Sunday 28 April 2013

World Book Night - The first book


I’m still waiting to send off my health certificate and my IPCP – the International Child Protection Certificate, so I’m not officially a JET shortlister yet. Still, I’ve started to prepare for my trip, and the idea is both daunting and exciting. This is going to be a blog about my journey – around Japan, wherever I’m placed, and how I deal with living and travelling in a new culture.

In the meantime, however, I still have to study and work! I’m at the end of a degree at Warwick University, so hopefully the tales of my travails in Coventry will keep you entertained until I leave. One of the more interesting things I’m involved in at the moment is the World Book Night 2013. I applied for, and successfully became a World Book Giver this year, which means I have 20 copies of my chosen novel to give away. I selected Rose Tremain’s The Road Home. It’s a fantastic book, by the way. I read it in a day. My batch arrived at the local pickup point last week, and, since it was only a slight detour to the route I was taking that day, I decided to pick them up.

As I approached the library, I began to feel a little wary – it was out of the way, on a dusty looking road; something that Google Maps had failed to tell me. I recognized a road nearby, just about, which only made me realise I had managed to take the long way around, adding a ten minute walk onto my sweaty journey. A park – or rather, a desolate looking field, ran unhappily by the side of the road. A chap cycled past me, sitting upright, unwrapping a Subway sandwich with both hands. A useful skill.

The Canley Community library is a sorry sight, a building the size of a small bungalow, plonked unceremoniously on some sorry looking patch of lawn. It looked glumly run-down, with typically colourful abstract art painted in bright colours on one wall. It looked one scribble away from graffiti, the kind of art some poor “community artist” bangs out to get a living wage. There were bars on the windows. I wondered: what kind of people need to be kept out of a library? How desperate would you have to be? (The answer is, obviously, people that are desperate enough not to care, so it’s a moot point, but a sad story all the same). Or perhaps more humorously, what kind of people need to be kept in?

The doors were closed. In all honesty, it looked like a garage. There was only one other person around. He was dressed in a deep navy track suit. A black cap rested on his shaven head. His sling bag, as dark as the rest of his clothing, rested on one hip. I stood behind him, bored. He leaned back on an empty cycle rack. I echoed this posture on the rack behind, cool in the surprisingly hot day. Don’t talk to strangers. I pretended to text a friend (maybe I actually did, or maybe I just made a big show of it). There was some gum rattling around in my bag somewhere, so -

“They said they’ll be open at 2pm.”

I looked up from my gum-search and thanked him. 2pm? I had other, more important things to do! Well, not really, but I did need to meet a friend. Fortunately, I rang up the office, and the helpful librarian bought my box of books out. She headed back inside, waiting for electricians to fix up their lighting – the reason they were closed was that someone had busted the lights. I slung the box down and started to distribute the contents between my rucksack and a small sling bag I had bought along for this purpose. I managed to stuff about half a dozen in the rucksack, sweating profusely as the sun beat down on my back. I paused to unceremoniously wipe beads of perspiration from my forehead (and my armpits). I glanced up, smiled – the other gent was watching.

“Got some new books?” he commented. Now here is the thing. I have lived in a country where racial awareness was a very Big Thing, and not always in a great way. BLACK MEN are dangerous (unless they’re in suits, for some reason, then it’s fine). But whilst I’ve grown up with that stereotype, I really hate living my life with these rules. So, sorry ma, but I started up a conversation. I explained why I wasn’t really just a huge criminal stealing 20 copies of The Road Home from this little library, but what World Book Night was. A thought struck me –

“Are you much of a reader?” I asked. He hemmed and hawed a little, and agreed. Whatever his answer, my reaction would have been the same. I passed him a copy. “Here. A new book.”

“It looks like the sort of thing I’ll read before I sleep,” Lloyd (for indeed, Lloyd was his name) told me. I was ridiculously pleased by this idea – whether it’s true or not, I’ll never know. But I gave him the book, and that’s the most I could do. Lloyd needed to use the library for the computer – he didn’t have one at home. He had just got a new job, in the warehousing sector, he confided. He used to work in security, but the hours were too unsociable. And so, with that, he popped it into his sling bag. I finished repacking the books. We shook hands, and I left, off to meet my friends.

And that’s why libraries like Canley exist, as small and run-down as they look. It is why writers as huge and prolific as Neil Gaiman campaign to keep them alive. Because libraries are important. Because people who can’t afford computers probably won’t bother with buying books either, they’re too busy trying to stay alive. Libraries provide a public service that we all need to be aware of and respect, because where would we be without them? I’m lucky enough that my university carries all the books I need, and ten times the amount of books that I don’t. The knowledge in there has carried me through my degree.

I’ve given another four out, to students, but I think I’m going to carry them in my bag a little longer and wait. I don’t want to give it to people who normally read, like me. I want to find those who I’ve never had to chance to speak to before. Maybe when I’m next at the bus stop, with a grandmother who’s dressed in a cardigan and her salwar kameez, or the bartender at the local pub. I’m connecting through books, writing my own adventure. It’s not The Road Home, but it is a road to somewhere. It doesn’t just start when I move to Japan: it starts now.