Ahhh The Printed Word...

I love books!! Today I was working on a project looked up and saw my bookshelf or excuse me ONE of my many bookshelves in my home. I began to think about where did this love of books begin? Is it just a love of books or knowledge that I can gain from them? I would lean toward the latter not the former reason. I continue to have a fascination for learning and gleaning information. But I also enjoy the journey that many of my books take me on.
So where did this love of books begin? I guess it all goes back to Kindergarten when we used to visit this place http://www.braswell-library.org/index.htm on reading days. (Its the black and white building in the picture and much like I remember it.) It has since been re-modeled after the catastrophic flooding of the Tar River because of Hurricane Floyd over twenty years ago that wreaked havoc on the building and its collections. But it was a wonderful place to me. I remember bravely walking from the children's section to the adult section because my brother told me there was a jar of eyeballs in the next room. Well there wasn't' a jar of eyeballs but there were jars of fascinating things: tiny squid, frogs, flowers, etc. all preserved for children to delight in and investigate. Of course my morbid imagination was already writing stories in my head about how they got there. Thus my love of libraries began and all that they held.

Another favorite library of mine that I went to growing up was in Fayetteville, NC. It was the main public library downtown. I loved this place. It had rare documents and old newspapers on microfilm for you to discover. I can remember one of my aha moments there while researching for a paper on North Carolina History. I was reading about the founding of the town of Fayetteville which was named for the Revolutionary war hero: General Marquis de Lafayette and wondering about why it was named after him etc. So I started searching through newspapers that dated back to the early 1816's. Well who knew I was going to need a translator for what I was reading. But it was fascinating. It was written in olde English. I fell even more in love with libraries and history in that moment. I couldn't help but think about who had read those newspapers; what did they think, what did they feel, etc. I was hooked.


From the time of my childhood, I could always find the school library and worked in a few in college and graduate school. I hope I will continue to love libraries, books and love of knowledge held within. Did you grow up loving libraries? What was your favorite one?



PS I am adding an interesting history fact from Fayetteville that I didn't know before today. You will find it in this picture: