When she was in the seventh grade, the Library Science teacher, Miss Bubb, gave Churchill County Librarian Carol Lloyd a D minus in Library Science class.
“I’m sure it was because I talked too much,” laughed Lloyd on Tuesday night at the Churchill County Museum, where she was the guest speaker in the Spring Lecture Series focused on the topic “How to…”
Lloyd said that talking-too-much theme was repeated when she was a page at the Palm Springs library later in her career when she decided to pursue her master’s degree in library science. A friend told her, “You can’t be a librarian; you talk too much.”
But talking or not, books have been an integral part of Lloyd’s life since she was very young. “In first grade, reading clicked for me,” she said, showing a slide of the old Dick and Jane books that were her first memory of reading. She said she remembered her dad always reading history books and her mom trading books with friends. “One of the biggest wrongs you could do back then was not to return someone’s book.”
As she grew and matured in her reading appetite, the list of titles continued to grow for Lloyd. Mentioning Animal Farm, the Godfather, and The Grapes of Wrath, she said she would read anything by Steinbeck. “I always had a book on me, tucked away somewhere, and always found time to read, even if it was for seven minutes.”
When mass paperbacks became popular in the 60s, her sister brought home Valley of the Dolls, which brought comments from her mother as well as Forever Amber, a book considered to be racy for the time with the main character who “slept and married her way to the top,” as Lloyd explained.
Explaining that she subscribed to the Book of the Month club with her babysitting money, “I read because I liked the stories, and I read to learn about how people felt, how they handled themselves, what mattered to them, what worked in their lives and what didn’t, and I read to learn about places and history.”
Lloyd explained that she learned early that one thing would lead to another and lead a person to the next. Reading has always been like that for her; one book brings a thought or observation, or suggestion for another book, which leads to another and then the next.
“We read books that show up when we don’t really know why they do, and that helps us understand things when we need the help,” she said. “Reading keeps us on the front end of what’s happening at any given time. Books reflect society.”
The lecture series wraps up next Tuesday night, April 18, at 6:30, with Kelli Kelly presenting “How to… Change the World.”
Comment
Comments