Keep your friends close but your books closer

By Creed Kidd
Library Director

Red Feather Lakes Community Library

Writing in “The Guardian” recently, novelist Anakana Schofield asserts that “Our book collections record the narrative of expansion, diversion, regression, terror and yet-to-be-discovered possibilities … This is why … people immediately migrate to examine your bookshelves, rather than rummage in your cutlery …”

And consequently, while it may be true that reading defines the person, it is equally true that the person defines one’s reading.

We’re making the case today for stocking and maintaining a good home library. For one’s self, the family – perhaps friends — and for all the close-at-hand pleasurable serendipity that stumbling unexpectedly on a familiar or unfamiliar title, chapter or passage can bring. There’s the adventure and threshold of the new; however, one of the primary pleasures of reading is re-reading.

So, in paraphrasing, keep your friends close but your books closer.

Being widely read is wonderful but not essential. Henry David Thoreau noted in 1850 Massachusetts – with a continent westward and northward virtually unexplored – that to really know an area and fully understand the topography, the changes of weather and the seasons and the life within – one had a lifelong limit of one square mile. As it were, your explorative reading may be local or continental and measured by breadth or depth.

If your reading choices incorporate titles by Louis or C.J. or Ernest or James or Zane or Sarah – fine. “Never apologize for your reading tastes,” wrote librarian Betty Rosenberg several years ago and that holds true – forever. Great and important reading can come through many means and genres. More to the point is individually touching that chord through reading that speaks to our better natures and entertains, satisfies and fulfills.

This doesn’t diminish the value of having a good, well-stocked local public library handy and at call. There are a great many books that are incidental, entertaining or that you may want to ‘try before you buy’ a given author or genre. Most titles are building blocks rather than cornerstones; buy and keep the latter and appropriately use and place the former.

Your friendly, downtown Red Feather Lakes Village library holds 15,000 print and AV titles and offers online 25,000 eBook and e-Audio titles. One million titles are available through Colorado interlibrary loan, given a two-week turnaround. Unprecedented, until recently, is the ability to download one of millions of titles onto a library e-reader or tablet that can then be checked out all within 15 minutes. Famous in 15 minutes for a lifetime of good reading.

As your local library, give Red Feather Lakes Community Library a whirl. You’ll find a good selection, excellent service, free library cards, free computer use, free WIFI and competitively priced office services such as fax, printing and copying. You’ll like what you find — we guarantee it.

Red Feather Lakes Community Library
P.O. Box 123, 71 Firehouse Lane
Red Feather Lakes, CO 80545
970-881-2664 (voice)
970-881-2836 (fax)
www.redfeatherlibrary.org
director@redfeatherlibrary.org

Library hours: 7 days a week, 9am – 6pm

Red Feather Lakes Community Library – we just say NO. NO overdue fines; NO hidden fees; NO hard-to-understand or complicated rules; NO days closed excepting major holidays & snow days; NO card needed for internet service and NO wait lines; NO time limit for computer use; and, NO-hassle personalized service.

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