Walking up the stairs I thought what a marvelous place to
lean over the balustrade and let out a real scream. Then sitting at a oak desk in the teen area of the public
library and facing the wall. A ledge above has a large framed display that
claims:
“Outstanding
Books for the College Bound (and all life-long learners)”
The choices:
The Catcher in the Rye
Emma
For Whom the Bell
Tolls
East of Eden
Jane Eyre
In the stacks to the left there are several hundred works of
Manga. The closest book to my chair
is called Fruits Basket and on the
cover it has a marvelous illustration of a slumped over animal that came from
someone’s imagination: a fat lamb with sawed off legs and no mouth or maybe a
bloated dead mouse with no tail.
But on the wall past the YA shelves there is hung a truly
absorbing piece of modern art that turns out to be a sheet from the U.S. Geologic Survey of the area where the library sits. It is better than all the titles of the shelves combined but to lift from George in A Room With a View...Joy! Beauty!
