“... I taught myself how to write by reading as many books as I could carry home from the library.“
Many people do indeed learn to write by extensive reading, although obviously not all voracious readers go on to become published writers. Who knows what wonderful works might never have existed if their authors had not had access to large numbers of good-quality library books!
By coincidence, Neil Gaiman, who wrote the comedy novel Good Omens jointly with Terry Pratchett, was another great reader of library books. I found an interesting article in which he speaks about reading, literacy, fiction, the imagination and the function of libraries in general.
Neil Gaiman says this:
“I was lucky. I had an excellent local library growing up. I had the kind of parents who could be persuaded to drop me off in the library on their way to work in summer holidays, and the kind of librarians who did not mind a small, unaccompanied boy heading back into the children’s library every morning and working his way through the card catalogue, looking for books with ghosts or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders. And when I had finished reading the children’s library I began on the adult books.”
I like to see people giving credit where it is due!
Neil Gaiman could be speaking for many people who made good use of libraries as a child, including me. I had similar tastes in fiction too.
There is more to come on the subject of public libraries.
Neil Gaiman’s words in his own hand, illustrated by Chris Riddell:
