This article by Rebecca Solnit reminded me of sitting in the little red chair in the children’s corner at the town library in Merrick, LI. At home there was always a book at the foot of our beds when my sisters and I were young. If we woke up, there was a book to “read.” I think I loved books even before I could read. At the library I traveled via picture books to Paris, Neverland, meeting Jane Eyre, Trixie Belden, and Heathcliff. And it was all free. Was that when the seed was planted that I could write? Write a story? Write a book?

My little library was built in 1897 and I sat there in the 1950s. Lucky me!

“The United States’s public libraries sometimes seem to me the last refuges of a democratic vision of equality, places in which everyone is welcome, which serve the goal of an informed public, offering services far beyond the already heady gift of free books you can take home, everything from voter registration to computer access.” Read more…

Rebecca Solnit on a Childhood of Reading and Wandering   https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-on-a-childhood-of-reading-and-wandering/