What’s Missed Out In Childhood Is Huge

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m getting ready for keeping chickens in my backyard. I’m literally covered with chicken books that I borrowed from my local library. I’ve never been into books this much. When I think that the chickens’ lives would depend on me, I cannot just bring them home right away without a good knowledge of them. I didn’t even know which book to buy to start with, so I headed to the library.

To be honest, libraries are untouched mystery area to me. Sure, all my schools had their own, and every town I lived had its own libraries, but I didn’t use them very much. The books I’ve ever borrowed from the libraries before my ‘chicken fever’ would be less than 10. This is embarrassing. Without notice, I developed a stupid motto, books are something to buy, not to borrow. This motto actually had affected badly to my reading habit.

Buying books obviously requires money. I’ve never been rich enough to buy them every week, so I naturally stayed away from the bookshops. Even though if I managed to buy one, I often found that it wasn’t worth the cost. The only way I could judge a book at the shop was the descriptions on the back of the book or recommendations. Unfortunately, they don’t necessarily explain what I want from the book, so I ended up disappointed with my purchase. This phenomenon made me stay further away from the books, understandably.

By now, I know that it’s the marketing that sells books rather than the contents of them (to me anyway). I now buy only books that I’ve already borrowed from the library, and read. In this way the books meet my satisfaction. If the libraries don’t have a particular book I want, I look for the other books that’s written by the same author. That gives me a guide of expectation about the book I want.

Thinking back now, missing out on books in my childhood means huge. I had no bedtime stories, no research subjects at schools, none of my family are bookworm. There are some cultural reasons involved in this book-less childhood, I chose to play in the schoolyard when school libraries were only open in the break time, local libraries in a driving distance didn’t help me on the weekends since my parents were either away for work or had no car. Eventually I became too busy catching up on schoolwork, resulting no time for non-academic, non-subject-related books. No wonder I wasn’t a creative child.

Discovering the power of the library

I love libraries now. I go there every week, often more than once a week. I also visit their website almost everyday to look for more books I want to borrow for later. I’m lucky enough to have such a wonderful library near by. My local library offers lots more than just books. They have audios, videos, online materials, meeting rooms, computers and the Internet for free of charge, and what I was impressed was they have lots of free events available for the local community. For example, the last month was science fiction month. Their lifts (elevators) were decorated as Tardis the blue police box from Doctor Who, star wars characters appeared every corner of the library, a free draw you can enter to win SF books and character toys, and kids craft workshop to be creative.

Every few rows there is a computer to browse catalog or request items, self circulation machine saves time for lining up. It is a wonderful place to develop child creativity and independence in terms of finding out what they want in the way they want. Damn it! I missed it! I’ve got lots to catch up.

The other day, my husband was driving me to the library and said,
‘You know how much time you spend in the library now, you are classified as a nerd now :)’

my response?

‘no! I’m not! I’m a bookworm!!’

He didn’t stop looking at me and grinning, I couldn’t deny his face telling me the word ‘nerd’.

I’m off to the library again…