Libraries are Amazing

The first week of September always makes me nostalgic for university. On a day like today (my last free Friday afternoon before summer hours end), when the weather is perfect for that first stroll through campus, I miss the feeling of blissful optimism I always felt when starting a new academic year.

I loved school and loved being a student. And it wasn't just the freedom to work and play whenever I wanted, although that was certainly a perk. I loved school because it meant that my job was to read incredible literature, think deeply and critically about it, and then write about it in pretty much any form I wanted. I loved having a built-in network of like-minded souls that met weekly simply to analyse and debate books.

Granted, my current job also entails reading academic material, thinking critically about it, and writing responses. In fact, that's exactly what I was doing this morning. The big difference is that now I'm editing business law and statistics texts, whereas at university I was leisurely making my way through the greatest works of English literature. Same skills, totally different connection to the material.

Of course, the great thing about loving to study is that there's really no reason not to keep tracking down new things to research, and it is exactly this fact that sent me wandering though the Toronto Public Library this afternoon in search of new material. I didn't even have a specific goal in mind when I started looking through the shelves, but my recent foray into art deco printing soon drew me to the art history section. Low and behold, there in the modern art section was a book that I've been secretly coveting in Indigo for months: Peter Gay's Modernism.


Don't ask me why it never occurred to me to look for this book in the library before. For the longest time I've had my heart set on buying it (even though it comes with a nearly fifty dollar price tag), so I guess I just assumed that eventually my artistic curiosity would get the better of my fiscal good sense and I'd plunk down the money for it. Now, I have it for free (err... we'll just skip over the part where I had to pay a $15 fine for my last library check outs...) and I'm so excited to start reading it.

So, voila! Book learnin' just like the good old days, minus tuition, book store lines, and my woeful Value Village wardrobe (oh yes, now I'm starting to remember the perks of not being a student).

I hope everyone is having a lovely start to their long weekend/school year/September! I have some significant printing plans for this weekend (along with plans for sipping wine in the sunshine and visiting great friends), so stay tuned!