Welcome to my midnight library where everything is imaginary, even the non-fiction. The midnight library is lit only by stars and the occasional warm lamp with a quirky shade, but there's still enough light to read by. A butler brings you hot chocolate and cookies that never spill or stain. He doesn't interrupt if you're in an exciting place and always has a good book suggestion if you need one. You can curl up in a cozy armchair, stretch out under a quilt on a sofa or sit on the steps of the circular staircase if you can't wait to get down the stairs before starting your book.
There is a British classics/historical fiction section in my library, featuring the Victorians - mostly the Brontes, Dickens, Gaskell and Eliot. Jane Austen has her own shelf (shrine), and Georgette Heyer has two or three. There is a small mystery section in a particularly well-lighted corner because I am a wimp. But if you want to take a mystery into a dark room and read it during a thunderstorm, you are welcome to. Picture books live on lower shelves where you can easily reach them when you're sitting in the beanbag chairs.
But most of the books in my library are YA, from Alcott to Zusak. I didn't conscientiously start out to be a YA reader. I've been trying to remember what I read when I was an actual teenager. Although I must have read some contemporary novels, I don't remember many, aside from the odd Sweet Valley High. I read a lot of Lucy Maud Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott and Noel Streatfeild.
Then in college I discovered the joy of having constant access to a library. I attended Brigham Young University, home of the Harold B. Lee Library, which had a 'Juvenile' section large enough to provide me with years of reading. There were long stretches when I'd go to the library every few days to check out new books. This despite the fact that I was an English major and already reading novels. But I liked the books I was getting at the library better than the ones I was reading for class. It was in college that I came to better appreciate authors like Cynthia Voigt and Madeleine L'Engle, whose books I had only sort of liked when I was younger. And I discovered many many new authors. I became entrenched in YA, and I've never left it. There's just so much good stuff that's out there and keeps coming that I don't see any reason to stop reading it. A good book is a good book is a good book, whatever your age. Well, a 3-year-old is unlikely to get much out of Les Miserables, but any adult should be able to appreciate Mo Willems's We Are in a Book!. And I say that J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books and Melina Marchetta's Jellicoe Road and Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races are good books whether you're 15 or 35.
Feel free to roam my midnight library, even if it's daytime. I hope you find something you like and stay a while. The cookies will be waiting.
