The Library Housing All You Need to Know...

I just finished reading A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. The main character, Catherine Land, leads a complicated life in which she goes from loved daughter, to prostition, to wealthy man's mistress, to finally answering an ad for a "reliable wife". She does have a constant in her life and that is the library, or maybe it would be more accurately described as books and learning. There were many great quotes about libraries in the book, but I loved this one because I can picture the character standing in the large Philadelphia library taking in the sights, the sounds and the smells.

"...She sewed, and she discovered the big library. She remembered her mother telling her that the library housed all she would ever need to know, about history and art and science.

It terrified her at first. On her initial visits she could only stare, not knowing what to ask for or where to turn. Finally she asked for a book, a book on sewing, and she read it, sitting at the long tables, taking notes with a pencil she had stolen from one of the stalls in the market.

Learning became her. She loved the smell of the books from the shelves, the type on the pages, the sense that the world was an infinite but knowable place. Every fact she learned seemed to open another question, and for every question there was another book. She learned the card catalog. She never learned more than she needed to know." (page 169-170)