Myth and Fingerprints


I was thinking recently about my school library in 3rd grade.

Not sure why. It could’ve been the recent news reports on libraries without books — without physical books, anyway; rather, they’re community spaces with computers where users can surf the Internet and check out E-books — that got me remembering how I’d settle down in the stacks in front of the encyclopedias and basically use the references in the article at hand like we use hyperlinks online today.

I have several fond memories, general and specific, of libraries. One suspects many readers do. Those I’ve shared on the blog before include — nestled in a post on TV’s Supernatural — memories of my favorite aisle in this particular library. What brought me to that aisle was books on Greek and Roman mythology, a subject I read about voraciously and to an almost literally exhausting degree. Based on periodic scans of various library and bookstore shelves, I may well have gone through every relevant volume in print. Some books were, from my youthful perspective at least, stuffier than others, a category in which I preferred Edith Hamilton’s Mythology to Bulfinch’s. There were plenty of slim paperbacks and large, illustrated tomes aimed more directly at my age, too, with D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths atop the heap of the latter.