Reading community
I just got home from vacation - long autumn days at my family’s cabin on Moosehead Lake. Days were still warm enough for repainting the exterior - this year’s project- and nights cold enough to leave thick blankets of frost all over our cars and causing us to vault out of bed to make strong coffee and light a fire in the woodstove before our toes grew cold and forced us back to warm blankets and reading novels with warm mugs perched on our tummies. To me, reading with a view is the best vacation ever.
It was during one of these cozy mornings, glancing over at mom in the other bed, that I got to thinking of the pleasure of reading together. The consumption of stories is traditionally a community activity, it’s only in our modern, and perhaps too independent, world that reading is a solo-activity. It’s wonderfully bonding to discuss stories together, even better to be moved by them at the same time as someone else.
I wonder, are there any libraries out there that host storytime for grownups? A series of evenings, perhaps, when a (good) reader reads aloud. I picture folks knitting as they listen (c’mon guys, I know lots of men who knit); the soft rustle of other folks shifting; perhaps the coo of a sleeping child. I guess it’s an extension, of sorts, of the One Community, One Book trend - but a bit more touchy-feely…? Anyone doing this? How does it work? For the record, my favorite vacation book was Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and Mom’s an excellent reader.
Tags: Libraries, Services, and Librarians, maine, moosehead lake, programs, stories, storytime, vacation