I always went with Mom when she shopped for groceries. Usually while she was in the El Rey market I’d go to the library. It was on the corner just across the street.

The library was a place of enchantment. It had two arms joined in the middle by the desk manned by the librarian, a stern woman with grey hair tied in a bun  She demanded silence.

Checking out a book always fascinated me.  Along with my library card, I’d bring the several I wanted to the desk.  She’d open the cover of the first.  A pocket had been glued to it.  She take a card with the book’s name from the pocket.  She’d put the card over my library card’s metal identification tab and roll a wheel over it.  She had a pencil with a little silver attachment.  It had a multislotted wheel that she evidently changed every morning so that the due date (two weeks in the future) was present.  She’d freshen the ink by tapping a small pad.  Then she’d stamp the due date on the card.  Finally,  she’d stamp the date it on a note-sized paper and put it in the pocket.

If I turned to the right after coming to the desk I’d enter a large room with long tables.  Large books on shelves.  References and such.  Atlases.  A large globe of the world had a prominent place.

I found only one things of interest:  the stereopticon.   First I’d select a card, one with the same picture on both sides.  I’d fit it into a sliding fitting on a long stick.  Then I’d look through the two squares.  Wonder of wonders, the pictures had depth.  Dimension.  Over and over I found things to look at.  I especially liked the pictures of Vienna.  People.  Men in tall hats.  Women with wide skirts carrying parasols.  But most marvelous, the silence.  The places I could see.  But they were inhumanly silent.

While occasionally I’d use the stereopticon, I spent most of the time on the other side of the library.  Books and books and books.  Rarely did I leave with less than six or eight to be read over the week until the next grocery trip.  Or reread.  Often I took pleasure in taking home a favorite book to be enjoyed once again.

One day it occurred to me that there must be a best book.  Of all those I read, which one was most outstanding.  Above all others.  I thus began a serious study of the contents of the library.  After some weeks I came up with a winner:  Two Little Savages.  Enthralled, I read and reread the adventures of two boys who tried to live as indians.

Not only a gripping story, there were wonderful illustrations!  I checked it out and read it once again.

But as days extended into weeks I began to have doubts.  Two Little Savages told a fine story.  Granted.  But was my criteria too limited.  The experience of reading a book, I reasoned, was not simply in the story.  There existed something I came to call “bookness.”  The physical book was part of the experience.  What it looked like.  How it felt.  The paper of the pages.  The cover and spine.  So I found I had to reopen the contest.

There began a sober reconsideration of the best book in the library.  This took considerable time, especially since I had to sandwich it between getting books to check out for the coming week.  But after a long and complex series of comparisons a new champion emerged.  A nonpareil.  The best book in the entire library:

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar.

Begin with the story.  Suspense, suspense.  Would the ape man regain his memory?  Would he realize the pretty rocks he played with were really jewels of great worth?  Would the vile seducer Albert Werper realize his evil intent toward Lady Jane?  Would Tarzan arrive in time to save her?

But beyond that, the book itself.  A cover of tiny diamond pattern.  Yet with stains on it.  This gave age and dignity.  It meant that someone else had checked it out.  Read it.  Perhaps got ink on it.  Leaving it slightly battered.  Inside, the paper of the pages were somehow filled with flecks, as if something had fallen in while printing.  They were smooth to the touch.  Occasionally I’d find one of them dogeared, the record of an earlier reader.

Once again I checked it out and took it home.  I took it with me to the garden where I had to water the tomatoes.  I started the hose running, but not too strong.  Enough for the water to flow down the winding path I’d made between the plants.  Then I’d pick one or two that were ripe.  I’d sit in the shade of the plants, eating the tomatoes as I opened the book, and once again lived with the ape man.