famous books and poetry. It also features the lead character, a bumbling 29-year-old Jewish librarian from London, using tomes like a Harry Potter novel and Yann Martel's Life of Pi as objects in his sleuthing rather than as works of literature. Case in point - the occasionally intrepid Israel Armstrong uses the Harry Potter novel to break a window in a noteworthy breaking-and-entering scene. I wonder if Mr. Sansom, like Mr. Armstrong, dislikes these titles.

The plots or mysteries - missing books and persons - aren't the main draw of the books. No, it's the witty writing, the hilarious scenes, and the roundabout thoughts of Israel that made me blaze through each book. I love his love of books and libraries. And it tickled me how he described driving a mobile library as the absolute low point of a librarian's career. I've never been in one before, though my friend, EK, in Ann Arbor told me about her children picking out books from the one that made its rounds in their area. It seemed like a good thing for busy parents or folks who lived far from a public library - the books come to you.

Here are some choice bits from the novels -

"...it was books mostly, some clean underwear, and then more books, and books and books and books, the ratio of books to underwear being about 20:1, books being really the great constant and companion in Israel's life; they were always there for you, books, like a small pet dog that doesn't die; they weren't like people; they weren't treacherous or unreliable and they didn't work late at the office on important projects or go skiing with their friends at Christmas. (from (The Case of the Missing Books)

"He considered the people who were the heaviest borrowers from the mobile library, the people he saw the most of, week in, week out: all the children and their parents, checking out books indiscriminately, picture books and easy-readers, the good and the bad, no discernible difference between them; and the teenagers - the local MP's daughter and some of her friends, some gothy-looking boys - who seemed to be working their way through every Ian McEwan and William Burroughs in the county and who possibly as a consequence seemed more miserable even than the average teen; and the adults, women in and out for romantic fiction and men for military history. And when he considered them all he couldn't honestly say that these people were any more equipped socially or intellectually or emotionally than anyone else; they might possibly have known whether or not Cromwell's troops massacred civilians at Drogheda in the seventeenth century, or about life under the Nazis in the Channel Islands, or exactly which Harry Potter they preferred, on balance, but they were no more polite when challenged about their overdue books than the average borrower, and no more or less keen to pass the time of day with a lowly public servant.

Library users were exactly the same as everyone else, it seemed, and this came as a terrible shock to Israel. He had always believed that reading was good for you, that the more books you read somehow the better you were, the closer to some ideal of human perfection you came, yet if anything his own experience at the library suggested the exact opposite: that reading didn't make you a better person, that it just made you short-sighted, and even less likely than your fellow man or woman to be able to hold a conversation about anything that did not centre around you and your ailments and the state of the weather.

He shivered." (from Mr Dixon Disappears)

Despite these thoughts of Israel's, I'm inclined to believe that reading always improves you, perhaps not your character, but certainly your mind, where knowledge and sensitivity are concerned. Perhaps it's because I've had so many moments during reading when I felt the metaphorical light bulb glow suddenly, or sensed that the author was uncannily describing my life, or wanted to memorize a line on the page that contained what I believed to be the most beautiful sound or image as it slowly unfurled in my head.

So I'll always be making trips to the library (and paying my fines), and ordering books from deepdiscount or zakoola, some of which have been intercepted by the dreaded MDA who think my heavy boxes contain unsuitably rated DVDs purchased from abroad. They're books! Stop making me go down to your office again and again to retrieve my purchases. But that's another story.

I've been meaning to read Anna Politkovskaya's A Russian Diary ever since Nick Hornby mentioned it in his column in a recent issue of McSweeney's "The Believer." I read an except in "The Guardian" and found her reportage vivid and unflinching. It's an important read, and a tragic one, given that she was assassinated last year, and people suspect it's because of her unwavering criticism of Putin and the troubling Russian state.

Another memoir on my list is Yakuza Moon, which may be the very first of its kind, one that gives the female perspective from the Japanese underworld. The cover of the book and the description of her tattoo made me certain it's the writer, Shoko Tendo, on the cover.

Posted by Monoceros at July 6, 2007 12:01 AM