Editorial 3.8, August/September 2001, by Deirdre Helfferich Bibliophilia Now that the rains have begun, the fireweed is going to seed, and a few yellow leaves amidst the greenery are rudely declaring winter‘s imminent arrival, I am preparing for my favorite time of the year: book-reading season. I read all year round, of course, but it’s hard to stay inside during the summer, what with all the construction and gardening chores to be done, the press of playing in the woods, messing about in boats, and so forth. I’m not one of those stalwarts who likes to go snowshoeing at thirty below, and I’m not fond of snowmachining or other sports that involve regular contact with bitter wind chill. Dressing up like a furry sausage doesn’t appeal to me that much. I like winter escapism, and since I can’t afford to go to Hawaii regularly (and really, it’s too hot there), I prefer to sit on the couch and read a good book. My favorite variety of mind fluff is science fiction, but you can catch me with African, South American, or Asian literature in translation, history, poetry if I’m in the bathroom, travelogues, the occasional political diatribe, mysteries, horror, biographies—whatever happens to fit the mood I’m in. I am an eclectic reader. Now that we have a library here in Ester that I can actually walk to, my reading has increased. I have the bibliophile’s standard foot of thermal mass lining the walls of my house, and I’ve started all of the books on those shelves, and read more than half of them. But dust collected on most, because they included all those books that I felt obligated to read because my English teacher in high school told me they were classics of modern literature. I haven’t gotten to them yet, and finally admitted to myself that I probably never will. So I donated them to the local library and visit them from time to time. Curiously, now that those members of the classical canon are out of my house and in the John Trigg Ester Library, along with others donated by my neighbors, I find that my interest in them has been renewed. So I may yet read them and alleviate my residual high-school guilt. Mrs. Clark would be pleased. Reading has always been important in my family. Everybody always had their nose in a book. When I was very young, I was mystified by the way grownups seemed to share information when I was sure that they’d never said anything to each other. Then one day I had a flash of insight that struck me like a bolt of lightning: it was those little marks on paper that somehow carried the meaning of what they knew, without speech. All I had to figure out was the relationship between the marks and the meaning. I had discovered the idea of code—the essential idea behind the written word. Everything else was easy after that breakthrough. Or so I thought then. There were still concepts to master, patterns to remember, context and metaphor and referents to understand—things that I will never finish learning about. I recall being quite frustrated with my parents, who would laugh out loud while reading, and when I would ask what was so funny, they’d tell me to read the book. Almost nothing was worse than having a grownup guffawing at some mysterious punch line to a joke and refusing to let me in on it—I always had the suspicion that perhaps the joke was on me. What was worse was reading the passage that gave said grownup hysterics—and still not having a clue what the joke was all about. The more I read, the more I learn. Paradoxically, the more I read, the more I become aware of my ignorance. I feel more and more stupid as I get older, but I suppose that I’m getting better at balancing the embarrassing real-life learning with the vicarious book learning that entertains me so much during the winter months. I love the fiction section in the Ester library, but I’m finding my eye drawn more and more by the nonfiction, and by the videos. I also find myself more interested by the borough library van that comes by once or twice a month to the fire hall. When I was nine, our family lived in Hawaii for a winter, and a bookmobile came through our neighborhood. Our family checked out so many books that the librarians could justify their run through our entire area because of us. It was great. The nice thing about the Noel Wien library van is that whatever is available at the library can be brought to you—and the borough library is a heck of a lot bigger than the Ester library. Still, it is wonderful to have a local library, and there are distinct advantages to it being a private, membership library. For example, the Ester library doesn’t have to worry about political bodies doing away with our funds if we stock books that members of those bodies don’t like. The members have a more direct connection to the library (many of the books on the library shelves used to be in their homes), and it’s not as far to drive. Many of us can walk to it. Judy Triplehorn, the head librarian at the Keith Mather Library in the IARC building on West Ridge of the UAF campus, tells me that most libraries in this country used to be membership libraries. The public library system in the United States is quite extensive, but, according to Judy, many small local libraries are closing their doors in these times of budget cutting, and cities are consolidating them into larger and more central locations, and so reducing their direct accessibility to neighborhoods and small communities. One concern that I had when the Ester library opened up was that it might have an adverse effect on the book exchange at the post office—but my fears proved groundless. In fact, there have been so many donations to the library that numerous duplicates and books too worn to use there have made it to the book exchange’s shelves—boxes and boxes of them. Bibliophilia is alive and well in Ester, and book lovers can find a lot of good reading here. But of course, that’s nothing new. John Trigg, after whom the Ester library is named, was responsible for yet another book exchange in the Golden Eagle, and many of his books are now on the library shelves too. I was a bookworm in school, hiding books inside my math textbook, reading during recess, reading under the covers at night with a flashlight until early in the morning. Books and I are old friends, and it’s good to know that I’m surrounded by people who are likewise book lovers. People like Kenny, a trapper, who would take a huge box of books out to the Bush with him each fall, and others like Frank, who can’t pass up a box of books at the dumpsters (his books formed the nucleus of the Ester library). And then there’s Judy, who checks out a giant stack from the library van each month, and J.D., who shares his lists of good books he’s read if you ask him about them, and Oliver, who seems to read more than his dad does—and that’s a heck of a lot of books, because his dad is no slouch, either. So when I curl up on the couch at the John Trigg Ester Library, I can expect people to keep trooping in and out. But the breeze from the swinging door won’t freeze my bones, because I know I’m in good company, and the thought keeps me warm. These folks are my kind of people: unrepentant book nuts. | ||
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