FREE BOOKS FOR FREE
I had to go into Crewe this morning to sign on for the first time, and then I had to go to the library because YOU CAN’T PRINT YOUR CV AT THE JOB CENTRE. I’m glad I did though. Did you know that you can borrow books from libraries FOR ACTUAL FREE???? It’s amazing!
I used to spend all my school holidays in Macclesfield library. Every single day. Dad was always trying to get us to go walking places in the bloody Peak District but I’d worked out that if I left for the library early enough, I wouldn’t need an anti-outdoors excuse. I’d read everything in their teenage fiction section several times over. All of Sweet Valley High, all of Point Horror, everything by Christopher Pike. Before that, all those make-your-own-adventure things and The Saddle Club. Then when I was 14 I discovered wine and boys. So long library!
Somewhere in my early twenties I became the kind of person who buys books. Fuck knows why. I never had any bloody money. I blame Hay-on-Wye. I’ve got so many books now that they’re currently sitting in my parents’ shed because I can’t afford to house them appropriately. Plus I went through a big phase of buying IMPROVING literature that’ll never get read. God, think of the trees.
And then today I joined the library. I joined in Crewe but - get this - I can use the one in Sandbach too, and all the others all over Cheshire. Fucking MINT. I got the book about radio by that poet guy from Latitude who wrote a poem about Gomez, John Osborne, and a Nicola Barker novel and she’s ace. She wrote a book with a guy in it whose toenails were so long they curled over and tapped on the floor when he walked. MINGING. And I got a thing about grunge and the Mark E Smith autobiography which is just bound to be the best bitter ranting since the one by that dude from The Auteurs. And a Daphne Du Maurier and an Evelyn Waugh and an Andrea Levy and a thing by John Niven, who is good on twitter even though I wasn’t entirely convinced by Kill Your Friends when that came out. And they’re all free and I have them all until AT LEAST the 23rd of July and it’s perfect timing because Dad’s about to start nights so I won’t be allowed telly or radio for aaaaages.
ALL HAIL THE LIBRARY!!
