Proverbs and Pacifiers: My Trip to Narnia and the Local Library

Have you ever been cleaning out a closet and wanted desperately to reach the back and find a magical world where you become a queen surrounded by talking animals, servants, food, and beautiful dresses? Are you ever disappointed when you reach the back and find spider webs and old shoes instead? Not exactly an enchanted forest. Bummer.

And yes, I have been cleaning out closets and listening to The Chronicles of Narnia all day. How did you know?

A while back my husband found an dramatized audio version of the Chronicles of Narnia at our local library, and I love them! I love listening to audio books while I work around the house. They help me strike a good balance between being productive and being entertained. And of course, unlike television, they go with me from room to room so I don't get tied down waiting for the next commercial. It's a win-win.

Of course, my taste in audio books, well in any books, is quite limited. You wouldn't expect that seeing consider how many bookshelves we have, but really I have very particular standards.

In fact, I most often spend my time at the library perusing cookbooks and children's books (and by perusing children's books I mean picking them up off the floor when Rooster knocks them off the shelf). However today during our library visit, I decided to branch out and find something new to read. While I was walking up and down the rows of fiction and non-fiction books, glancing at titles and reading the back of books, I learned two things.

1. They let anyone write anything these days. Seriously, you don't have to have anything good or decent to say to publish a book. You can just say whatever pops into your head.

2. The library is useless if you don't know what you're looking for. Most of the time I have a book or author in mind when I go to the library, but not today. What a waste of time!

It was so disappointing to walk down aisle after aisle filled with less than desirable content. What am I supposed to do with books filled with social lies, illicit romances, and bad parenting advice? Read them? I think not!

Remember when the library was a place filled with enchanting books about far away places and young heros who sought to do the right thing and set free the animals enslaved by the White Witch? Back then (when I was in 4th grade) the library was wholesome and full of good books that carried the reader away into far off times and lands full of goodness and a little bit of intrigue.

Well, not any more. The library has lost the illusion of grandeur that it held when I was a child. While there may be some great books (and audiobooks!) on the shelves there, you have to wade through a lot of smut to find them.

Oh well, you know the saying, as the goes the culture, so goes the library. Or something like that.

Maybe finding a way into Narnia isn't such a bad idea after all.

And if I ever do get into Narnia, I'm pretty sure it will look a lot like Northern Ireland.