A home without books is like a house without windows

ATHY Lions Club will host the first of this year’s book fairs on Saturday, 8 March commencing from 10am to 4pm in the Athy Recreational Community Hall on the Kilkenny Road.

Those of my age will know the venue as Dreamland Ballroom, home of happy youthful memories.

We started the book fair just over two years ago as part of my ambition to make Athy a more friendly book town than it was when I was growing up in the 1950s.

I remember going to the small-town library one evening every week. It was located in what was a tiny room in the town hall at the top of the stairs which were accessed through the door which today remains locked and positioned almost opposite the Chinese restaurant.

How little traffic passed by the doorway is easily imagined given that you stepped onto the road as you left the library building.

There were few children’s books available in those days and indeed in the absence of any books apart from schoolbooks in the Taaffe household, I haunted the local library seeking detective novels.

It was memories of those days that prompted my suggestion to the lions club to offer free books to young children from the lions book shop in the weeks leading up to last Christmas. It has now been decided to extend the free book scheme for the rest of this year.

Children are encouraged with their parents to call to the book shop and pick up a book free of charge to bring home to read and to keep.

I am very conscious that there are many children who like myself as a youngster did not have books to read at home and the whole purpose of the children’s free book scheme is to give these children the opportunity to make their lives richer by reading books.

The lions book shop has been operating for more than 15 years. It was an attempt to replicate the small beginning of the book town of Hay-On-Wye, the Welsh town which the late Richard Booth re-energised when he opened his first book shop.

With a population of less than 2,000, it presently has 23 second-hand book shops and prior to the internet, it had many more.

It is still the centre of the second-hand book world and is a wonderful place which I have been visiting every year for the last forty years.

In the early weeks of the lions bookshop, it opened on Saturdays only until I was approached by a lady offering her help in running the shop.

Alice Rowan, who is now an honorary lions club member, has been the front of house person in the book shop from Tuesday to Saturday inclusive every week for the last 15 years or so. As a volunteer, her services to the lions club and to the local community have brought huge benefits for both. Alice is one of the great community heroes who, unasked, has done so much for the people of Athy.

I am very conscious that many of the children in our local community are unable either because of parental indifference or deprivation, to access books to read.

Even the presence of a local library does not apparently encourage many such parents to allow their children to use the library facilities. A home without books is like a house without windows.

Children learn to read and to see the world through the writings of others by being in the presence of books. That is why the lions club wants to assist the children of bookless homes to build their own small libraries by taking up the invitation to collect a book a month from the lions bookshop. I realise that many of the children who would benefit from the free book scheme may not call to the lions book shop.

Perhaps local teachers and indeed members of the St Vincent de Paul Society might be in a good position to offer advice regarding the distribution of children’s books. If so, I would like to hear from either.

Looking back over more than 60 years of reading, I find that my own reading habits have changed. The detective novels of almost seventy years ago have given way after a few years of limited, if any reading, to novels and short stories of Irish writers.

I once collected all of what I refer to as the ‘classical’ Irish novelists of the Irish literary scene such as Liam O’Flaherty, Sean O’Faolain, Francis Stuart and such like, whose works I still retain even though I no longer read fiction.

Indeed, I haven’t done so for over 40 years, my interests having passed on to Irish history, British social history and English politics. It was George Crabbe who wrote “My books have changed, I now prefer the truth To the light reading of unsettled youth”.