Today is the anniversary of the dedication of the main branch of the New York Public Library, a landmark which was officially opened on May 23, 1911. This is the iconic library building on 5th Avenue, with an entrance guarded by two stone lions (Patience and Fortitude) and a grand reading room that is a wonder to behold.
“Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0”
The room is 77 feet wide and 295 feet long – longer than a Boeing 747 and able to take people more places. It is a shrine to knowledge, a temple of learning, and is lined with thousands of books – exactly the type of place where it would be impossible for me to read a book.
As a child, teenager and even as an adult, I am almost unengrossable. Oh, I love to read, but no matter what I’m doing, my head keeps lifting up to gaze around the room. It takes me twice as long as most people to read a book because of all the necessary daydreaming that has to happen at the end of chapters, after significant paragraphs, and often in between words.
The New York Public Library is magnificent. But if you’re building a reading room, give me something with the grandeur removed – a shabby closet, some pillows and a desk lamp.
Any place without a lot of stuff to look at.
Where do you go to read?
Trail Baboon 
my distractions come from inside my head as often as outside. last ight the 7t grader had a band concert and there was a 1 hour wait for it to start after drop off was done. i thought this would be perfect for reading so i grabbed a book and went to get a good seat in the auditorium and there were othere with the same idea however there was aobut a 40% room full of people talking on their cell phones and also a number of good ol boy conversations that happen each time the old friends see each other anywhere so the reading quality was so poor i gave it up. two paragraphs in 20 minutes and then the distraction form the text made those two paragraphs less than absorbed.
most of the time i can plunk down in the middle of a noisy situation and get down to business but the challange for me is keeping my mind on the pages. if it reminds me of something while i am reading i may creat a sub plot running concurrently wth the sotry i am reading and it cna take several pages before i realize i have derailed,
i have not been to that reading room in nyc. i will have to check it out next time.
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Good morning. I do my reading where ever I can. A quiet place is best. Sitting in a comfortable chair by a lamp would be my preferred place. I read in bed before going to sleep and if I wake up too early I read in bed right after waking. I can read in public places if I have a book with me and I am waiting for someone. Lately I have found I can even read in front of the TV while others are watching TV. This works if the show on the TV isn’t one I like, but this isn’t a very good place to read.
My mind does drift when I’m reading and I am not a fast reader. At one time I thought I should learn to read faster so that I could read more books. I read an essay by Fredrick Manfred where he said reading should be something you do at your own pace and you should even back up and read a passage a second time if you think you are missing something. I think Manfred is right and I no longer worry about being a slow reader.
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Being a slow reader is a detriment if you’re an English major enrolled in multiple English classes with a lot of reading to do. I have taken speed reading courses, yes multiple; either I don’t get it, or it doesn’t work. I like to relish the written language of the author.
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When Daughter was younger, I would sit in her room while she fell asleep and read. We kept a small light on for her, enough of a pool of light for me to see my book. It was quiet and peaceful – I got more read when I had that 20-30 minutes of reading time guaranteed. Now I tuck her in, give her a hug, the door closes and I get distracted by the Great Lists of Things That Must Be Done and wind up with only a few minutes of reading in bed before I go to sleep. Takes forever to get through a book when you only have 10 minutes to read before you fall asleep with a book on your chest…
Soon, however, it will be warm and summery and I can sit in the back yard in the breeze while Daughter chases around with her pals and read. Love reading outside in the summer – would give it a go in the winter if I could turn the pages with my mittens on. 🙂
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One winter, when the s&h had just started school, there was a big sloppy snowstorm that resulted in a rare snowday for SPPS-it must have been March, because later in the day, it really warmed up, so we made a messy snowfort out of the slop and sat reading in it, just to say we did.
Fingerless gloves are your friend for winter reading. Suppose you might be able to turn pages with mittens on with an e-reader and a stick?
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I just saw a news report about the book leading the NY Times best-seller list, something called Fifty Shades of Grey, It is apparently a romance novel, but one with oodles of hot sex. The issue in this report was trying to understand why this book was so popular, and one of the reasons amused me. Now that people use e-readers, they are free to read raunchy novels in public because nobody else can tell what they are reading. A secretary on a subway train who would never had the nerve to read this sexy book with its title page showing can safely read it on her Kindle now.
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There is a You Tube of Ellen DeGeneres reading this. It is a big deal, because they consider this women’s porn. Before ereaders, women would not buy the stuff. But now with anonymity of a download and an ereader, off we go! Ellen’s commentary about the exerpt she is reading is a hoot. “Don’t use the spatulas in her kitchen!”
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That theory makes perfect sense to me. I would also bet that a lot of men are buying this book as well. “You know…as a present. For my wife.”
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do they sell edible accessories that go with e books?
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Obviously, I’m not normal. Here I got excited when I found some old children’s books that I could download to my e-reader for free…
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Edith – I think this makes you normal HERE.
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Maybe I’m being obtuse here, but the appeal of reading erotica in public escapes me. If I were to read some, and I’m not saying I would, mind you, but if I did, I would probably not choose to do so hurtling down University Avenue on the 16A, or in the dentist’s chair waiting for the novocaine to kick in.
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The list of things that need to be done also keeps me from getting much reading done. I am retired and should have time for reading, but there are a lot of other things I want to do. If I am reading a book that I really like I will take some extra time away for the other things I want to do and spend more time reading. Also, I will make extra time for reading if I am getting near the end of a book that I think will have a good ending or some kind of ending that interests me.
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
Oh, that storied Reading Room. It is on my bucket list to see. I wonder if anyone has counted the number of movies in which it has appeared?
My reading life these days is conducted on foot, in the gym or in the car while an accomplished narrator downloaded from Audible.com onto my iPod reads to me. Vacations away are now the only time I get to revert to my lifelong habit of laying on the couch with my head propped at a reading angle and the book propped by my hands. Music, public radio, or the TV play quietly in the background providing some distracting and soothing ambient noise.
Right now as I type, I am listening to our nesting pair of wrens who are ardently courting and singing while they construct their home in the birdhouse off the back deck. My mother is here this week. Yesterday she spent the entire day listening to the wrens while she read. I am off work for 6 days starting today. After walking the dogs while plugged into the iPod (reading “The Potato Factory,” a fictionalized history of Australia) I will plant seedlings until it rains then take a nap.
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My wife and I listen to books when traveling in the car. When I had a job that required long trips by car I listened to book while traveling. I usually only take short car trips by myself these days and don’t have any books to listen to while driving alone. My wife gets the audio books we listen to from the library. Some day I will start making more use of my iPod and might use it to listen to books.
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I just came inside from planting the front flower garden. Thunder was rumbling in the distance. It may be a great day to listen to a storm, read on the day bed and drift into a nap…. Yawn.
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As those of you who have met us may have observed, the s&h and I never leave home without a book (and I like to have some knitting as well). We read everywhere, but seldom in official “reading rooms”. I suppose that is what happens when you just cram your reading in as a guilty pleasure anywhere you can, and never really designate time for it.
The big exception to this was when I lived in the DC area and actually had a Library of Congress library card. You cannot check out books there, you cannot cruise the stacks. You look up something in the card catalog, fill out the slip and wait for them to bring you the book(s) you have asked for to your desk number. If you find something you really, really want, you then try your luck at getting a copier and copy to your heart’s content.
I always thought that since nearly every book has a Library of Congress number, that the Library of Congress had ALL the books so numbered. Alas, no, and even they have books you cannot get because they are “missing”.
OT-tim-last night, the s&h suddenly got up from the couch and got a piece of paper-when I asked what he was doing, he said he was taking a box elder bug outside “there you go little fella”-thought of you and smiled. Usually, I tell him about the daily conversation here, but hadn’t done so yesterday-he must just channel it anyway.
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Yes, to books (at least 3 or 4) AND knitting because one never knows what kind of mood will strike. I’d rather carry one less pair of shoes, and clothes? Who needs them. There’s nothing like the panic that hits when you realize that you’ve left the current book or knitting project at home. Or maybe I’m wound a little too tightly. Jacque, there must be a good mantra for crises like these.
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My Grandma, who was also always in motion in the same way I am, would say in those times, “Well, just twiddle your thumbs, then!” It’s a Twiddle Crisis.
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Bill will be glad to put a professional name to this malady that he has to deal with much too often. One thing we used to do on road trips that we haven’t done lately is write parody lyrics to favorite or current songs. Of course now we don’t listen to much current music. But if we go back a few decades musically speaking, we could resurrect that pastime. I’d forgotten all about it till this minute. Anything but twiddle!!!!
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Good excuse for buying another book, or a magazine at the very least! Knitting projects are not so easy to purchase on the fly, alas.
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nice
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No one is admitting to much bathroom reading. It is hard to tell sometimes if the small room off our bedroom is a library or a bathroom, since my husband has it stocked with the multitude of library books he reads at any one time. I love to read in bed or curled up on the sofa or soft chair. My cousin Wes got a degree in Library Science and Document preservation at Columbia University and worked at the New York Public Library for a couple of years before starting a 30 year career at Ohio State. He really enjoyed working in New York. I don’t know if he saw any of the ghosts in the library.
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Okay, I will admit to using the bathroom as a reading room. I plead guilty.
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Uh, yeah. that would be me. I learned it from my Dad. TMI??
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Also guilty…we keep ours stocked with magazines (generally MN Monthly, MN Women’s Press and my college alumni magazine, should you be in the neighborhood) in case your regular reading material is not close to hand when you enter…
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I’ll admit to it. In fact, I read “War and Peace” in the bathroom. Back in my bookstore days I had a stripped copy (paperback without it’s cover) that I kept in the bathroom. Every few days I would rip off the last few pages that I had read and throw them away, so the book got smaller and smaller as the months went by. As you can imagine, at 2-3 minutes a pop, it took a couple of years to finish the whole thing!
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Oh, my, I love this place.
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That is mighty impressive, Sherrilee! I never had the ambition to tackle the classics while in the bathroom. Just magazines and newspapers in ours. Perhaps I’m setting the bar too low – although, if I tried bringing a proper book in there I might never come out again. I tend to stay in longer than I should as it is, just because it is the only place in the house where children/dogs have no access to me. 🙂
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Yes, often the only room with a lock on the door.
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I read Rumi poetry and other Buddhist writings in the bathroom, as well as Mother Earth News and Yoga Journal.
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Poetry and koans. Short and pithy! Yes, that’s better 🙂
I’m still trying to wrap my brain around “War and Peace” as bathroom reading, especially since my stab at that book involved constantly re-reading entire chunks of the book so as to sort out all the names etc. I did once read “The Gulag Archipelago” as summer reading?!? and it took all summer. Not in the bathroom though.
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Like MIG I have a book with me everywhere I go. If I’m early for a meeting I often read in my Outback, which has a comfy chair and a radio. Dining alone in a restaurant would be impossible without the help of a book. Nor could I fly without a book to distract me from the awfulness of the general experience.
But the question seems aimed at our favorite place to read. Without a doubt, the best place I can read a book is somewhere around Lake Superior. There is one place you can sit in my cabin and see the big lake heaving and sloshing while you read, and your extra reward is seeing wildlife moving past the cabin windows. I love to read while sitting down in the old quarry in front of the cabin, occasionally getting a spray when the lake smacks against the rocks. It is almost as nice to read in my home’s comfy chair when there is a fire dancing on logs in the hearth and nice music on the sound system.
OT: weather for the Sunday goat trip is lookin’ pretty good. There is room for another in my car. We leave at 8 AM and get back about 4 PM, smelling goaty I’m sure.
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My birthday tradition for the past 3 years is to get my “free dessert with the purchase of a food item” email coupon from Longfellow Grill, and go redeem the coupon alone. I always take a book and I must say that dining in a restaurant alone with a book is a much better experience than dining with some people.
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TeeHee
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Mostly in bed at night. If not there, the living room sofa. Less often on the family room sofa. On warm, calm days, the chaise lounge on our porch. I don’t need much in the way of “accoutrements”, to be comfortable, just relative quiet. A little background music is okay sometimes.
Chris
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Porches were invented for reading, surely.
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And watching thunderstorms out of the rain.
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And hammocks too. Haven’t taken a book out there yet this year, but the hammock is up, so probably this weekend, it will get book-broken-in!
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I can never read in a hammock. I get way too relaxed and tend to fall asleep. Of course, that may also be because I often have an adult beverage in hand when I hit the hammock, so there ya go! 🙂
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I had a great professor who once said that snoozing a bit was the best part of a good read!
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So true 🙂
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Morning–
I read the papers either on the dining room table or leaning on the kitchen counter. Books are usually in bed, sometimes on the living room couch or… yeah… the WC.
OT- headed to Chicago this afternoon to pick up my son. Flight comes into O’hare about 5:30 and then they will return to college campus North of Downtown. So when I’m driving into town about 6:30, should I stay on I90 or get off on a side street? Any advice?
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I don’t know what the situation will be where you are going, Ben, but trying to find a quicker way on side streets doesn’t always work in my experience. Even when it is stop and go on a free way it is usually better to stay on the free way and put up with the slow travel because you will usually not find any very good route to use on side streets.
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yeah, Jim is right.
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Thanks for the advice Jim. We’re on I90 and headed home again (son is driving). They were ahead of schedule so I was right there in the thick of Chicago traffic from 5:30 – 6:40 by the time I finally got off I90. I did detour just a couple exits early.
Catch you all in the morning.
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By the way, my music on the trip down was Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ followed by Benny Goodman ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ and then random Mark Knopfler.
Son is listening to his playlist now; an assortment of Christian bands.
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I read in the bathtub-but mostly junk novels and magazines wouldn’t want to drop great literature into the bubbles
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The bathtub is a favorite spot for me, too. I don’t take the e-reader into the bathtub, but anything else can go there, except maybe if I had a signed first edition of something, which I don’t.
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I’ve learned the hard way not to pick library books for tub reading.
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Dale here is where 45 years ago I too could not read or study.
The film is worth it.
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Sorry, that worn out:
http://harperlibrarycommons.uchicago.edu/
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Watch the film. It’s now a “Commons because they have a splendid new library, butr will never have the grandeur of Harper or NYC or Yale, etc.
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Clyde! You have returned. We missed you while you were away.
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I usually read in bed. I also read in waiting rooms or on the bus if it’s a long enough ride. Reading at home in a chair or on the couch is a guilty pleasure because The Great List of Things That Must Be Done is always calling to me.
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I could provide you with my GLOTTMBD, too, so that the guilty pleasure is even more intense.
Always want to help!
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“GLOTTMBD” — must be added to the glossary.
Also, and this is OT and I stole it from a friend, “SWMBA” – ‘She Who Must Be Adored’…
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Yes, duly noted. And HWMBA, also? – we don’t want to be called sexist…
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Thanks for the offer, Jacque – perhaps we could work out a trade.
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I read everywhere, always have done, so I don’t really have a favorite place. Train, bus, waiting rooms, restaurants, living room, bedroom…and yes, I do sometimes take my reading material with me to the loo. Sometimes I read and listen to the TV at the same time. The worst was when I got bored listening to a book on tape and reached for a print book before I realized what I was doing. I’ve tried walking and reading, and cooking and reading, but it didn’t really work all that well (kept losing my place on the page, very annoying).
OT, I probably won’t see the next several Trail entries because I’ll be in Madison attending WisCon (a feminist science fiction convention). You all have fun without me, and see you on Tuesday!
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When I was about nine or ten I needed to return a library book that I had not quite finished. So I walked to the Ames Public Library (about five blocks away) while reading. A robin up in an elm above the sidewalk cocked his long tail and let loose a big pile of bird shit that splattered all over my page, plunging me into fury and guilt because I had been responsible for book abuse. Last time I read while walking.
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Did they make you pay for the book?
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Naww. I got an understanding librarian who could read my anguish in my face.
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A college librarian friend of mine told me that once a student came in to report that he had lost a book. It had been in his car and the car had been towed and crushed into a large metal cube an auto salvage yard.
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That had to be a first, Renee!
When Charlie, our now deceased Portuguese Waterdog, was a puppy, he ate a rare Danish book I had checked out from the local library. Cost me $40.00 that one. Charlie really didn’t destroy much as a puppy, but when he did, he made sure it was expensive! Gone four years now, and I still miss him.
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Sounds like he was a valuable friend in every way 🙂
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ah remember goldfinger.
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bath tub rather than toilet. i mid be willing to bet you 10 dollars you could never get a bird to drop on your book while walking again if you tried. if you do i will award you the lightning strikes twice award and eat the costs of the book that bit the dust.
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sorry half entry from early this morning that never got posted then a reply to steves bird dropping. geeze
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Walking and reading works if you’re at the Y on the indoor track. Smooth and obstacle free.
I can read any place, standing/sitting/lying down (preferably in a hammock) due to a childhood spent in large classrooms of 50+ kids and boarding school with never fewer than 2 roommates. I can block out the world for a good (or not so good) book. We had an old cabin when I was young where I re-read the same old magazines/books/comics cover to cover every summer for years. I must admit that ages ago in public I would occasionally conceal the cover if my book flunked the “lurid” test. Maybe I was a book snob. But no more. Now I read what I like wherever and whenever I like.
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Ha ha…. I occasionally feel the same way. In fact, just yesterday, when I set my book down on the bench at the gym while I opened my locker, I set it facedown. But not because this one is lurid, but because it’s a little on the geeky side!
My folks were very serious about non-censorship when I was growing up, but every now and then my mother would move books out of our public space if she found them laying about – that’s when I knew I was testing her resolve to let me read anything. I have to admit that once, when reading “Fear of Flying” by Erica Jong (which had a particularly tittilating cover) I made sure to leave it laying around, cover up, all over the place!
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It was ‘Catch 22’ that my mom objected too. So I just hid it as I read it.
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“Lurid”, “Geeky”, “Cheesy”, “Low Brow”, “Exotic”, whatever tips over into self-conscious territory. My parents never censored us either. I would self censor only to the extent of occasionally hiding the cover. Read it undercover 🙂
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Like CG, I don’t have just one place. I read in bed, in my studio, on the sofa, in the car, while waiting in almost any waiting room, at my desk, on the stationary bike at the gym. I have a plastic bin in the car trunk that I stash books in, so I always have at least one book on hand. And magazines in the bathroom. I’m also one of those few folks that are able to read more than one book at a time, so I can have one book on CD in the car going while I have another book that I’m reading at the gym and a third book that I’m reading in my bedroom.
I will say that one of my most pleasant reading experiences was in the Central branch of the Hennepin County Library downtown. I wanted to read a book about Margaret Fuller that was a reference copy so I trekked down on a Saturday and sat in a quiet room where you’re allowed to look at the reference only materials. It was so quiet, almost mesmerizing. I’ve always wanted to do that again, but don’t have the time I used to!
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Yes, to simultaneous book reading. I do that too.
Margaret Fuller? VS, you need to visit our basement 19th c book vault. You might find some interesting reading material.
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Book vault? You might never get me out!!!
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You and Bill both! When it comes to 19th c literature, theatricals, utiopian societies, esoterica, he’s king of the geeks. You’ll have to come over some day.
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Book vault is a bit of a misnomer. Just substitute “bookshelves”. No vault.
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On a decent day, my back porch is a fine spot for reading. When it’s too hot, as it is now beginning to get here in FL, I tend to stick to reading in bed at night. I also manage to sneak in a few chapters here and there on days when I must pick my kid up at school, since I park there an hour before dismissal (can’t even get near that parking lot if I arrive any later!) and can read a bit while I wait for her. And my own local library is a great place for reading. They have a few spacious, comfortable, well-lit areas which I have parked myself in many a time. And because they have completely separate spaces for the children’s section and the teens section, I don’t find too many disturbances where the grown-ups sit.
As for the public library building in NYC, I just visited there about a month ago. I could have spent the whole day there if it were up to me. It was kind of busy, with a couple of different tour groups parading through, so I was not able to get as many pictures as I would have liked (the throngs were occupying the primo picture-taking spots and I got tired of waiting for them to leave). I did get a handful of nice pics from inside and out, and if anyone is interested, here is the link to my own blog, where those photos and several others from my NYC trip are posted: http://doubleyooteeeff.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/todays-fyi-trip-recoveryrewind/
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And just imagine all the great writers who have sat in those same chairs, reading for pleasure or researching their books. I think Ian Frazier researched one of his best books there.
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Absolutely! I really did relish the opportunity to be in a place that had such history associated with it. I felt that way in general while visiting NYC. Florida doesn’t have that type of vibe at all.
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You’ve got a great eye for photos, Chris! Loved them all. The signage, architecture, people watching, parks, library . . . What a smorgasbord. Makes me wonder why we’ve put off going there for so long. My family lived there for a year when I was in 1st grade and my memories are all visual snapshots of our neighborhood near Grant’s Tomb.
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Thanks, Robin, glad you enjoyed them! And a trip to NYC is always worth the time and the money, IMHO. I wish I had the chance to get up there more often, but I haven’t been there more than 3 times in the past couple of decades. Hope you manage to take a journey there yourself before too long – and don’t forget to take pictures for us when you do! 🙂
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i have a new rule as of two or three years ago. it is to never say in my opinion. who elses would it be coming out of your fingertips or mouth?
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It could be an opinion as opposed to a fact i.e. in Chris’s opinion, a trip to NYC is always worth the time and money. In my opinion, it might not be.
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OT – those who know me well know that there are a couple of inventors who I believe should be canonized. Art Fry is one of them (post-it notes) and the other is Eugene Polley. Sad to say that Eugune Polley, who invented the remote control and the mute button, passed away yesterday.
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Not sure about the remote, but certainly he should be blessed for giving us the mute button!
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My grandfather was a bit of a tyrant… when we were little he would always make us get up to change the channel on the tv. And he would make us change it quite a bit… when a commercial would come on, you’d have to get up and then a few minutes later, change it back. He was one of the first people I knew to get a remote control and I loved it immediately!
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gotta add george de mestral, velcro died 1990
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Added!
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Susan Allen Toth edited a book in the early 90s called Reading Rooms that I sold in my little shop, but unfortunately I never had time to read it. It’s in the Hennepin Cty. Lib. system.
I am constantly creating new little nooks (rocking chair and lamp in alcove at top of stairs) at home that are supposed to be reading corners, and then I seldom read there! I read on the couch, usually, with Husband, or in bed at night. I too keep a half-read book in certain places – one down by the stationary bike, one in the car in case I’m stranded somewhere and have forgotten to bring my current book. I have an upstairs book and a downstairs book… If I get really engrossed in something, it lives on the stairway so it’s handy on either floor.
I loved seeing the NYC reading room, and Dale, this is about the best photo of it I remember seeing. Thanks.
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Halfway down the stairs
is a stair
where i sit.
there isn’t any
other stair
quite like
it.
i’m not at the bottom,
i’m not at the top;
so this is the stair
where
I always
stop.
Halfway up the stairs
Isn’t up
And it isn’t down.
It isn’t in the nursery,
It isn’t in town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
It isn’t really
Anywhere!
It’s somewhere else
Instead!
–A A Milne
My little granddaughter Zoe already knows the first stanza and will sometimes find a quiet corner when she wants to be alone. We found her on the stairs one day and when we asked her what she was doing, she recited it for us. We left her alone. Case closed 🙂
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I remember being young and watching this poem being performed as a song on The Muppet Show. I couldn’t tell you why the song version sounds so melancholy, because the poem itself doesn’t read that way at all (to me, anyway). Still…yay Muppets! 🙂
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You’re right, Chris. The poem is more meditative or thoughtful than melancholy. When Zoe recites it, she’s off in another place in her mind. Imagination is a wonderful place to visit.
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I have an LP of this. The music was written by H. Fraser-Simpson.
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Mmmmmm… A.A. Milne
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i love that one thanks. didnt know it.
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I went to high school with Susan Allen (no Toth in her name then). Had a crush on her!
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Such a nice woman. About 10 years ago, I recognized her when we were walking around Lake Harriet one day and approached (accosted?) her. I’d read all of her books about travelling in the UK and bent her ear for a while. She was most friendly and gracious.
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OT – but wanted to share. I heard on the drive in that Lakewood Cemetery is doing tours this weekend for those who may want to know more about the place (maybe answer the question of what all those obelisks and Egyptian-style monuments are about). More info is available here: http://www.lakewoodcemetery.com/Memorial_Day.html
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Thanks, Anna!
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I’ve been on those tours a couple of times and they are GREAT. If there’s anyone who has not visited the unbelievable mosaic chapel, get yourself thither (except for Memorial Day, it’s usually not open). More interesting acoustics: a whisper at certain points in the chapel can be heard clear as day from near the podium.
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A place I’d LIKE to love to read is the circular reading room at Washburn library, familiar to Anna and VS. The location is nice and the chairs just right (they hug your body and don’t have too deep a distance from bent knee to the back). However, the acoustics are terrible. You can hear someone THINKING about turning a page. #1 son, who had a cold at the time, was asked to leave or blow his nose because his sniffling was driving other readers bonkers.
I’m sure that the architect and committee who designed the “new” library were probably disappointed that they’d created a less than optimal place.
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Funny — I’ve never noticed the bad acoustics. Guess once I’m reading I can block out noises!
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see if you can say that after your next visit
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I also like the reading room in the Boston Public Library. My favorite things when I did research at the BPL were the zillions of green-shaded desk lamps in rows.
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I like that image of the banks of green lights. It goes with wrist to elbow sleeve guards and fountain pens.
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I do a lot of reading in my bed; I am an addicted “put myself to sleep by reading” person..I learned it from my Dad who loved to read in bed also. When I can take the time (I am retired..why can I not find the time?) I like to read in my little cabin by the house that I call my Hytte..(hit-teh) Norwegian mountain cabin. It has no electricity or water —-one oil lamp but for daytime relaxation it cannot be beat!
I am a retired school librarian who misses reading aloud to children so much I cannot express it!
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Kay, I miss reading to my sons. I imagine that you would have experienced that much more joy reading to lots of kids and realizing that you could be turning at least some of them on to a lifetime activity.
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As a substitute teacher in elementary schools I found that one of the best things to do was to read to the kids. They would almost always pay attention and behave well and sometimes they also liked to take turns reading.
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Welcome, Kay – or welcome back if by chance you are the Kay that used to be on here…?
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Oh, my goodness. Wouldn’t your local school still love for you to come in and read to the younger children?
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kay if you want to read to school children i can arrange it around your schedule if you are in hennipen county
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As a couple of you have mentioned, even being retired carries with it no guarantee of having time to read, largely because of that GLOTTMBD. Some of us are better at taking the time than others, I guess – Husband seems to plop down with his book in the middle of the day. I seem to think I must do everything first and so often don’t read until bedtime. (Except here, of course.)
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Fun topic, Dale!
That GLOTTMBD keeps me from reading as much as much as I’d like to, too. (Too, two many tos in that sentence…) My eyes are getting worse for reading these days so everything has to be just right. I need the light directly on the pages, I need to be sitting upright in a comfortable chair, and it needs to be relatively quiet in the room. If I get the least bit distracted, the GLOTTMBD presents itself to me and I lose focus. I can read in bed at night but it’s not that comfortable anymore.
The GLOTTMBD got longer since last Friday. I had hail damage from the hail storm in early May, so I’m getting a new roof, gutter guards and downspout extensions. I’ve been receiving quotes from contractors all week. I also decided to refinance my mortgage so I put all the paperwork together on Sunday, which would have been a great day for reading, but then my glasses fell apart and that was a blinding experience. So, yeah, it’s been a little hard to get any reading done.
OT: for anyone interested. The huge morel mushroom we found a couple weeks ago won the contest in Nicollet!
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congrats. have you got the mortgage deal done? make sure they dont mess up the gutters with the roof replacement it is eeasy to hide when they put the new covers on. you may be able to talk the contaractor into doing new gutters too if hes getting the whole job. he should do it at no charge for being awarded the work.
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I thought you had eaten it. (maybe that was after judging). Congratulations on your upstanding morals. And good luck on all the roof work. My roof is 24 years old and gutters older so it’s just a matter of time.
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One of my favorites from the 50s. Those guys and that tune were great.
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I don’t multi-task well. I never have the radio or TV on unless there’s something on that I’m listening to or watching. Same thing with reading. The daily newspaper is consumed in bed, but otherwise I read mostly in my recliner. Lately I’ve spent a lot of time in waiting rooms of various doctors and therapists, and I find myself too distracted to really retain much of what I’m reading, partly because of the sorry selection of what there is to read there unless I bring your own reading material which I somehow never do.
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OK folks, I googled “book songs” and got this. Please watch it to the end. It is definitely for the Baboon Congress.
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Wowie Zowie! That is GREAT!
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Great fun — and that’s exacting how I am when I’m reading a book!
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Fabulous — would never had guessed that ending!
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good one indeed. great find
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Catchy!
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Fun fun – and I have suffered the same interruption he has at the end…
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