Toni Noel
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Blog - Remembering Ray Bradbury

6/7/2012

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About 15 years ago my critique group heard Ray Bradbury speak at a writer's conference sponsored by Point Loma  Nazarene University.  Attendants helped this elderly, remarkable man onto the stage and into an easy chair and for the next two hours he held the packed audience spellbound as he told stories of his youth, his successes and his disappointments.

The fact he never attended college impressed me the most. With no money for college, he attended a library in Los Angeles 3 days a week for 10 years, reading, a habit started in his youth when he read his favorite authors in the Carnegie Library in Waukegan, Illinois. We shared a love of Edgar Allen Poe's writings.

His firm belief in the importance of libraries struck a similar chord in me.  When he began writing his own science fiction he had his years of reading it to fall back on. He wrote Fahrenheit 451 in UCLA's Powell Library on a typewriter rented for 10 cents a half-hour.

His remarks made me realize how easy my writer's life was, and drove home how many opportunities I was allowing to pass me buy.

The youngest member of our critique group insisted on fighting the mob to get her copy of Zen and the Art of Writing signed. I was content just to sit and wait for her while mulling over everything he'd said and how it applied to me as a writer. She returned, all starry-eyed because Ray Bradbury "asked me what I wrote."

Looking back,  I'm sorry I passed up the opportunity to breathe the same air perhaps the best writer of my generation breathed that night.

***

On a lighter note but a related topic,  I'm happy to report the City found an unexpected windfall and our local libraries are opening again on Mondays. I'd be a happy camper if they'd reopen on Saturdays, now, too.

       

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Where's Your Library Card?

4/9/2012

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This is National Library Week. Can you put your hands on your library card? Through the years mine has changed considerably. To apply for my first library card in California, I was required to bring in an envelope mailed to my current address, and allowed to check out two books. A week later I received a card for my wallet that became dog-eared long before a new one was issued.

Now everything is checked out electronically. My latest library card looks like a credit card. Works like one, too. I can even renew the books I check out by phone, but do I use my card as often as I use my credit card? No, not nearly often enough, however every time I step back into the library I'm amazed at the offerings I find there. I had no idea our branch library four block away hosted a monthly book club, eliminating the need to drive to Barnes and Noble for their's.

Like carrying a membership card for the fitness club or AAA, when I walk into the library I have a sense of belonging. I'm familiar with my surroundings, even if I've never been in that particular building before. I enjoy a sense of fellowship, and suspense. No telling what I'll find beneath the covers of the first book I remove from the shelf.

And the best part? I never lose the sense of wonder. All that knowledge at my fingertips. I race down the rows of shelves, fearful some other patron will beat me to the latest Nicholas Sparks release or video. Too busy to read? Check out a talking book for those forty-five minute commutes to work. 
  
Why not put a visit to the local library on your shopping list this week. You're bound to find something there that interests you. Maybe an armful, like me.  


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    Toni Noel enjoys  writing romantic suspense and contemporary romance, reading, gardening and walking her dog Jack in Southern California.  

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