Read Online Among Others by Jo Walton - Free Book Online

a card, but I said it was all right, they could save the stamp money to buy books, and I’d just come in every week and collect whatever they had.
    Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.
    Libraries really are wonderful. They’re better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.
    I then spent a happy hour among the stacks, which are like the school library in that they contain a few gems, but only a few. Also, the SF is shelved in with everything else, which makes things slower. With eight books weighing me down and rain slashing in my face, I considered going straight back to school and reading them in my own comfortable library. But I wanted to check the bookshop, and eight books sounds (and feels!) like a lot, but it isn’t as if they’ll last me all week. I normally read now in the early morning if I wake before the bell, for the three hours of compulsory games, during any boring classes, in prep after I’ve finished my prep, in the half-hour free time after prep, and for the half hour we’re allowed in bed before lights out. So I’m getting through a couple of books most days.
    So I walked slowly down the hill to the bookshop. The wind was whipping the willow branches out across the water. Most of the yellow leaves were down and floating on the surface. There was no sign of the swans. But I could see that beyond the pond there were more trees.
    I bought a couple of things. I wish I knew how long this ten pounds is supposed to last. Most books are 75p, with thick ones being more. I left a lot of books when I ran away. I could replace them, but I also want new things to read. Re-reading’s all very well. I bought a new Tiptree collection. This one has an introduction by Le Guin, so she must like him too! It’s lovely when writers I like like each other. Maybe they’re friends, like Tolkien and Lewis. The bookshop has a new biography of all the Inklings, by Humphrey Carpenter who wrote the Tolkien biography. It’s in hardcover. I shall order it from the library.
    After the bookshop, I checked out the shelves in the junk shop and bought a couple of things there too. I had so many books I could hardly walk at this point, and of course my leg was terrible. It always is when it rains. I didn’t ask to have my good leg replaced by a creaky rusty weathervane, but then I suppose nobody does. I would have made much greater sacrifices. I was prepared to die, and Mor did die. I should think of it as a war-wound, an old soldier’s scars. Frodo lost a finger, and all his own possibility of happiness. Tolkien understood about the things that happen after the end. Because this is after the end, this is all the Scouring of the Shire, this is figuring out how to live in the time that wasn’t supposed to happen after the glorious last stand. I saved the world, or I think I did, and look, the world is still here, with sunsets and interlibrary loans. And it doesn’t care about me any more than the Shire cared about Frodo. But that doesn’t matter. My mother isn’t a dark queen who everyone loves and despairs. She’s alive, all right, but she’s trapped in the nets of her own malice like a spider caught in its own web. I got away from her. And she can’t ever hurt Mor now.
    I went into the bakery and sat down on one of the tables by the window and ate a Cornish pasty and a honey bun and played with a pot of tea. I don’t like tea, and coffee is worse, it smells fine but it tastes disgusting. In fact I only drink water, though if I absolutely have to have something I can drink lemonade. I prefer water. But a pot of tea is fiddly and nobody can tell if you’ve finished it, especially if you haven’t drunk any, and it gives you an excuse to sit and read and rest for a while.
    So I did that, and then I bought four honey buns to go, with my own money this time. One for