Call me old fashioned, but I am a firm believer in the idea that libraries ought to hang on to those old literary chestnuts, especially award winners. Books that have garnered prestigious recognition in the way of the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Caldecott Award and the Newbery Award should not be consigned to the dust heap of history and weeded out of library collections as somehow no longer significant or relevant to today's readers. Of course, in these tough times that libraries face, what with competition from big box bookstores, online media and others, there seems to be a perception that they must cater to the tastes of the here and now, what is hot and what is in demand. Books that don't circulate are deemed to be no longer worthy of sitting on library shelves, and so off they go to make room for bestsellers, both juvenile and adult. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of the old literary chestnuts that teachers require students to read for school are weeded out of collections, forever to be unavailable to today's readers. Even if teachers didn't require students to read those books, they still ought to be sitting on library shelves. Maybe I'm old fashioned in that I have always sort of viewed libraries as a sort of temple of learning, free and available to all, regardless of economic class. I've long believed in keeping old books around like old friends, to be revisited from time to time. Those old literary chestnuts are full of wisdom from past generations that ought not to be lost, and are examples of how people once lived and wrote. Some of them deal with themes that are still popular today. They are a glimpse into our country's literary past and should be treasured and kept around for future generations to enjoy.
I know that for a lot of us, our teachers made us read certain literary classics that at the time, we all felt were a supreme bore. Every high school English teacher probably makes their students read this stuff and more than likely, all but maybe a few students approached it with the typical attitude of boredom, fear, dread and a host of other emotions. I know that I wasn't atypical in that I hated reading some of the required literature that my High School English teachers made us read. I remember hating a great deal of the older books we had to read like
Pilgrim's Progress,
The Scarlet Letter,
Moby Dick and others. It all seemed supremely dull and far too wordy for my 17 year old mind to wrap itself around. But read it I did because there were usually quizzes and at least a test or two on them. As an adult, however, I have gone back and revisited some of those old dreaded chestnuts and without the fear of a quiz, test or some other thing to bog me down, I read them for pure pleasure and found myself surprisingly enjoying some of them. In particular, I've become quite smitten with American Transcendentalist period literary figures like Melville, Emerson, Thoreau and others. While these are not award winning authors who won literary prizes, still, they deserve to be kept on library shelves because they helped define who we are as a society. It's always a pure pleasure to rediscover a book once read before or to discover a book anew that maybe got overlooked earlier, whether it's an old children's classic or an adult literary author. Even as an adult, I love discovering old children's books that are wonderfully written and/or illustrated and reading them. Some of the best books I've read were children's books that are not dumbed down but written as if both a child and an adult could enjoy them. These are the kinds of books that need to stay on library shelves, books that appeal to multiple generations, tell a great story, have beautiful, appealing and engaging illustrations and are timeless classics that can be enjoyed forever. I'm always saddened to discover how many really good old books are no longer available on library shelves. Some of them are downright hard to find even in bookstores. Perhaps they might be available as digital media online or somewhere else, but I'm also old fashioned in that I love the feel of holding a good book in my hands, feeling the binding, smelling the slightly musty scent of an old book and wondering how many generations of people have checked it out and read it. I do hope that books do not disappear from our landscape to be replaced by online and digital media. Our world would be the poorer for it and we'd lose our sense of what brought pleasure to so many readers. And I hope that libraries, despite having to daily scramble to keep up with current trends and demands from patrons, never lose sight of their role as something of a literary museum and temple of knowledge and keep good old chestnuts around to read for future generations to enjoy in the old fashioned print media format.
Call me old fashioned, but I am a firm believer in the idea that libraries ought to hang on to those old literary chestnuts, especially award winners. Books that have garnered prestigious recognition in the way of the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Caldecott Award and the Newbery Award should not be consigned to the dust heap of history and weeded out of library collections as somehow no longer significant or relevant to today's readers. Of course, in these tough times that libraries face, what with competition from big box bookstores, online media and others, there seems to be a perception that they must cater to the tastes of the here and now, what is hot and what is in demand. Books that don't circulate are deemed to be no longer worthy of sitting on library shelves, and so off they go to make room for bestsellers, both juvenile and adult. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of the old literary chestnuts that teachers require students to read for school are weeded out of collections, forever to be unavailable to today's readers. Even if teachers didn't require students to read those books, they still ought to be sitting on library shelves. Maybe I'm old fashioned in that I have always sort of viewed libraries as a sort of temple of learning, free and available to all, regardless of economic class. I've long believed in keeping old books around like old friends, to be revisited from time to time. Those old literary chestnuts are full of wisdom from past generations that ought not to be lost, and are examples of how people once lived and wrote. Some of them deal with themes that are still popular today. They are a glimpse into our country's literary past and should be treasured and kept around for future generations to enjoy.
I know that for a lot of us, our teachers made us read certain literary classics that at the time, we all felt were a supreme bore. Every high school English teacher probably makes their students read this stuff and more than likely, all but maybe a few students approached it with the typical attitude of boredom, fear, dread and a host of other emotions. I know that I wasn't atypical in that I hated reading some of the required literature that my High School English teachers made us read. I remember hating a great deal of the older books we had to read like Pilgrim's Progress, The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick and others. It all seemed supremely dull and far too wordy for my 17 year old mind to wrap itself around. But read it I did because there were usually quizzes and at least a test or two on them. As an adult, however, I have gone back and revisited some of those old dreaded chestnuts and without the fear of a quiz, test or some other thing to bog me down, I read them for pure pleasure and found myself surprisingly enjoying some of them. In particular, I've become quite smitten with American Transcendentalist period literary figures like Melville, Emerson, Thoreau and others. While these are not award winning authors who won literary prizes, still, they deserve to be kept on library shelves because they helped define who we are as a society. It's always a pure pleasure to rediscover a book once read before or to discover a book anew that maybe got overlooked earlier, whether it's an old children's classic or an adult literary author. Even as an adult, I love discovering old children's books that are wonderfully written and/or illustrated and reading them. Some of the best books I've read were children's books that are not dumbed down but written as if both a child and an adult could enjoy them. These are the kinds of books that need to stay on library shelves, books that appeal to multiple generations, tell a great story, have beautiful, appealing and engaging illustrations and are timeless classics that can be enjoyed forever. I'm always saddened to discover how many really good old books are no longer available on library shelves. Some of them are downright hard to find even in bookstores. Perhaps they might be available as digital media online or somewhere else, but I'm also old fashioned in that I love the feel of holding a good book in my hands, feeling the binding, smelling the slightly musty scent of an old book and wondering how many generations of people have checked it out and read it. I do hope that books do not disappear from our landscape to be replaced by online and digital media. Our world would be the poorer for it and we'd lose our sense of what brought pleasure to so many readers. And I hope that libraries, despite having to daily scramble to keep up with current trends and demands from patrons, never lose sight of their role as something of a literary museum and temple of knowledge and keep good old chestnuts around to read for future generations to enjoy in the old fashioned print media format.
5 comments:
Amen, sistah!
I guess I'm in a repetitive mood today. But to repeat a comment I made some time ago... I love your posts on book and politics.
Keeping the old chestnuts is a great idea. For example, I've always prided myself in never watching the same movie twice (with the exception of Sparticus, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, Bridge on The River Kwai & maybe on or two others, read the same book over again.... So our local small town library strapped for new book funds put out Best Sellers Of The Past in their "New Book Section" and with nothing better to do I grabbed a few off the shelf. All ones I read previously. What fun! The details I'd forgotten. The new connection I became aware off. Etc Etc. And I returned to read more and more of them all summer. Yup don't throw away those old chestnuts librarians!
I agree but I also want to note that not all the older books are relevant or appealing to young readers now. I would love the library to screen them and present the ones that they would recommend.
Pragmatic Mom
http://PragmaticMom.com
(my google account is associated with my group blog on SEO and I can't figure out how to switch it)
Well said. This is something that libraries should just DO. They should consider it part of their mission.
But the public are becoming increasingly parsimonious (oh, hell, let's just call 'em stingy b**tards). They've been listening to the wingnuts scream "it's your money" for years, and their huge piggy TVs and SUVs are far more important than public libraries.
They don't use libraries anyway, so why should they care? In fact most of them hardly read at all. This is no surprise, since the same wingnuts have done such a fine job of wrecking our once-admirable public education system.
In that kind of climate, which we can't seem to reverse, we probably should be grateful that the classics are still available somewhere, anywhere.
And they are, at least so far. Project Gutenberg and other online libraries are preserving these public domain gems and making them widely available.
Of course there are quite a few of us who prefer paperboard, cloth, paper, and ink. We aren't so keen on curling up with a computer or even an E-book reader. I suspect we're the last such generation. So maybe it's OK that the classics are available in electronic format for the next generation - as long as we can manage to keep THAT alive.
Pragmatic Mom, books CAN be relevant if pitched correctly to potential readers. You have to look at the themes addressed in the book and relate it to the here and now, and trust me, most books deal with fairly universal themes that are relevant no matter when they were written. So even, say, a Newbery winner from the 1920's can be relevant to today's readers even though a book written back then is over 80 years old now.
That is why certain books are classics, because no matter how old they are or when they were written, they are timeless tales that can be read and enjoyed by any generation of readers. Unfortunately, there is a certain generation of librarians who only wants to keep stuff on the shelves that is new and hot, but most of that stuff is flash in the pan, media driven stuff that becomes outdated in a painfully short time. So books today have very short shelf lives compared to the old classics that can be revisited over and over again and be relevant no matter who you are or when you were born.
I see books discarded that are less than 6 months old because they are no longer "hot" and won't circulate once the hype has died down. Somehow, that's just not right to blow money on books that may last 6 months before the desire for them wears off. It seems counterproductive to already financially strapped libraries to spend money on things that they will only end up throwing away 6 months later. That's not being pragmatic in my book. Steer readers to those timeless classics you'll have around forever. That makes more sense to me.
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