'Part of daily life in the mid-twentieth century, circulating libraries have left charmed traces.
'If you walked down a suburban Sydney street in the 1930s or 1940's it's likely you would have passed a small privately run library. Hundreds of 'circulating' or subscription libraries operated from the early twentieth century to the 1960s.'
'The Tasmanian literary magazine Island (No.157, May 2019, p.8) has an insightful and amusing article by Pete Hay titled 'Are Books the New Zucchini?' By way of introduction to discussing the dilemma of anyone wishing to downsize their book collection, he talks about the gardener who, when finding himself with an overabundance of zucchinis, decides to offer them to his neighbours and friends - and instead of being met with gratitude, he is confronted with reluctance to accept anything more than a very small portion of his largesse. Refusing to waste good food the donor resorts to visiting them at 2 am and quietly leaving his surplus zucchinis on their doorsteps. Hay goes on to show that getting rid of surplus books is an equally hazardous and thankless task.'
