A story about a library

 I’m at that age: Younger colleagues ask about retirement.

I think every person should have something he or she wants to do. If you want to write a book, do it. If you want to go to Paris, go. If you don’t have anything you want to do, maybe you ought to hold on to that job.

One of the best projects I’ve heard about was a library in the backyard.

Karen Swallow Prior, a professor of literature, designed it, talked her husband into building it and wrote about it. Her essay gave me a bad case of the daydreams.

I love public libraries, my alma mater. But Professor Prior got the sense of what’s it like to have your own collection.

Her library has a place for the cheap paperback copies of classic novels she read as a teenager. She tells how she counted (roughly) her books and organized them (loosely) into sections.

I retired almost a dozen years ago and have done other things. If I were retiring tomorrow, I think I’d try to imagine a library in the backyard, maybe back in the woodlot.

• Source: Karen Swallow Prior, “My Books Needed a House of Their Own”; Miller’s Book Review, Sept. 19, 2026. It’s here:

https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/my-books-needed-a-house-of-their?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

I learned about the essay because it was mentioned in Julian Girdham’s wonderful newsletter, The Fortnightly.