WOMEN IN THE LIBRARY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 124, 11 May 1935, Page 12

WOMEN IN THE LIBRARY

Interesting Observations

A recent article in the women’s (Supplement on what women are reading prompts mo, as a library assistant, to share a few observations 1 have made on the women who do frequent lending libraries (says Sylvie Trew in the “Sydney Morning Herald”). From the conscientious schoolgirl who carries away six or eight weighty tomes at a time, to the old lady of ninety who confesses a passion tor books about the sea, the woman borrower invariably makes an interesting and surprising choice from the shelves loaded with reading mutter.

Scores of women are almost fanat:cally keen about books on astrology, and refuse to look at any other section. Light works of psychology, spiritualism, caligraphy, phrenology, and palmistry are popular, particularly if they contain simple guides for character delineation, or fortune-telling. Young girl arts students in guy .-mocks spend an hour or two seriously musing over prints of the Masters — I hen slip out wit'll a not so serious novel or a bioel Coward play. Women always seem to know the very latest play, as well as the successes of other years. This interest is one I hat has grown suddenly with the little-theatre movement and continues to increase each week.

Comparatively, the feminine reader is more interested in the story or subject of her choice than in the particular author. Apropos of this, it was amusing when Eric Gill’s discussion of modern art, “Beauty looks after itself,” called forth dozens of reserves from women anxious to leurn what secrets about the complexion and the figure it might disclose.

As well as the woman who reads and the women who wants material for a debate, a club meeting, a newspaper article, or a radio talk, there is another vast army of women borrowers who actually never read the book they spend hours in selecting. What a debt of gratitude is owing from families of busy men and women, who entrust their library lists to good-natured mothers or sisters.

One unaccustomed to watching these Samaritans would be amazed to sen a gentle old lady carrying away a book on jiu-jitsu and a handbook of diesel engines.

Women are definitely more interesting as borrowers because they seek assistance oftener and they will talk more. They tell enthusiastically of other books thev have read or heard

about, of the work they are doing, their ambitions, their travels, friends, and children. Indeed, so many romances are revealed, so many little confidences are made by these women who read, that it is not to be wondered that one frequently forgets to notice just what they are reading.