I awoke on this very rainy Sunday morning wondering what the day might have in store for me. I did what I always do each morning – I looked outside and made my first decision (since it was pouring I decided not to go out for a run. Oh well…best laid plans etc). I put on my glasses and then picked up my blackberry to see what the world had been up to while I slept. I was greeted on this otherwise murky day by a most wonderful Facebook message. A Facebook friend, the poet Lyn Moir, wrote to tell me she had just finished reading Tangled Roots and loved it (phew). But she happened to mention that she had picked it up at the library, and I felt a funny, complicated little jolt.

One of the unfortunate side effects of having a book to sell is that you want to actually sell it — either for the money or the Nielsen rating. And now for a confession — last year while I was on my book tour, an older woman came up to me, asked me all about the book and said that she was really interested in reading it. When she then said she would go and take it out of her library I had a moment of irritation and had to control my eyes from rolling around to the back of my head. I do feel bad about that because public libraries are not only convenient, good local resources, they are important — vitally important and, I believe, vital to the cultural vibrancy of any community. I remember learning about the origin of the public library when I was about 12 years old and in school in New York. In the States, most of the credit for creating a system of local institutions which are funded by the government and exist for the continuing education of the general population goes to none other than Benjamin Franklin. The importance of the fact that the history of this institution was actually a part of the curriculum in my local “public” school (“state” school to the Brits) was not lost on me, even then. One of the roles of any government is to to help ensure the literacy of its population, and a key to that is the continuing efficacy of its public libraries.

And so this morning when I read that my friend had taken Tangled Roots out of her local library I had a different reaction. I was snug in my bed on a rainy Sunday morning and not standing in the fiction department of a strange, far away Waterstones. So I was thrilled. Thank you, Lyn, and from across the generations and the ocean, thank you Benjamin Franklin.

Now, of course, all this reminds me of a song…