Inside British Libraries...

Synopsis

Chris works as a librarian in a small-town library in the south of England. This is the story of the library, its staff, and the fascinating group of people who use the library on a regular basis.

We'll meet characters like the street-sleepers Brewer, Wolf and Spencer, who are always the first through the doors. The Mad Hatter, an elderly man who scurries around manically, searching for books. Sons of Anarchy Alan, a young Down's Syndrome man addicted to the American TV drama series. Startled Stewart, a gay man with a spray-on tan who pops in most days for a nice chat, sharking for good-looking foreign language students. And Trish, who is relentlessly cheerful and always dressed in pink - she has never married, but the marital status of everybody she meets is of huge interest to her.

Some of the characters' stories are tragic, some are amusing, some are genuinely surreal, but together they will paint a bigger picture of the world we live in today, and of a library's hugely important place within it. Yes, of course, people come in to borrow books, but the library is also the equivalent of the village pump. It's one of the few places left where anyone, regardless of age or income or background, can wander in and find somebody to listen to their concerns, to share the time of day.

Reading Allowed will provide us with a fascinating portrait of a place that we all value and cherish, but which few of us truly know very much about ...

Review

This book was interesting in both good and not so good ways. At times it was really easy and pleasant to read as I combined it with narration (I do with a lot of my reads, as you may know by now if you’re a regular to my blog) but at others the writing became bland and mundane making it harder to turn the pages. The insight this non-fiction read presents is clever. You could easily chapter by chapter begin to believe that this is a fictional work but by the gently placed discussions about the restrictions recent budget cuts adds the right level of reality to ensure the awareness of the reader to the true stories, whilst also adding humour to keep the reader continuing on.

I enjoyed how you felt you could relate even though I have never unfortunately worked in a library although I would love too. I found myself making comparisons to my work (retail) in the sense of having regular customers that I enjoy working with, but also having those other customers that you do whatever you can to avoid. I found the digressions to books that caught his eye intriguing, it added a sometimes much needed change of pace to the sometimes slowing stories. I found myself most engaged with the descriptive aspects of the writing because I could easily picture the layout of the library and how it works day to day. I had always wondered being an avid reader, how a library’s stock was chosen and I have since found out from this work that books are selected by the supplier not the library as I had previously imagined. I think the best part of this book for me was the fact that it was based in a British library from the perspective of a British worker, that seems to be becoming rare in todays reads for reasons unknown. It makes me proud to be a British reader reading something set in Britain and written by a British writer.

**Disclaimer** I in no way wish to alter or sway anyone else’s view by anything discussed in this post. these are merely my own opinion feel free to agree or disagree as you see fit.

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