I can now fit, literally thousands of books on my ipad, so why on earth, one might ask, would you ever want to pay good money for a custom cabinet maker to go to all the effort of building me a “Library” in my home? Well the answer is simple. Although arguing against the practicality of a library you can carry around in your day bag is pretty futile, certainly the suggestion that the feeling and the tactile appeal of holding a book or accumulating a meaningful collection of literature in the place where you live, is not. You have to admit it. Books have SOUL! What was the first thing you did when you were in High School or Grade School and you got those readers or text books that were owned by the school? That’s right – you are welcome for the flashback – you flipped right to the front cover to check out the stamped list, to see WHO the other kids were who had the book before you!! What LIFE did this book have, what “cool kids” had previously “lived” in the pages before you? In essence, books were the first “Facebook.” Considering the TYPES of messages left in those books, sometimes, maybe not the best facebook, but bare with me here! In a world where you can sit in a restaurant and watch “couples” literally absorbed in their own digital worlds and now, ever more in classrooms with policies of BYOD ( bring your own device ) a strange silence has fallen over our “people” where once there was noisy discussion. Is technology to blame? Heck no! And I am the first to admit that tech has its place, its function and its form in our ever changing world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it MUST replace everything that went before it. Libraries and the Stewards that provide the loving foster homes for the pages they house are able to experience, daily, the joy that having a collection of literature in the home brings. Just look at the popularity of those cool “Little Libraries” that have popped up around town these days. My friends from Menno Martin Renovations in town took on huge initiative building the “Little Libraries” in the community and they could have built MORE! All in all, having a collection of books in ones home is more akin to having a wall of memories, a living time capsule, a safe place where a collection of the conscious can be seated either temporarily or for the duration. When you think of it in this light, having a virtual library then, has about the same appeal as curling up with a virtual Labrador Retriever on a cold night. Oh…and the ladders…they just make stuff cool! Happy Reading!
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