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I spent most of my childhood in libraries
whether it was going to the public library
whether it was my school library or going to visit
my mother who was in elementary school reading teacher and hanging out in that library.
So I've always been surrounded by books
and what I always loved about that was
whenever I wanted to read about, I could just reach out and touch.
Honestly, maybe it's just me, but
I love just the
actual physical feeling of being in the library.
Having a book in my hand. The smell of the book.
An e-reader just doesn't have the same experiences as actually sitting
someplace where you can just reach out and touch whatever you want.
And I learned from a
very young age how to use the Dewey Decimal System.
How to find
what I wanted to read.
How to actually approach a book and just even being able to talk
to the librarian
and ask a simple question like, "Hey, I'm looking for a book on..."
whatever the subject was that I was interested in.
Mainly research...you know it's easy to sort of do superficial
research on the Internet. Sometimes you need yp go out and find the actual books.
Sometimes you need to go to very specialized libraries.
And sometimes it's fun to just sort of go and
see what's out, and what's coming out. In some ways it's
actually easier to figure that out by going to the library than it is going to a bookstore.
There's something about the community of reading
that the library fosters that, as a kid, I just loved.
[On Censorship] I'm against it. I think that it's an important
community resource...not...
I mean, look, books are probably more
available and cheaper than they've ever been, but
there are still people
who can't afford to go out and spend twenty bucks on a hard cover or
spend six bucks on a paperback.
People don't have the resources to go out
and find something that interests them. And one of the great things about
reading is that if you are doing it right,
reading begets more reading and
the wonderful thing about a library is, you can finish one book
and say, "Wow, that
intrigues me..." and some other subject, you can go off and get another book
and it makes learning and information free.
Number one, as a parent, I have a responsibility to sit down with my kids
and
know what he's going to be involved with,
whether he's reading it, watching it, or whatever.
Number two, I think that kids are actually pretty good judges of what they're capable of handling,
and capable of dealing with, and if you creat an environment
where they feel comfortable saying, "Hey, I have a question about this thing..." it might
be uncomfortable,
but it's actually better
for dealing with the topics that might be controversial.
The only good thing that comes out of it is that every time someone tries to censor a book,
it raises awareness of that book, which means that more people are going to read it.