Michelle's corner

This BBC article details an old subscription library in Leeds - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-46522378

Mr Hutton says: "For some people, the library is the thing that gets them up out of bed in the morning.

"We have writers who come here to enjoy the ambience and find it's an industrious place to work, we have some people who just love reading books and a younger element who like that we're diversifying into events."

To celebrate its milestone, the library has hosted about 200 events including film screenings, poetry nights, author talks and theatre performances, working with 32 different organisations in the process.

Would I join a subscription library? Probably not. That this one is still going, and in Leeds (large city in North England) shows that for some people, this method of doing things still works and that not everyone has gone the way of the modern age. After all, the rest of society has only recently moved to subscription services for music and films; not being that fussed about actually owning the article itself. That books were there way before them, isn't that much of a surprise.

I have to admit that I do go through my book collection every year or two, and only keep the books that I want. If book prices rise higher then I'll be even more careful over what I buy. My mother, on the other hand, uses the public library which, funnily enough, is next door to where I work!

I couldn't really answer why it is that I don't use the library more. I think it's a mixture of things; one of them being the lack of quality reading time, so reading a book properly can take me outside the usual lending period. That's something that I hope to have more of next year. Linked to this is that the popular books have queues, so if I haven't finished it in time then it still has to go back regardless.

Other than that, many of the books that I have read lately, have not been from the mainstream even despite being new books; and some of the subject matter has been decidedly awkward. "The history and arts of the Dominatrix," was one of the new ones. One of the more difficult ones to find was, "The Girdle of Chastity," where the author went into a deep dive of the actual history of the chastity belt. So, you see, walking into the local library and asking for these sorts of books... and in a building next door to where I work, even... isn't perhaps the wisest of moves.

It was an interesting article, however, to read about that library, how it functions and there are some interesting anecdotes in there as well. And if book prices start rising then I suspect it will continue for another quarter century. Long may it survive the passage of time.