Welcome to the Library Blogs! I'm so glad you are able to join me on this exciting journey as I travel around, visiting different libraries in this country. Before I dive into this entry, I think it's appropriate for me to introduce myself! My name is Nicholas Yoo (call me Nick), and I am a sophomore at the Delbarton School. I love playing the violin, having long conversations with my friends, and enjoy going on bubble tea hunts to find the best shops. In fact, I tried making my own bubble tea, but let's just say it wasn't the most successful. My favorite book also happens to be the latest book that I've read which was Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Murakami paints his world in a way where the reader feels like their viewing the scene as a character off to the side, whether you're following Kafka's relationships with Miss. Saeki and Oshima or trying to dodge raining fish yourself.
On a more related note, let's talk libraries. As a young child, I really liked to go to bookstores. I used to live on the West Coast up to preschool and there were a ton of Borders bookstores. You could say I grew up with Borders. On Monday afternoons, I would always attend the afternoon
kids crafts activities and story read-alouds. On other days, I would stop by with my mom or dad and would spend some time perusing the latest Magic Tree House series book. While the business unfortunately shut down, when we moved to the East Coast, I was introduced to Barnes & Nobles. There, my favorite go-to ritual was grabbing one or two books to read and going over to the Starbucks in-store with my mom and having a complementary brownie to eat while reading the book. In the end, I encountered the common problem of having to choose between two books to buy, which would end up with me spending 10 minutes weighing the pros and cons of each book.
When my parents recognized my passion for reading, they introduced me to public libraries. One reason was because buying too many books was a. costly and b. overfilled my own room. But the real reason was that they wanted to show me a community of unlimited books that I could checkout for free. Receiving my first library card in first grade felt like a secret VIP access card. A card that would open up a literary world that I could jump in and come out only when I finished the journey. To this leads me to talk about why I started this blog.
In an ever digitizing world filled with phones and computers, libraries become more and more under-appreciated. The times where libraries used to be havens for us to checkout books are now replaced by e-Books, online news articles, or sometimes none at all! From your small local public library to the Library of Congress, we can never forget about these nooks. That's why with this blog, I aim to record my journeys of visiting libraries and share these stories with you all. Perhaps, then we will be reminded of our childhood memories of sitting on the oversized chair, wrapped up in a story of a lifetime. Stay happy, stay reading!
- Nick
Kommentare