I like Scavenger Hunts too!
Today is a musing blog, it came to mind when I was in the library at the University this afternoon. I was just thinking that you can decide a book worm by someone who likes the /smell/ of books. Have you ever noticed how old books have that… yellow-paper brittle smell, it’s kinda like those fallen leaves on an October evening. Then there’s that nice inky-clean plasticky smell of those neatly bound brand new books, with the shiny pages? Usually new textbooks have that inky chemical smell, but I still like it. Then there’s the neutral paper smell of your regular paper back book, where you can just barely smell the glue and the ink. And when you’re in a library, the whole area smells of those various book-smells.
Today I walked around just looking at the sheer variety of covers, tall ones, short ones… red, gold, blue, yellow… and I really just wanted to start grabbing at random, find a corner and read. I think I just don’t spend enough time in libraries. So much of life is the run-here, run there… clean, write, work… earn money, that you forget the sheer weight of time, knowledge and peace that seems to pervade a library. The UH one is labyrinthine, with you having to take different elevators in different sections to reach the various levels of the library. They label them with colors too, so the walls change from brown, to red, to blue… and the hallways twist and turn. I found a hidden area with books up on the 6th floor, after walking through endless empty shelves, and lonely study desks. It was kind of eerie! Think of a room the size of your average high school gym full of empty shelves!
Jorge Luis Borges used to use libraries as a metaphor for human life; each person or thought as a book and the endless variety an allegory for life. Walking around today, I think I agree with him.
It’s also pretty fun to use the call number to hunt down a slim battered tome no one has looked at, probably, since it was printed in the 20s! It’s an easy sense of accomplishment.
~Kristen
