Libraries Ain't No Good Anymore

[dem bones]

Extracted from 'Horowitz Horror' thread

No joy with either Horowitz Horror or a random Ben Templesmith at the proper local library, which means *groan* visiting the idea shop multiplex to brave the stares of the security guards who come over very suspicious should anyone drop in to look at books. Maybe in the morning. But i loaned out Christopher Priestly's Tales Of Terror From The Black Ship (Bloomsbury, 2008) so it wasn't a wasted journey by any means.

[lemming13]

You're braver than me! Our central one isn't an idea shop, it's a chilling space with snack and drink machines. The security guards are all clustered around the internet centre, because after all who cares if the snacking scroats and their sticky-fingered brats run riot among the books? Paper is just for recycling. Be nice if there was anybody involved in running our library service who actually liked books

[dem bones]

yep, we've got the wall-to-wall delicatessen on the top floor and god, but it reeks. i filled out a slip for the suggestion box requesting that they please add a burger stall at the end of every bookcase to further improve the already superb ambiance. now i'm terrified the powers that be will consider this an innovation of some genius and modernise the place accordingly.

was a time when i considered a visit to the local library an event second only to a trip to a second hand bookstall. i'm not sure when it changed - early 00's i guess, once they began operating under the delusion that they were a DVD outlet - but change for the worse it has and the decline has surely reached its nadir with the 'idea's store'.

since last i braved it, there have been "improvements". The general fiction has been transferred from the top to bottom floor, perhaps in the belief that anyone with the slightest interest in reading is either too crippled by arthritis to reach the lift buttons or just too plain drooling senile to be allowed out without supervision. it was with some delight i found that three shelves have been set aside for "horror", but this proved yet another spiteful variation on the torture of hope. Of course, i long since gave up on finding anything remotely vintage, say, pre-2009, in idealand, but you never know your luck, there's sure to be something of interest from the contemporary scene and who could imagine a horror section bereft of any Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Stephen Jones or (local legend) James Herbert? After this morning, i no longer have to.

My grim determination not to come away empty-handed was eventually rewarded with copies of Chris Priestly's Uncle Montague's Tales Of Terror (again) and Richard Dalby's Virago Ghost Stories Omnibus (again) but nothing doing as far as Ben Templesmith or Horowitz Horrors are concerned.

No problem with the desk staff - i've always found them pleasant and helpful - but the security guards were on top form, standing around doing their best to look "menacing", fixing me like i was some kind of feeb for checking out silly made up fiction with scary covers. you'll maybe understand from that why i decided against risking a venture into the children's section ...

and all the while, up on the top floor, the morbidly obese shovel more donuts down their gullets and put on an extra 200 stone so they can hate the likes of me even more because we're so lovely and slim.

i'm never going back.

[marksamuels]

When the politicians start demanding places like libraries become "family friendly", it means they're going to destroy what it was about them that made attractive to folk like us, Dem. Ye social engineering rules.

There were (old) books in a library? In ten years no-one in the next generation will understand it. Just like in ten years no-one will believe you could happily smoke inside a pub and also get a cheap pint.

End of civilisation, alas. What an evil age of Brave New World we've lived into...

Mark S.

[Craig Herbertson]

Aug 24, 2010 15:15:16 GMT marksamuels said:

When the politicians start demanding places like libraries become "family friendly", it means they're going to destroy what it was about them that made attractive to folk like us, Dem. Ye social engineering rules.

There were (old) books in a library? In ten years no-one in the next generation will understand it. Just like in ten years no-one will believe you could happily smoke inside a pub and also get a cheap pint.

End of civilisation, alas. What an evil age of Brave New World we've lived into...

Mark S.

Christ yes. Libraries used to be full of books. It was great. They weren't supposed to be friendly at all. Who cares about friendly if you could get a book to read. I absolutely detest it now.

You know I went round Dublin last year - I'd been round hundreds of secondhand book shops about twenty years before. Dublin was crawling with them. After two days looking - and I am vaultish when it comes to the location of books. There were only three book shops in the whole of Dublin with basically new books and some vastly overpriced crap that masqueraded as 'interesting antiquarian' - read here fourteenth impression Enid Blyton book without cover.

The only real book shop left was a five story supermarket which held all the books. Really, all of them. It was awful

[andydecker]

You have security guards in the library? Wow.

It is some time since I was last in one of our librarys. They used to be free borrowing, but since they charge a yearly fee for lending books I don´t have a membership any longer. I don´t have time for mainstream stuff, and as I have pay tv I don´t need to borrow DVDs.

As a lot of cities are close to bancrupticy, there is much talk of closing branches. And I am considering of joining up again. It is kind of hard to protest such ideas if you never need the object in question.

Our librarysystem manages to order every avaiable book if it isn´t in your citys library, except paperbacks. Most librarys have a fair selection of genre stuff, but there are no particular horror sections.

[dem bones]

Aug 24, 2010 19:00:35 GMT andydecker said:

You have security guards in the library? Wow.

yeah, their main function appears to be to frighten away undesirables (aka book-loving weirdos) so folk can rent out their Honey, I Shrunk The Kids! Blu-ray in peace.

i'm not sure if this has spread to your neck of the woods, Mark, but there is another insidious evil we whitechapel fun city denizens have to contend with. The 'controlled drinking zone'. This began in the grounds of the Royal London Hospital - fair enough - but as we draw nearer to the 2012 Olympics, so the zone surreptitiously expands outward in every direction. As yet there is no signposting to advise you that you are in a CDZ, you understand. The authorities are relying on the notoriously finely tuned sensibilities of the average street drinker to intuitively realise the fact and accept that, technically, any community enforcement officer can confiscate their entire stash if they are spotted opening that bottle of blue nun in a no-go area. we should have realised this was on the cards last December when mare Boris introduced his notorious "puke tax" - an £80 on the spot fine if you were caught throwing up in the street. This, i gather, did not meet with great success. None among the local wino population could afford to pay so the only folk liable to be punished were the middle class once-a-year-drinkers who had one too many at the office Christmas party, and no politician wants to risk losing their vote.

Still, i'm sure it will all be put right when our glorious leader imposes his not the slightest bit scary vision of the 'Big Society' upon us.

Craig, i sympathise - that must've been an awful choker.

Anyway, where were we? oh yeah, Anthony Horowitz and other great authors of top children's horror stories for all the family. I saw Mr. Horowitz's Necropolis novel in the proper library yesterday, looks a bit meaty and i'd rather start on the shorts, but if the worst comes to the worst i'll give that one a go.

[marksamuels]

Dem

I have a reactionary solution that's better than CDZs. I propose the following: old fashioned pubs selling cheap beer anyone can afford to buy and where you can have a smoke.

Same sort of idea with libraries. Fill them up with piles and piles and piles of old books.

2010? Progess? My arse.

Mark S.

[dem bones]

Aug 24, 2010 21:10:21 GMT marksamuels said:

Dem

I have a reactionary solution that's better than CDZs. I propose the following: old fashioned pubs selling cheap beer anyone can afford to buy and where you can have a smoke.

Same sort of idea with libraries. Fill them up with piles and piles and piles of old books.

2010? Progess? My arse.

Mark S.

There's always one seditionary ...

[cw67q]

I'm going to turn my face against APC (alternative-PC) and state my enthusiasm for the smoking ban. The old fashioned poubs I inhabit have been greatly improved.

I can play my banjo in piece now without choking to death. God knows how the flute players used to cope.

- chris

Aug 24, 2010 21:10:21 GMT marksamuels said:

Dem

I have a reactionary solution that's better than CDZs. I propose the following: old fashioned pubs selling cheap beer anyone can afford to buy and where you can have a smoke.

Same sort of idea with libraries. Fill them up with piles and piles and piles of old books.

2010? Progess? My arse.

Mark S.

[marksamuels]

Aug 24, 2010 21:48:15 GMT cw67q said:

I'm going to turn my face against APC (alternative-PC) and state my enthusiasm for the smoking ban. The old fashioned poubs I inhabit have been greatly improved.

I can play my banjo in piece now without choking to death. God knows how the flute players used to cope.

- chris

I think Ian Anderson quite liked it.



But your lot win, Chris, 'cause those days are dead.

Mark S.

[cw67q]

Aug 24, 2010 22:29:08 GMT marksamuels said:

Aug 24, 2010 21:48:15 GMT cw67q said:

I think Ian Anderson quite liked it.

Mark S.

Actually truth be told I know a fair few flute players that smoke themselves, but I think even they suffered sometimes in the eye watering atmosphere of some of the folkier glasgow pubs.
- chris

[dem bones]

my painstaking research reveals the idea store ® to be a local phenomena, so think yourselves lucky! Where Tower "let's make it happen!" Hamlets leads, the world is usually sane enough not to follow, though news that the iced bun menace has struck in the Potteries is cause for concern.

anyway, i ordered Horowitz Horrors from the proper library this morning with the minimum of stress, so shouldn't be too long before i get get to sample his brand of spooky chillingness!

[lemming13]

Dem

I have a reactionary solution that's better than CDZs. I propose the following: old fashioned pubs selling cheap beer anyone can afford to buy and where you can have a smoke.

Same sort of idea with libraries. Fill them up with piles and piles and piles of old books.

2010? Progess? My arse.

Mark S.

I've got an even better one; how about pubs selling cheap beer AND full up with lots and lots of books? With a separate room for non-smokers and flute players. I'd happily donate a few of my overflow volumes to the cause. I admit, I'm so sick of trying to find any fiction older than last year's in our groovy snacking stop (or indeed, any non-fiction more recent than a Haynes manual for a 1975 Hillman Imp) that I bought a Kindle; I can download hundreds and thousands of out of print lovelies without leaving my chair, idle shite that I am. I know, I know, I'm a techno traitor, but needs must when an illiterate yob city council drives.

[dem bones]

Aug 31, 2010 18:46:08 GMT lemming13 said:

I've got an even better one; how about pubs selling cheap beer AND full up with lots and lots of books? With a separate room for non-smokers and flute players. I'd happily donate a few of my overflow volumes to the cause.

A pub around here, The Artful Dodger, has a windowsill full of books, the idea being that the customers take what they want so long as they replace it with books of their own. i'm not in there often but make sure to take something along with me when i drop by as it's an idea i'd love to see catch on. Incidentally, the bar-staff tell me trade has been clobbered by the smoking ban and that seems to be the case all over - virtually everyone i know gets wasted indoors these days, although i guess the fact it's a lot cheaper and you don't have the worry that someone will have a breakdown and start caterwauling China In Your Hand at the top of their voice for no fathomable reason has plenty to do with that.