Every branch of the NYPL

 

I love the New York Public Library for connecting me to worlds of books! The research division allowed me to read the Indian-published work of Nandalal Bose, discussed in Sumana Roy's How I Became a Tree.

But NYPL affords access to more than academic titles. Delivered conveniently to my nearest neighborhood branch I can check out books no university library would stock, from children's books like Sylvaine 

 

Jaoui and Anne Crahay's I'm like a tree and a tree's like me (with clever holes in its pages) to comic books like Jeff Lemire and Phil Hester's rather darker Family Tree, where some humans become trees.

Patience

After 701 days, New York City saw snow today! Not just flurries in the air but actual accumulation on the ground, trees, vehicles and lions.

Top shelf

My shelf's at the top, and I've started filling it with tree books.

Fiat lux

My sabbatical has begun in earnest! Past sabbaticals have taken me to other countries but this one will be based in New York City... and yet, away. I might sneak down to my university of a Friday (when nobody's around) but I have a new home base: a space in the main study room of the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities at the New York Public Library. My orientation was yesterday afternoon, when there were three other scholars spread across the four long tables. (Each of us gets a dedicated shelf for books from the library.) I was the first to arrive this morning, and found this atmospheric scene. I switched on another table lamp lights and settled into the warm semi-darkness until another researcher came in and told me the main lights in the room are motion activated. As he walked up and down, lights of all kinds went on! Let's hope I have that experience too!