Open book-shelves :: 2024
They are in every town and city, even small villages have them - open book shelves. Places where you can put books into and/ or get books from, 7 days a week 24 hours a day.
Last spring I went to the shelf in the quarter where I live. The place hadn´t been inspiring for a few years, rather the opposite, kind of eat pray love or even worse. There was an older (but not old, just like most older ones here) woman skipping through the books there too. She said she was looking for art books, once there were plenty of them, from all over the world and really interesting stuff.
She told me that the shelf had been the very first shelf in town (so probably in this country). It was the idea of an art student from here to create an exchange of literature away from the usual commercial interests, and so he built the place together with other artists. I didn ́t know that! I thought, wow, that sounds interesting !
That’s probably different to many places here compared to places elsewhere - they don’t have THIS history. Wherever you scratch on, the most rebellious and arty things resurface and most (or all?) pioneer projects seem to have their roots here. Once again I felt very proud to live here :: a quarter as a teacher :: books ::
