Putting a figure on it

For a few years now I’ve spent three or four hours a day commuting to and from work by public transport. This gives me plenty of time to read, and I get through several books a week, mostly fiction, sometimes history or biography or current affairs. But we’re on a tight budget, so I don’t buy many at full price. Sometimes they’re books I’ve picked up in op-shops or jumble sales, but on the whole the place that supplies most of my reading material is Manly Library.

I did the sums recently. Say five or so books a week for ten years: that amounts to 2,500 books. Given that they’re mostly new or recent hardbacks, paying full price for them from the shop at, say, $40 each would come to $100,000. This doesn’t take into account other stuff that I borrow for the family, such as children’s picture books, DVDs, CDs or magazines. Over my reading lifetime, to my amazement, I find that the total so far must amount to something like half a million dollars! And my eyes aren’t worn out yet! And I’m in no danger of exhausting the Library’s resources, because there are still so many great books to read.

It’s not as though I’m a particularly heavy user of the Library, either, because we know there are borrowers out there who go through a couple of books a day. All I know is, I owe a huge six-figure debt to all the public libraries I’ve ever belonged to, and I know my imagination would be much the poorer without the inspiration libraries have provided.

- John MacRitchie