An old placard from a used library book I bought. What I liked about it was how the System worked to educate people. Public libraries, kids with disabilities like lack of a Fantasy world walking into a public library, sense of awe at a wall full of memoirs. My first memories of British council and American center in Delhi were like that, though I did not like the "stiff and stifling, formal upper class kind of atmosphere" like someone with nose poked in heaven.
Reading should be fun, nonacademic possibly. Divergent, self constructed if need be, a navigation through the culture of the worlds. How did Shackleton endure the cold, what is it like to be a detached kite - an empathic journey of support and admiration to all we can imagine to be (but can never be?).
This quiet card reminded me of that, and those days. People who took the book home -what made them choose this, did they sit at kitchen counter eating or tugged to a winter snow to bed a half-constructed blanket wrapped around them and hands out? Did they had an "aha" moment or were escaping a torture called parental fight? Did they leave the book flapping midway to walk across and order a cup of coffee and croissant in a roadside stopover, windows half-open? Was the day sunny?
Little, so called meaningless memories that made us. The book says "discarded" stamped.
No, it is not (and in present tense)..
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