By Laura Schmiedicke

Monroe Public Library

This month, we had the pleasure of talking books with Carolyn Page, an avid library user.

What are you currently reading?

I’ve got probably about 20 books on my currently reading list. I have some fiction that’s based off of Holocaust stories, I have some modern fairytales, I have some Eudora Welty. “Princesses Behaving Badly” is nonfiction, spiced-up stories of bad things happening to royals. Everyone likes to hear about that. Some nonfiction, a Thai cookbook; I have a little bit of everything. My personal philosophy is that if a book opens the door to a different world, why would you waste this superpower by sticking to one genre?

Do you read everything cover to cover, or do you sometimes explore it a little and then move on?

It really depends. I like to think that calories and time are kind of the same thing. If you don’t like what you’re eating, why would you finish it? If you don’t like what you’re reading, why would you finish it? 

If I start a book and I don’t like it, I maybe skim through to the middle to see if it gets any better. If it doesn’t, I toss it aside and pick something else up. I recently read a book about several hundred different ways you could cast on for knitting. I obviously didn’t read all of that word for word. 

For a few years, I read a lot of fiction, but I think now it’s more 50/50. The book that really rekindled my interest in nonfiction was called “Stoned.” It’s about gems and the whole mystique behind them, and economics and history. It’s very interesting.

What book inspires you?

I just finished reading the Bible all the way through, which is the biggest book I’ve ever read. I have to say, as a practicing Christian, that one book probably inspired me the most to become a better person.

The book that had the biggest impact on me growing up was “Little House on the Prairie,” that whole series. My dad would read those to us kids, every night. And he couldn’t sing the songs, but he read the lyrics out loud to us like poetry. He read us the entire series and I just loved it so much. That’s a series that made me want to read and that made me like books of that era.

Which Little House book was your favorite?

I really liked “These Happy Golden Years,” with the courtship story. I loved it when he walked her home from the meetings. I love the illustrations by Garth Williams. The illustration of her coat, Laura dressed like a bell, and her coat wouldn’t button all the way down over it.

I think tied for favorite might be “On the Banks of Plum Creek.” After I read that book, I drew up a schematic, because my mother and my grandmother design houses. I had at this point decided that I never wanted to marry, and I was going to live alone in the woods with my books and my cat. I must have been really young because I don’t know how else I would have thought this was going to work. I was going to have my parents take a rock out of their giant retaining wall and I was going to make myself a cave, a dugout, like by the banks of Plum Creek. I was going to whitewash it and I was going to live there.

What was your favorite book growing up?

I really liked the Carolyn Haywood books about Betsy and Eddie. I read all of those. Far and away my favorites when I was first learning to read were “Curious George.” I remember coming to the library and every single time I went straight to the Curious George books. H.A. Rey, it was simple for me to spell, so I knew where to locate them.

Can you tell us about a book you were disappointed in?

Lots. Every once in a while, I try and read a popular book that people say, “Well, this is so great,” and then read it and I think, “No, it really wasn’t.”

A book that I got really mad about was “Gone with the Wind.” I liked it all up to the end and she just said, “Well, tomorrow is another day,” and I’m like ... what? But I reread it and I really like it. I get it now as I’ve gotten older.

If you were stranded on a desert island with only one book, what would it be?

Probably the Bible because it’s the biggest book I know. It covers so many different genres. There’s poetry, there’s genealogy. There’s crazy bloody stories. I’ll just go with that because it’s so long. There’s so much you can read into it, obviously. There’s been centuries of people fighting over what it actually means.

Do you actually own a ton of books or do you feel like you don’t need to? 

I don’t own as many as I used to. When I moved into my own apartment, at that time I was reading “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” I read it a couple of times. I’ve read all of her companion books. I’ve read the manga. It’s amazing. I went through and thought, which ones do I actually love? I kept them on terms of readability and how often I was going to read it. I do still have, combined with my husband, a library of maybe about 100 volumes, maybe a little less. A number of them are really old antiques that we like. Some of them are ones that I’ve kept from my childhood, and about 10 or 15 of them are cookbooks.

Did you read to your two younger siblings?

I got Jocelyn started on the Betsy books, and she would read them out loud. I had the worst time trying to convince her to read silently. She’s a big reader now, too. She says, “The ladies at the high school library remember you.”

What’s your most recent favorite book?

I’ve read some really good books recently. “The Count of Monte Cristo.” I found out later that the book that I was reading might possibly have been abridged because sometimes the English translations don’t tell you when they’re abridged, but it was so good. It was revenge, playing the long game. I’m talking multiple dramatic reveals and multiple screaming fits, and brooding looks and passionate young men, and lots and lots of money. Like, oodles of money. You can see why Alexandre Dumas was so popular.

— Cover to Cover is provided by the Monroe Public Library and is published the fourth Wednesday of the month.