let the water hold me down

nevver:

Return to Magenta, Richard Mosse

kateoplis:

“I’ve probably been in about 6-700 libraries over the years, some of them that I researched in, some of them I took my children to; a lot of them I’ve visited for events, for launches, for opening graphic novel sections. I’ve seen so many wonderful libraries. One of my favourites is in Salt Lake City, in Utah, where they had giant, six-foot-high beanbag things on the kids’ floor, where you could collapse and disappear with your book and not come out for the day. And although those places would have been my idea of the Elysian fields, had someone described them to me as a child, really all I needed at that point in time was a shelf with books on it that I hadn’t read. And a relatively comfy chair. Actually, I didn’t care about the comfy chair. I look around at some of the wonderful libraries I’ve been to, and you know, they’re all glorious. And they have internet, and they have librarians who are delights, and they have “no-shushing” signs. But I think that what is most interesting to remember, always, is the platonic concept of a library. And the platonic concept of a library can be a caravan with some books in it.”

“I used to love libraries at school. Because school libraries had an enforced quiet policy, which meant they tended to be bully-free zones. They were places where you could do your homework, you could do stuff, whether it was reading books, or getting on with things that you wanted to get on with, and know that you were safe there. And people responded to your enthusiasms.”

“I would obviously always put a vote up for books around, because there’s nothing quite like the glorious serendipity of finding a book you didn’t know you wanted to read. Anybody online can find a book they know they want to read, but it’s so much harder to find a book you didn’t know you want to read. To just pick it up because the cover looks interesting. Pick it up because it’s sitting next to the book that you meant to pick up. Pick it up because it’s sitting there on the returned book stack, above, below the book that you were putting down. I would always have books around. Because there are studies now that seem to indicate that we absorb information differently if we’re taking it from a static page than if we’re taking it from a screen, which is fascinating. But if you told me that all you’d have is a comfortable room that was a safe space, with a person in it maintaining it, I could believe in that.”

“For me, closing libraries is the equivalent of eating your seed corn to save a little money. They recently did a survey that showed that among poor white boys in England, 45% have reading difficulties and cannot read for pleasure. Which is a monstrous statistic, especially when you start thinking about it as a statistic that measures not just literacy but also as a measure of imagination and empathy, because a book is a little empathy machine. It puts you inside somebody else’s head. You see out of the world through somebody else’s eyes. It’s very hard to hate people of a certain kind when you’ve just read a book by one of those people. So in that context, as far as I’m concerned, closing libraries is endangering the future. You know, at least with the libraries there, you’re in with a chance.”

Neil Gaiman | Guardian

nevver:

Ask a Man (1967), Awful Library Books

applesour: Meet Zeus: The Rescued Blind Owl With Stars In His Eyes