25 Authors and Their Favorite Library Memories
25 Authors and Their Favorite Library Memories
Everyone knows that February 14 is Valentine’s Day. But did you know it is also Library Lovers' Day? After working for a florist in college, I’m a little ho-hum on all the traditional Valentine’s Day fare. My husband and I started dating when Valentine’s Day meant staying up all night making hundreds of identical floral arrangements and then dealing with disgruntled guys the next day who didn’t plan ahead. So when our first Valentine’s Day together rolled around, my husband asked me what I wanted to do and I said “What’s the least Valentine’s Day-ey thing you can think of?” And he responded, “Chicken wings?” And eating chicken wings has been our Valentine’s Day tradition ever since.
All that to say, I’m much more enthusiastic about Library Lovers’ Day! So I asked 25 authors to share their favorite library memories below. I’ve enabled comments on this post, so you can share your favorite library or library memories, too!
Katherine Reay
The library in Harbor Springs, MI, is an incredibly special place -- I have pulled books from its shelves every summer since I was a kid. And, if I can, I don't check them out. I stay right there and read all afternoon. Yes, they let check books out, but why would you? The library sits directly above a fudge shop -- Howse's Candy Haus -- and is truly the best smelling place in the entire world! Talk about a multi-sensory reading experience!
Evelyn Kohl LaTorre
When I was a pre-teen growing up in the small southeastern Montana town of Ismay, summers could be boring. So, my mother convinced the principal of our school to open the school library to her five children. I was in heaven each week when I perused the high-ceilinged room that held over a thousand books--five of which I could take home to devour. I regularly selected the classics, without knowing their literary value. Through these great works, I traveled to Rome in The Robe, England's Yorkshire moors in Wuthering Heights, and to Spain with Captain from Castile. That early exposure to literary masterpieces shaped my reading and writing life. Since that time, books have my constant companions and guided the writing of my own books, Between Inca Walls and Love in Any Language.
Kristina Parro
A large chunk of my childhood was spent in the Fountaindale Public Library. My parents would take my brother and I to classes and meet-ups. We’d spend hours picking out stacks of books. My love for books definitely developed at the library. I even met my childhood best-friend at the library (shoutout Kaylee)! As I got older, I spent time volunteering at the library. I have so many great memories.
Still, no moment matches the one when I found out that my debut book, Lucky: A Novel (inspired by Taylor Swift’s folklore and the incredible true story of Standard Oil heiress Rebekah Harkness) was officially in my library’s catalogue and available for checkout. There is something exhilarating about the fact that my book is part of a public record, and that it will be available for any interested readers for generations to come.
Clifford Garstang
I love libraries all the time, and have many wonderful memories, but the biggest thing that has every happened to me in my literary life occurred in the Library of Virginia. In 2013 I was honored to be a finalist for the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction. The award ceremonies were held at a formal dinner in the fabulous atrium of the Library and I was thrilled to be there. When it was announced that I had won the award, I could barely breathe, much less step to the dais to receive the award and say a few words of thanks. Definitely a memory to last a lifetime.
Victoria Christopher Murray
I still remember this as if it were yesterday. I was seven years old and when my mom put my very own library card into my hands, that was better than my favorite doll and even the Easy Bake Oven that I so badly wanted. I already had a love affair with the library…every Tuesday my mom or dad would take my sister and me to the library to pick out our books for the week. I would take my time walking through the children’s section, looking at every single title. I could have stayed there all day! I loved the quiet that surrounded me, I loved the fragrance of that place, and I even loved the librarians who seemed so sophisticated with the glasses that they wore, always on the tips of their noses. (For years, I thought every librarian wore glasses!) Finally, I would choose my two books (that’s all we were allowed to check out back in my day), but by that evening, I would have read both of my books! Actually, it’s because of the library that I became a writer — when I finished those books I had nothing to read for the rest of the week. So, I began writing my own stories to tide me over. 😀.
Ellen Birkett Morris
My father would take us to the main library where we would sit on the lap of statue of Lincoln before going to story hour. The story hour room had colorful block seats and a small stage where a lady told tales of far away places and adventures. I knew then that I wanted to weave such worlds, to hold people in thrall , to create an escape.
Aimee Liu
While the public library was a favorite destination for me as a kid and a welcome haven as a teenager, I'm not sure I fully appreciated the value of libraries until my mother hit her 80s. As her friends and my father died, her world shrank, but the small branch library near her house remained the vibrant center of her universe. Like TV's Cheers bar, at the Cos Cob Library, everybody knew my mother's name. Librarians set aside special books for her, and she met her friends there. It wasn't just a place to read, but a zone of life where my mom could connect with people of all ages, people who reminded her that she still mattered. It was also the source of books that kept her mind sharp, current, and well traveled. Now 101, she's no longer able to read very well, but she rejoices that the library mobile can still come to her.
Tessa Wegert
My love affair with libraries started when I was a kid. I was lucky to have a mother who regularly volunteered at our little town library in Lennoxville, Quebec, and I would meet her there after school to linger between the stacks. When I got a little older, she would put me on weekend storytime duty and I'd read children's books to young library patrons. I'm not sure how much that helped prepare me for my future readings, but I had a great time finding creative new ways to keep toddlers quiet and engaged. My favorite memory, though, is of the annual library book sale. Books for pocket change? There was nothing better. I still have a discarded US first-edition copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's so yellowed and brittle it looks like a movie prop, but I treasure it all the same.
Sandra L. Young
Growing up in rural, isolated central Illinois farmlands, the library opened me to so many new worlds and possibilities. Including being one of the few in my class determined to go on to college. In high school, I loved assisting as a student aide, where I could browse the books and read in the downtime. Words moved me from an early age and I also started writing short stories and poems. Many years later, that earlier bookish inspiration has led me to the proud moment to share my own debut book with the world. DIVINE VINTAGE, with dual romances wrapped around historical mystery and psychic sizzle, lands next week, on February 21!
Suzy Krause
I grew up in Frontier, Saskatchewan—a tiny farming community in the middle of nowhere. It had no movie theatre, no swimming pool, no mall. I didn't care though; it had a library. I vividly remember that being my favorite place as a kid—so much so that at the age of 5 I asked my mom if we could move my bed there. (She said no.) I was a farm kid, and my school bus ride was up to two hours long, one way—four hours total—and I loved it. Endless, uninterrupted time alone with my precious library books. I remember once I went to take out a book for probably the twentieth time and the librarian showed me the card in the back of it. "Suzy," she said kindly, "you're the only person at this school who has read this book. Maybe it's someone else's turn?"
Feyisayo Anjorin
My favorite library memory was in my secondary school years at St Mary's college in Owo, South West Nigeria. It was a boarding school and all my friends were bookworm. Sometimes we would skip boring classes are get lost in works of fiction like Oliver Twist, or Achebe's Things Fall Apart, or Soyinka's translation of D O Fagunwa's works.
A few of us love non-fiction too. Those were the days of Encyclopedias, hence someone could spend hours reading an Encyclopedia and then come back to us to impress us with the newfound knowledge.
The library was our golden opportunity at that point to access new bodies of knowledge.
We grabbed it with both hands.
And I met my first "friend who is a girl" (I'm intentionally avoiding the word "Girlfriend" here) at the library.
It was the first experience of teenage love and a house full of books made it happen 🙂
Jill Shalvis
When I was in middle school, I'd stop at the library on the walk home. I'd go in the way back where they had racks of uncategorized romance novels and sit. I'd open my science book and place a romance book inside, reading while pretending to do homework. That was my introduction to romance novels, and I've never looked back since.
Catherine Dang
My favorite memories took place over twenty years ago. When my mom was working her shifts, my dad would sometimes take me and my sister to the library. He would skim through finance magazines while my baby sister slept in her car seat. And while they were nearby, I was allowed to wander among the picture books by myself. I was either 4 or 5. And I would always search for the same stories that LeVar Burton had read on Reading Rainbow. I would carry a huge stack of books and sit down next to my dad and sister. I felt very grown-up, leafing through my stories as my dad read through his magazines. Good times!
Farhad Dadyburjor
I love the warmth and feel of libraries, rows and rows of books, much like being in a bookstore. It's my place to go to de-stress, to just sometimes spend time browsing through different authors. I'm very fortunate to be part of the committee of the Bombay Gymkhana library in Mumbai which allows me to select new books every month. I love how this gives me the opportunity to broaden people's minds by exposing them to literature they might not have picked up otherwise.
Willa Goodfellow
All kinds of things happen in libraries! Our local library hosts an art show every January and February. Sisters, Oregon being an arts center, the quality is generally amazing. One year at the opening reception, I got to meet Paul Bennett and tell him the story of why his painting, "Crossing Over," which hangs in my living room, means so much to me. The painting shows a dog - no detail, just a black silhouette - on the edge of a river. with a ray of light shining on the water, leading the dog to cross over. Or is the dog watching and waiting for somebody to cross over from the other side? I wept when I first saw it, remembering my dog Mazie, wondering if she is waiting for me. I wept when I told the artist about Mazie. He said his model was his own Labrador. And he started weeping, too. There we were, artist and fan, surrounded by crowds drinking wine and nibbling cheese, weeping in the Deschutes County Library in Sisters, Oregon.
Eileen Brill
I have very sharp memories of my elementary school library and spending quite a lot of time there in fourth through sixth grades. Whether researching a topic for a report or listening to a story read by one of the librarians (who are long gone but whose names I still remember), I viewed the library as a place of limitless possibility. I loved sifting through Encyclopedia Britannica and world atlases; I curled up in a soft beanbag chair and read Judy Blume; I even helped the first graders with reading and writing skills. My mother was the person who instilled in me a love of reading and storytelling from a young age, and the library at Myers Elementary School was where that foundation took wing.
Sam Gridley
In my early teens, when I was much too young to understand her subtleties, I fell in love with Jane Austen. especially with PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and that novel's protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet. A cis-gender male like me was not supposed to like Austen, but I read her fervently. Somehow her vision of turn-of-the-nineteenth-century English society made me happier than my own environs in suburban Los Angeles. Well, maybe anything would have made me happier than suburban Los Angeles, but I did love Austen's witty style, the humor, the humanity, and of course the reasonably happy and romantic endings.
So how did that involve libraries? A local library is where I found my Austen novels, and the tale I want to tell centers on one particular volume, a copy of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in a teal hardcover library binding with ultra-thick boards. No picture on the cover. No illustrations anywhere. No trace of the publisher's original dust jacket. Just Austen's words and the library checkout pocket pasted on the back endpaper.
I read it thoroughly once. And twice. And then the due date came, and I refused to return the book. I kept it. I considered it mine, never to be surrendered.
At first, it seemed that I got away with my transgression. I continued to check other books out of the library with no interruption, including the books of Asimov's Foundation series (more appropriate for my gender, to be sure).
But then. One day. At the checkout counter a stern female librarian, brown-haired and middle-aged (meaning over 30), confronted me about the volume I'd never returned. Glaring down from behind the counter, she stood twice my height—so says my memory. She demanded I return that book or pay the fine, which had become, in terms of a teenager's income, substantial.
I did not hesitate. Though quivering in my shoes, I absolutely lied. I swore on my honor that the book had been returned and could certainly be found on the shelf. (I knew the library had multiple copies.)
No go. She was not swayed. Ultimately, since I couldn't part with the book—and couldn't face the shame of returning it—I paid the fine.
Why is this my favorite library memory? Because it taught me so much. I learned, for example, that crime doesn't pay, at least not when you're such a terrible liar. I determined that bureaucratic systems, such as the library's, do sometimes keep good records. And, of course, I discovered that librarians are really tough customers.
Since then, I've been very good, I swear on my honor. And I no longer have that book. I must have returned it.
Susan Mallery
When I was little, my dad took me to the library every Saturday (which I now know was to get me out of my mom's hair for a couple of hours!) The rule was, I could bring home as many books as I could carry. One day, a kind librarian changed my life by telling me about a magical thing called a tote bag. I was soooo happy walking home, weighed down by all those new books!
Audrey Wick
When I was getting ready to go to kindergarten, my public library had an art contest for kids. I entered artwork inspired by L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz.” My piece was selected to be matted and displayed! My family accompanied me to the library, and I remember being so proud that my drawing was actually available for viewing in a public location. Seeing my piece—which I titled “Surrender Dorothy”—in and among the book stacks was a highlight for me, and it no doubt influenced my love of storytelling and physical books, too. Today, when I see a novel that I wrote in a public location like a library, it’s such a thrill!
Heather Bell Adams
I'd like to give a shout out to Wake County's Northeast Regional library in Wake Forest, North Carolina. From the moment we moved to the area, I kept driving by the construction site, eagerly awaiting completion of this new branch. Now a few years old, the facility is beautiful, with lovely natural light. From the large rear windows I've sometimes glimpsed the cutest groundhog scampering around outside. I've named him "Dewey." Oh, and also, the book selection is top notch and the staff is friendly and helpful!
Heather Chavez
As a child, it was in my local library that I discovered many of the stories that inspired me to become a writer. So when I was offered a job there while while in high school, I couldn’t believe my luck. Someone was actually going to pay me to spend my day around books? Later, the library became my favorite place to take my kids, too. They were as proud of their first library cards as I had been about mine.
Christina Consolino
Library memories are abundant in every corner of my brain. Riding my bike to the Wass Elementary School library in the summer, legs pumping to keep time with my older, and much taller sister, coming home with bags full of books, and repeating all over again the next week. Riffling through card catalogs, sometimes for ages, hoping to find the exact number, then realizing that you'd written the number down incorrectly. The frustration of microfiche. Standing, neck tilted back, eyes to the ceiling as I took in the expanse of the library's reading room at the University of Michigan, feeling small and inconsequential as I placed my books on the hard wooden tables. Watching with wonder as my children, all four, smile and nod and run toward the library bookshelves, grab their choices, plop on the carpet and get lost in a book. The crack of spines when you open the New Release you've been waiting for. The feeling of being home anywhere you're visiting because of a library and all that's inside.
Idelle Kursman
When I enter a library, I feel like a kid in a candy store! I just want to roam around and explore, pick up some books and read the front jackets, and then take a bundle home. Actually, whenever I pass any library, It is always such a temptation!
Magdalena Stanhoff
My very first visit in a library took place when I was six. I had just learned to read and was endlessly fascinated with how a string of letters could transform in front of my eyes into a story, but at the same time a bit bored with the children's books we had at home, which I already knew inside out.
One day, my mum took me to a library near her workplace, and I fell instantaneously in love. Everything about this place seemed like a miracle, the atmosphere, the quietness of it, the smell, the endless rows of colorful book spines, each title a promise of a new world and a new adventure.
I visited this library for years, regularly, first with my mum and then on my own, and it never got old - each time I went with the same feeling of joyful expectations, and each time I left carrying a new hoard of treasures, to dive into it as soon as I returned home. This small library stayed in my memory as one of the most wonderful places of my childhood.
Diane Wald
I’ve been a library lover ever since I was old enough to obtain an official card at my small hometown town library, where I quickly exhausted anything decent in the children’s section and moved on to books in the adult section that the librarians would carefully monitor. They would ask me if my mother said it was okay for me take out a particular book and I would always say yes, and they always gave it to me. My mother, of course, had no idea this was going on.
But perhaps the library that meant the most to me as a writer was the one in my undergraduate college. I would say it is largely responsible for my new novel, My Famous Brain, because that’s where I happened upon many inspiring contemporary poets and authors like Kennth Patchen and Edith Wharton, who figure importantly in the book. I got a work-study job there, and since I was a speedy shelver, I always had lots of time to browse my favorite rows of wonder.
Libraries are essential, and they always smell good. If I were a millionaire, the most gorgeous and comfortable room in my house would be a library.
