Libraries, they have always been such an integral part of my life. Everywhere I lived extensively, that is for more than a year, I have known the city library and used it quite a lot, when most of my friends couldn't show you the library on a map; it is not to say I was the only avid reader among my friends, in fact I am but only an average reader - but it is just simply that most readers are not library goers, and they like to own books. I just never understood how bookstores survived in North America when there were such good libraries around and I also never understood people's need to own books or even dvd's for that matter, well except for when you have a passion for a genre or a classic book perhaps, or a reference book. But this non-understanding might also stem from growing up with parents who were terrible pack-rats about books (and other things too). Today I have some friends who would proudly show off their personal book collections to me and, proudly again, exclaim 'aren't we pack-rats?'. And I always think, and sometimes say, you will not even come close to my parents by the time you are their age. You wanted to see what the world's political boundaries looked like in the 18th century, there we had that at home (once when I said this, some of my friends said 'ah that's so cool - I would go visit your parents just to see that if I ever went to Sri Lanka); you wanted to read the assassinations of American presidents, there we had a book chronicling those; you wanted to read about the supreme court proceedings of the case that accused Sri Lankan Tamils of cheating in broad day light to pass the tough university entrance exams in the 1970's, we had the complete bound works of the supreme court proceedings - all of this ready at our fingertips. This was in addition to all the school books, mandatory and suggested, for English, that my English-teacher dad had and actually most of the other books too, were his - the diversity of our home library very much reflecting his own diverse interests, a different era's version of myself. So I always told myself I would never amass that many books, but because my dad instilled in me the desire to read, I became an avid user of the library system.
The DS Senanayake library in Kandy, Kandy British council, Minneapolis public library, Grande Bibliothèque à Montréal, and now the Vancouver Public Library's main branch, all special places. The dated DS library and its kind librarians moving about in hushed silence arranging books and replacing cards (did I just date myself?), the Kandy British Council, where I used to meet the first guy who truly shattered my heart, the Convent library where I escaped boring religion periods and sometimes Mass, the Peradeniya library where I discussed life's philosophies with my later ex-husband, the Minneapolis public library and how it moved me to exhilarated tears at its grand opening ceremony at the new location, the Grande Bibliothèque that I was introduced to by my first Quebecois boyfriend. What memories will this Vancouver library make for me?
I was truly impressed by the architecture of this library - the inside I think didn't live up to Montréal's inside - I thought it was sunnier inside the bibliothèque, but then it is Vancouver, so… But yeah they had all the tech-cool and more with those electronic sliding bookshelves etc.
This reminds me of a Facebook post I made sometime ago: it wasn't about libraries or books or reading even. But I think inadvertently I did make a statement about the person who got me to read in the first place, my dad, always the parent who taught us the deeper, non-worldly things in this world, while my mom toiled over the worldy things, the money, what school we go to… In all senses of the world, a perfect combination of parents.
when I was five my Dad bought me 4 children's newspapers and said I had to decide on one as my weekly. I didn't have to deal with such difficult decisions again until I was nine, when he said I had to decide between a magnetic chess board or a badminton racket for christmas... Little did I know of the decisions that awaited me in adulthood... Ah to be a kid again...
I remember it was Rankati, Ran-something else, Mihira and Vijaya... and then he and I had this long discussion about how the Ran's might be ...a little too babyish for me and Mihira was boring, and the font and art in Mihira wasn't nice and rounded and I thought the sound of the name 'Vijaya' was more upbeat than that of 'Mihira'... so we decided to get Vijaya...
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