Reading Allowed
by Chris Paling
(London: Constable, 2017)
Anything not literally screwed down is fair game for some of the regular users of the library.
Page 12.
Until the founding of Alexandria the libraries of the ancient world were either private collections or government storehouses where legal and literary documents were kept for official reference.
Page 15.
To prevent their rivals from crating manuscripts for their library, the Ptolemies banned the exportation of Papyrus, to which the Pergamum librarians responded by inventing a new writing material which was given the city’s name: pergamenon, or parchment.
Page 15.
Children’s is a seething, chaotic, noisy souk of colliding infants, breastfeeding mothers, svelte East European au pairs - legs tucked beneath them on the sofas, eating plain yogurt and keeping their hard eyes on their charges - and weary grandparents in sensible coats being tugged towards the DVDs by their pre-school grandchildren.
Page 17.
The role of a library officer - beyond supplying and receiving books and information - encompasses that of confidant, counsellor and mediator. Mediation is requi4ed on most days due to the preponderance of bemused, threatening and often deeply troubled people who use the facilities.
Page 23.
When the library opens each morning the street dwellers are at the front of the crowd at the door waiting to come in.
Page 24.
The medieval book-buyer paid more for his book on average than does the modern collector of first editions.
Page 43.
The way people approach the desk is an indicator of the tenor of the transaction that will follow.
Page 45.
Every branch library has its own atmosphere and smell and, of course, regulars. Occasional shifts in these outposts provide welcome relief from the relentlessness of the central library. Working in these satellites you soon realise that the conversation you have with some of the customers is the only human contact they will have that day - their trip to the library their only outing.
Page 48.
Nobody sets out with the intention of becoming a mid-list writer but that is the destination of most.
Page 54.
When the library closes each night, it’s not hard to imagine the books beginning to whisper to each other across the aisles - millions of words uttered quietly into the darkness.
Page 56.
Outbreaks of hostility are regular and usually quickly subside.
Page 58.
Customers usually thaw when they borrow or return a book. However short the transaction the exchange bonds them briefly t you and you to them.
Page 69.
The more elderly borrowers regularly discover that they have borrowed books before. On learning, some of them cluck or tut and apologise and make some comment about f ailing memory, while others press on anyway, arguing that if they can’t remember the title they might not remember the plot. Others enjoy re-reading books like children - it’s comforting, no nasty narrative surprised; like meeting an old friend and going through past times together.
Page 84.
The stock of a library is an organically developing entity. The books ‘weeded’ are, first, deleted from the system, then the title page taken out and the book either put out to be sold or sent to one of the charitable book-reclaiming services.
Page 87.
As the debate over the pros and cons of libraries goes on, one of the major cons (regularly trotted out by the government) is that the internet now supplies the information we once found in library books, now supplies the information we once found in library books. Contrary to this position, the writer Caitlin Moran, launching her ‘Save the libraries manifesto’, recently had this to say: ‘Why do we need libraries, I hear you cry, when there is the internet? Well, the thing about the internet is that it’ll only show you what’s most popular, hot what is best.’
Page 88.
The library, being the modern equivalent of the village pump, is now pretty much the only place int eh city that anyone can wander into and find something to do or somebody to talk to. Being so, it’s a barometer of the mood of the city.
Page 102.
The way books are chosen by borrowers is often unpredictable. There are two schools of thought among longstanding library staff. Putting aside the books that are garnering huge review coverage or have somehow miraculously become word-of-mouth hits, one school of thought holds that readers ‘graze’, i.e. they don’t know what they want and tend to wander along the aisles looking for a spine that catches their attention. Some customers regularly visit the ‘recently returned’ stand on the assumption that if someone else has returned a book then it must have some intrinsic merit. The second school of thought holds the more conventional view that reads visit the library in search of a particular book. … The current pro-libraries lobby subscribe to the first school, arguing that a grazing customer is more likely to choose to chew on something of more ‘quality’ if the stock has been curated by a stock buyer who knows his or her literature, rather than a wholesaler whose prime motivation is profit.
Page 116.
Ask anyone involved in dealing with the public and they will tell you that one of their most profoundly annoying characteristics is that if there is somebody around to answer a question then they will find a question to ask - often one thought up on the spur of the moment.
Page 125.
We take the Dewey Decimal Classification system for granted, but the man who gave his name to it, Melvil Dewey, was a driven, complex and apparently unsavoury character.
Page 128.
Dewey had his supporters and detractors. He was apparently hard to like.
Page 130.
You can always tell when customers want a chat because they approach the desk without urgency, an immediate question or concern or a book to be issued or returned.
Page 133.
The longer you work in the library the more you come to recognise those who seem to play a smaller part. A constant presence but who choose not to draw attention to themselves: the extras.
Page 135.
Libraries like to keep things simple - perhaps to leave no room for confusion. Being surrounded by millions of words promotes caution.
Page 139.
Read any author’s early works and you’ll usually encounter a soul stripped bare. Chance upon a late career autobiography and you’ll find the same writer being much more circumspect.
Page 155.
A good writer is a good reader of his or her own work. You can’t be one without the other. I’ve tried hard not to embellish the stories and characters in this book. There are occasions, however, when a writer confronted with an individual can’t help but flesh out the backstory.
Page 155.
The act of reading any book is apparently beneficial.
Page 159.
Reading slows down the heart rate and causes changes in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with language comprehension and a phenomenon known as ‘embodied. This function allows neurons to trick the mind into thinking it’s doing something that it is not.
Page 159.
The trouble some people take to return lost property to their owners - especially wallets - is not uncommon.
Page 162.
The street people rarely use the seats int eh centre of the room, instead choosing those places where there’s something solid at their back.
Page 167.
Like psychiatrists, when librarians encounter their clients outside the library they usually do not acknowledge them.
Page 168.
Whatever the benefits of the internet for information gathering it will rarely provide the serendipity of a library shelf. In Nonfiction, a books’ neighbours can be as enticing as the book you’ve just read.
Pages 176-177.
Violent and challenging customers are common to libraries the world over.
Page 189.
Libraries attract the poor and the bewildered, the opportunistic crook and the sneak thief, gang members, abandoned or runaway kids, people who can’t control their Axis II disorders or sobriety, and the sexual predator who prefers children, or at least the pornography enthusiast who doesn’t have his own computer or access to the Internet.
Page 189.
A number of surveys have been done on the books most regularly stolen from libraries. The Guinness Book of Records regularly heads the tab le followed usually by the Bible, then book designed to help for exam preparation (one US blogger suggests law-enforcement officer training manuals are among the most commonly stolen exam prep books), ‘racy’ books and manuals - Kama Sutra, art books with nudes in them and erotica - art books generally (high value) and, ore predictably, reference works.
Page 193.
Councils see libraries as a soft target, many of them conveniently forgetting they have a statutory responsibility to provide them.
Page 199.
Free public libraries grew out of the subscription library movement. In the late eighteenth century, a predominantly agrarian society in which learning was handed down from generation to generation became a predominantly industrial society in which up-to-date information was needed by a new breed of tradesmen and artisans.
Page 218.
Fiction and other popular material was treated with suspicion by the emerging middle classes and many f the earlier institutions concentrated their spending on that which would educate rather than entertain their members.
Page 219.
Two main factors had influenced the growth in libraries. The first was donations by benefactors such as the Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie, which improved the housing of the collections and raised their public profile. The second was the emergence of a library profession.
Page 219.
Writers are addicts. One of their addictions is to hunt for their books on library shelves. The second is the Amazon habit. … The third writer’s addiction involves visiting bookshops around the publication date and moving your books into a more visible position on the shop floor - this, of course, is contingent on the bookshop actually stocking your books.
Pages 240-241.
The literati signing the petition to save their local library have not, I bet, borrowed a book from any library since they were in their teens. It’s not James Joyce but James Patterson (four books in the top-twenty most borrowed fiction titles 2014/15, according to Public Lending Right figures) who’s keeping library stock churning.
Page 250.
This building, which just happens to house books for improvement and entertainment, is in greater demand as a sanctuary. It’s warm. It has a roof, running water, toilets and, as such, when the nights are cold, it’s a tough place to leave.
Page 257.
Almost everybody here has another life. It’s the preserve of poets, artists, sculptors, writers, subsidising their other lives by working between the stacks. They all bring something to the place.
\ Page 268.
The mood of a workplace is dictated more by the people there than the work in which they’re employed, with some obvious exceptions - hangman, for example.
Pages 268-269.
The young generation is not used to being censured in any way.
Page 269.
The library is now clear. The day’s weirdness retreats with the customers and all that’s left is silence and peace and the books begin to reassert their benevolent hold on the place.
Page 275.
When a system is under pressure it’s those on the frontline that bear the blame. These are also, by definition, the ones doing their best to keep the ship from sinking.
Page 280.
Libraries across the world are approaching this re-versioning with different strategies; the tendency of many is to move away from the core business of book-lending and toward multi-purpose community centres. The problem with this is that the further they move away, the more vulnerable they are.
Pages 281-282.
The main streets, post offices, cafes and libraries are the heart of a community’s social vitality. They not only promote social equality (who knows or who cares what somebody owns or earns in these places?), they provide a setting for grassroots politics.
Page 293.
There’s no doubt that the habit of public association is being lost and, with it, the places where we can find companionship and psychological support. Post offices, local pubs, libraries and even high streets are disappearing.
Page 293.
The physical transmission of manuscripts from classical antiquity into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance owed nothing to libraries founded by any emperor or king. What has come down to us today derived instead from altogether more marginal institutions: the equivalent of run-down libraries, perhaps, in a financially-squeezed inner city borough. Pages stuffed into a vase, papyrus scraps buried beneath the crumbling of provincial walls; musty folios stored in a monastery’s vaults: these are what survived the obliteration of the ancient world’s imperial collections of books.
Pages 293-294.
If the most senior member of the government at the time of writing considers libraries solely as places where information is provided then the battle is lost.
Page 294.