Libraries & The Smell of Old Books.

I like libraries. Having said that, i hadn't been to one in Finland since i moved back from Paris a couple of years ago. And to be honest, in the last five years, visits to the library have been exclusively academia-related. Hours of essay-writing and crappy vending-machine tea, armfuls of textbooks, journal hunting in the dusty recesses of research rooms...you get the drift. 

Well, i decided to make it right and head to the library with the sole ambition of borrowing some entirely academia-unrelated reading. And so i traipsed off to Rikhardinkadun kirjasto. And quite the bibliophile's wet dream that place is, too. The library was founded in 1882, and the building retains a lot of its original features. The coolest of which is the book tower, which is the highest point of the library. A spiral staircase leads up to the very top floor, which houses English Fiction. You can see clouds sailing above you, looking up through the skylight at the top of the tower. It's old, charming and eerie in equal amounts. I wanted to find a corner, build a fort and sit there with a blanket, flashlight and a thermos of tea and spend the night reading books. It's kinda awesome.

I spent an hour browsing the bookcases (and smelling the books - yeah, i'm one of those sneaky, old-book-smell-loving library pervs), trying to figure out what i wanted to borrow. i realized i'm a complete library-noob, continuously marveling at the fact that i could just pick out any books, and they'd let me take them home to read. I had to remind myself several times that that is, indeed, the premise a library operates on. And they didn't have to be bricks of books that dealt with the consequences of modernity in regard with self identity, or critical essays about the role of media as the fourth estate. (Which are the kinds of books i've come home with on my most recent, academia-heavy library visits.)

So there i was, like a fat kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet, hoarding books. In the end, i didn't take out all the ones i wanted (they'll still be here next time, i told myself - another great thing about libraries), and got out the following: Factotum by Charles Bukowski (a marvelous account of women, booze and chronic unemployment in America during WWII), The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (absolutely fantastic reworkings of classic fairy tales; dark, erotic and always wondrous) and Filth by Irvine Welsh (i thought Trainspotting was brilliant, but this was better. Mental problems; genital rashes; substance abuse of all sorts; the misogyny, racism and corruption of the Scottish police force in the 90s and intestinal parasites. The shit, in other words.)

Having vicariously drunk myself into oblivion, killed Bluebeard and hosted a particularly observant and intellectual tape worm, i need something new to read. If you've read something awesome lately, do leave me a recommendation (and it doesn't have to involve intestinal parasites - although that would be a bonus, of course). And if you haven't, i recommend you drop by the library and pick up one the aforementioned reads (and smell some old books while you're at it).