Some things make your heart dance with joy. One of my happiest thing to do is go to the library. And I realized how happy it makes me when I went there today.
It has been a while since I visited the library. Ever since I started work, I have hardly been reading. I’m exhausted by the end of the day, and seem to fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. Then came the holiday season, and life, if anything got busier. I read just a handful of books this last month.
Yesterday, as I checked my books, I realized that I had just one unread book in my bookshelf. I do have loads in the Kindle, but the Kindle doesn’t call out to me as much as real books do. So today at lunch time, I went to the library. As soon as I entered the premises, I could feel my heart sing with happiness. Rows and rows of books, just waiting to be picked up. Rows of books waiting to be browsed through.. books just waiting for you. I guess I sound silly, but libraries do make me happy. How I wish I could have spent hours there. It has been a while since I came to the central library, I tend to run to the library close to home more often these days, so it almost felt like a homecoming.
As long back as I can remember, libraries have always been a happy place for me. I remember waiting for the library period at school. We could only read in the library until we reached Class 3. Class 3 onwards, we could borrow books and take them home. I remember, quite clearly waiting to grow up and become a 3rd grader to be able to take books home. I wouldn’t be exagerating if I said that books and libraries were essential parts of my life as long back as I remembered. I still remember the pure joy of going to the library and choosing the book you got to take back home. For a lot of my classmates, it was just a chore which needed to be done while I would wait for library periods at school, and it helped that we had a fantastic library at school. For me it was just paradise.
And what’s more it still is. The same happiness I once experienced in my school library, I experience today. Nothing can match libraries for me. Book shops don’t have the same appeal that libraries have for me. I don’t know why but libraries are such a happy place for me.
So tell me, what are your happy places? Do libraries do to you, what they do for me? Which places make you feel truly happy?
Any Excuse to Write... 
Given that I am currently on a crazy book reading, movie watching and review writing binge right now, I absolutely loved this post of yours. Although I haven’t actually been to too many libraries other than the one that I had at school, I was born into books in terms of the fact that my dad is a voracious reader and he had piles of books, and as if they weren’t enough, he also bought me more than quite a few books when I was younger. So books speak out to me like nobody else does 🙂
I love the phrase ‘ born into books’ 🙂 I’m part of a reading family as well:) So I get what you mean:)
Jose Luis Borges, Argentine writer – “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library”. 🙂 🙂
Haha, that’s a good quote, Maya!
I absolutely love that quote!!!
As a kid I used to love libraries… although I read very few books now… I only read on net, magazines and newspapers nothing else… I order books, read a lil and lose interest…. sigh…
I don’t even remember now how a library looks like! 😛
Hitchy, I can imagine that, given teh fact that libraries in India are not so easy to get to. I used to use an online library last year too.
How lovely….I guess in India we dont have access to good libraries..at least not those near the vicinity of where I stay. So its online library for me..but yes, it does cheer me up when I go to a library, just to browse even if I cant pick anything up 🙂
That’s true in India, RM. I used to use an online lib in India too. There was a small branch not too far from where I lived but given the logistics, it was just easier to go online.
For me library, definitely 🙂 though I started reading recently.
🙂 Libraries are wonderful, aren’t they?
We don’t have such libraries in India, but I love the libraries here and my son has taken a liking to them too! I haven’t been to the central Edinburgh library yet but heard that it’s huge. Plan to make a trip there someday. And I know what you mean. Libraries have a charm about them, old and rustic yet new but familiar. I make it a point to go weekly to get books for my son.
I know. The best library I had been to in India was my school library. It was fantastic! Such a huge collection of books. Here, in the UK, libraries are great! Their collections are fantastic.
Reading is always pure joy and delight as a child..I can connect with this post and I agree with you that work has taken its toll on me…I cannot do the thing I love doing regularly..reading, writing and what’s not!!! How I wish i could bag a job where I work from home..I resume in 2 days post holidays and I abhor the first day@work.
That does sound like the perfect job:) But having been on a break from work for so long, I actually enjoy going to work, and meeting people:)
If I am glad to be back at US, one of the main reason to be happy is the access to library.. though I am not an avid reader, I take Adi as often as I can and the girl doesn’t let me down in borrowing the books..
Oh yes, the US has lovely libraries too. In India I had to depend on the online ones, and they weren’t the greatest either. In India, I buy a lot more books.
Library is also one of those places that makes me happy. Also the bookshops.
Welcome here:) Yes, places lined with books do seem to make a lot of us happy.
Books, books and more books, I could read endlessly.But now I read magazines and a stray book from my library.
I think that’s true of a lot of us.. I can’t do without reading, so I make time for it, somehow
I like reading books.. but the libraries i visited are the scary onces.. my coll library had snake in it.. was scared to go beyond few shelves.. one of the seniors got allergy and became critical as he toughed snake excreta on the book.
Wow! That does sound like a scary library!
I LOVE libraries and this post of yours brings back so many memories from school. Our school was built by the British and had a sturdy, vast library. It was had those typical wooden stair way and even small barred windows!
wow! wow! wow! I love the sound of it! Mine had a modern library(it was a relatively new building), but yours sounds like something out of a book 🙂
I would wait for 8th std, when we would be able to get library cards and take books home. Till then, I would hide my Enid Blyton in another section, so I found it the next time we had Library Class! 😀
Aww!! I wish you were my classmate! We could have had the best time hiding and reading 🙂
Soooper post!
“books are man’s best friend-No complaints,No demands”- a dialogue from the movie Ajab Prem Ki Gajab Kahani……………..seems very very true………
That is as true as it gets, isn’t it? Welcome here, Moon