dear [Deer Park] reader,
a field guide to what lives on the shelves, and is in the air, bookwise.
#11 . January 20th . 2015.
“This morning I saw a woman reading, on a bench in
Intercommunal Park. I sat down across from her just
to get a look at her face, but it was impossible. The book
absorbed her gaze completely, and there were a few
moments I believed she was aware of it. That holding
the book like that—at the exact height of her eyes, with
both hands, her elbows resting on an imaginary table—
was her way of hiding.
I saw her white forehead and her almost blond
hair, but never her eyes. The book was her disguise, a
precious mask.
…
To read is to cover one’s face, I thought.
To read is to cover one’s face. And to write is to
show it.”
Ways of Going Home,
by Alejandro Zambra.
“Even then my only friends were made of paper and
ink. At school I had learned to read and write long
before the other children. Where my school
friends saw notches of ink on incomprehensible
pages, I saw light, streets, and people. Words and
the mystery of their hidden science fascinated me,
and I saw in them a key with which I could unlock
a boundless world, a safe haven from that home,
those streets, and those troubled days in which
even I could sense that only a limited fortune
awaited me. “
The Angel’s Game,
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
begins.
‘How did I become the woman I am today?’ It
started in that library, in that reading room, in the
reading club. That’s where I started to be my own
person.”
The Boston Girl,
by Anita Diamant.
“The library was a little old shabby place. Francie
thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about
it was as good as the feeling she had about church.
She pushed open the door and went in. She liked
the combined smell of worn leather bindings,
library paste, and freshly inked stamping pads
better than she liked the smell of burning incense
at high mass.
Francie thought that all the books in the
world were in that library and she had a plan about
reading all the books in the world. She was
reading a book a day in alphabetical order and not
skipping the dry ones. She remembered that the
first author had been Abbott. She had been
reading a book a day for a long time now and she
was still in the B’s. Already she had read about
bees and buffaloes, Bermuda vacations and
Byzantine architecture. For all her enthusiasm, she
had to admit that some of the B’s had been hard
going. But Francie was a reader.”
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
By Betty Smith.
“After school, I went to the Salem Street Settlement
House with a lot of the other girls in my grade. I took a
cooking class there once but mostly I went to the
library, where I could finish my schoolwork and read
whatever I found on the shelves. And on Thursdays,
there was a reading club for girls my age.
This is probably where the answer to your question
Deer Park Public Library . 44 Lake Avenue . Deer Park . NY . 11729