November 16, 2010

How to get hold of a book

“…I went off to work, stopping on the way at Kensington Public Library to get a copy of John Henry Newman’s Apologia, which I had long promised Maisie Young. She could quite well have procured it for herself during all those weeks, disabled as she was, but she belonged to that catagory of society, by no means always the least educated, who are always asking how they can get hold of a book; they know very well that one buys shoes from a shoeshop and groceries from the grocer’s but to find and enter a bookshop is not somehow within the range of their imagination.” — from Muriel Spark’s Loitering With Intent