The only books on display in our home, the complete works of Dickens.

’Lurk’ was the latest, yesterday’s, word chosen by my blogosphere friend Iulia, a teacher of English in București among other things. In her regular series of words, she finds a quote to demonstrate its use, together with a beautiful piece of art, and posts them. She sometimes writes thought-provoking, often beautiful, poetry too but it’s today’s word, from a quote by Ray Bradbury, which has prompted this post.

I used to lurk in libraries a lot. The motive for going in was almost always the need to research some feature I was writing as a journalist (I wrote mostly on science and technology, businesses based on them and the management of them).  I wonder how many journalists do that now when Google is just a click away.

Lurking was an appropriate word for my activity. I’d secrete myself away in some dark corner having collected as many books as I could on the subject of interest, hoping to be missed at closing time so I could go and seek out the growing bibliography I scratched on my notebook indicating further interesting reading. Often this ‘further interesting reading’ had nothing to do with the subject in hand. It’s an aberration of mine: I’m interested in anything and everything so am easily led off track, which is why this blog is such a hotchpotch I guess.

Reading fiction

Before I began to read for researching features to write, and omitting the large amount of reading I had to do when studying physics, I was an avid reader of fiction, including poetry. It began at an early age; my mother had taught me to read before I was four years old. Later she had some regrets; I was repeatedly admonished for having my head in a book rather than “go out and play!” It’s probably why I’ve never been much interested in sport (other than walking, though in Yorkshire that’s more something we do, must do, than sport).

Now with rare exceptions I read little other than blog posts from all manner of people on all manner of subjects from many different countries (providing they’re in English or Romanian, the only two languages I read fairly proficiently). The only books on display in our home are the complete works of Dickens into which I dip occasionally (‘A Christmas Carol’ every Christmas). The cupboards are stuffed with books however, mostly on history and teaching English. I am reading a book at the moment, in fits and starts: ‘Carmen Sylvia, Regina poetă’ by Sylvia Irina Zimmerman. Carmen Sylvia was the literary name of Queen Consort Elisabeta of Romania from 1869 until she died in 1916, better known as the first translator of the works of Romania’s most renowned poet, Eminescu, and a poet in her own right. (I said I was easily led off track!)

Libraries being closed, and saved

Where is all this leading? Well, libraries are being closed all over Britain and that in our village was threated. However, it opened again after a brief closure with a team of volunteers. We are having our writers’ club meeting there on Saturday morning to plan our appearance in the Ilkley Literature Festival ‘Fringe’. During the past year we’ve done two ‘performances’ in another local library, Ilkley, which in some ways was even more satisfying than the bigger Playhouse stage for the fringe. I’d hope soon we might do one in our reopened local village library.

One thing’s for sure, I’ll be lurking in it from time to time.

For Iulia’s blog go to:

https://blogdecompanie.wordpress.com/2017/09/28/engleza-de-joi-lurk/