I am an avid reader. Probably an addict. I can no sooner imagine a life without books as I can a morning without coffee. And if I had to give one up, it would be coffee.
In the last four days I have read three books: two memoirs (one by U.S. Supreme Court Judge, Sonia Sotomayor, and one by a man who is blind) and a fictional memoir (set in Baghdad). My favorite genres are Memoirs and Historical Fiction preferably set in foreign countries.
I was raised in the States and in Puerto Rico. The two things I loved most about the States, as a young adult especially, were the vast open public lands of the western states along with the trail systems that made them accessible to me, and the public libraries which likewise made the world accessible to me.
Puerto Rico, being a commonwealth of the Unites States, did have El Yunque National Park which I loved to explore, but I was disappointed with its library system. Instead of being able to wander the aisles and run my fingers along the backs of books, reading the titles and pulling the tantalizing ones out to peruse, in Puerto Rico in the 1980s you were blocked access to the aisles of books by a heavy counter. Behind the counter stood the keeper of the books, demanding the name of the book that I wanted.
How did I know the name of the book I wanted, without first seeing it in the aisle and reading the first page? There was no Google then. No email. No Facebook. No english-language magazines even, with book suggestions. There weren’t even card catalogs for me to peruse.
I carried some books with me to Puerto Rico from the States, but even paperback books were heavy and took a lot of valuable luggage space.
Flash forward thirty plus years. A personal Kindle or Tablet or Computer can hold 1000+ books. You can buy a book in minutes and have it downloaded. And many books are even free.
As far as recommended book suggestions, there are enough that I could spend every minute of every day online just reading the recommendations, little alone the books.
And so it is that I’ve owned a home in San Juan del Sur approaching three years and had never set foot into the local library until a couple of weeks ago when my friend Tella Sametz was looking for a book there and lured me in.
It’s an attractive white wooden building with blue trim across the street from the church. I knew where it was and had walked past it on occasion but for some reason never felt invited to go in.
Thanks to Tella, I broke through the imaginary barrier. Instead of a counter barring my access and demanding a slip of paper with a book’s name like long ago in Puerto Rico, I was greeted by Denis and Jossy who work there, and given full access to the small but well-stocked library.
They have many books in english. I found Sternmen, a novel by Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) which I never even knew she’d written. And I just had to fill out a form with my name and address to get my free library card.
Now I once again have a place to stare at the titles of books, to run my fingers along their spines, to stop in surprise over a known author but an unknown book or over a curious title by an unknown author, then to pull one out, flip through the pages and with a gleam in my eye to take it home.
There’s a room with computers which you can use for free. And they have a printer if you need to print anything out, for a small fee to cover the cost of paper and ink. There are wicker chairs to read in. And a room with kids books, in both spanish and english, and a space for kids to do crafts.
They run an active mobile library too, taking books to schools for kids to check out and read. When the local schools start up their next school year in February I’d like to volunteer to help with that. To help others access that which I so greatly love.
Ah, yes. To read. To visit the world through stories and books. To walk in the footsteps of another, be it a blind man or a fictional gardener in Baghdad, or a Supreme Court Justice when she was a young, Puerto Rican child living in the tenements of New York, is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. It is a wonderful way, in my opinion, to spend a life, since it allows me to live not just my singular life but SO many lives. And to travel all over the world, and back in time and forward in time, and into the galaxies of science and into the fantasies of imagination, all without leaving my favorite hammock, or my bed, or my couch or now a white wicker chair at the library.
Jane Mirandette, of Colorado, who founded this non-profit library in San Juan del Sur fifteen plus years ago with apparently initially just four boxes of books, I take my hat off to you, you the magician, you the bringer of new worlds and dreams to all of us in San Juan del Sur. Thank you.
