A few things struck me when I was reading these three essays, but the main point that stood out to me was in Manuel’s “Library as Imagination”, a quote on pg.271 ”In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness, we invent our stories.” This quote stuck in my head till after I was done reading this essay, simple because I was relating it to my childhood when in the day time after returning home from school I would read endless Dr. Success stories but never dare to try to make up my story. “In the light” (pg.270) of the day, I was reading mostly because reading would transport me from my reality into this whole other world, taking me to made up places that I couldn’t even comprehend. But in the night (darkness) I would lay in bed until my eyes hurt from staying open, telling my mom stories. Most of the stories I used to tell her were stories about me having super powers, or traveling around the world… all made up stories. I had imagined my library, a separate library from my physical, tangible library at home… this library was restricted solely for me and whomever I would share these stories with. This library in my head was of “imaginary books” (pg. 283), as a child I was allowed the “pleasure of creation without the effort of research and writing” (pg.283). But where did those stories go? As the years progressed, I started to use my imagination less and less, those stories have been tucked deep into the back of my subconscious, or they may even be lost as the years progressed. I guess that would be the biggest problems with imagination libraries; there is no physical record of the book or story. That is how oral tradition is lost because it is almost never collected and written down- think about the thousands of stories we lost throughout the years of our ancestors and their journeys.
The second point that struck me was in Homi Bhabha’s “Unpacking my Library Again”, in the first paragraph Bhabha poses a question, “Does the order of books determine the order of things?” If there were a definitive answer to this question, I would love to know. But from what I gather is that he was trying to point out that disorder sends a signal to the human brain that worries us, some people get anxiety when walking into a room and it is “disorderly” or simply messy. The disorder sets off an alarm in our brains that trigger the feeling of chaos, yet as I look at my personal library, all I see is a disorder. My books are not arranged in alphabetical order like NYU bookstore nor are they organized by genre like Strand Bookstore, frankly there is no particular order to my private library. I simply read a book and then toss it onto the shelf, wherever it lands it shall stay until I decide to read it again or pass it onto a friend, looking at my library as Bhabha did unpacking his on pg 5 I can only recall a few vague stories of my quest for some of them. Most have been inquired via Amazon, or online Barnes and Nobles ( much thanks to the 21st century online shopping and Amazon Prime two day shipping) but others I can vaguely remember flipping through at a bookstore and deciding to buy them. What does it say about one’s identity if their private library is “disorderly” or if it is systemically alphabetized?
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