In celebration of National Library Week (April 13-19), Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett, aka Lorna Barrett, has posted an item on the blog Writers Plot about her early library experiences and the crucial role libraries have played in developing a readership for her books.
I'll never forget the library where I grew up in Queens, NY. Old and wooden, with a ceiling that seemed as high as the sky and a second-level tier of stacks that ran above the first floor stacks around the central reading area, I felt like I was entering a cathedral every time I went inside. I fell in love with the place and wanted to read every book I could get my hands on.
By the time I got to high school, I could get so lost in a book, I'd completely tune out my surroundings. One time, I was reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn while waiting to see my guidance counselor. I was so absorbed in the story by the time he called me, he had to repeat my name several times and was almost shouting before I heard him.
I still think of libraries as wondrous places--repositories of knowledge, as well as a place where you can escape to a variety of fictional worlds created by a multitude of authors--for free. And they are a great place for new and mid-list authors to have their books, given the difficulty most of us have getting them into stores. Libraries help attract readers. And to paraphrase the line from Field of Dreams, if you build a readership, perhaps one day the stores will come.
So let us all celebrate and support our local libraries. We would all be the poorer without them.
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