Things one did not think about at the time, being young and foolish
Maybe it was just me, but in the days long gone when I was a Young Thing, there were a hell of a lot of things that I just took for granted and did not think about and were just the way things were.
(I have probably mentioned my paternal grandmother's occasional remarks upon bodily and health matters that in the light of having had some contact with academic history of medicine I wish I'd paid more attention to at the time and possibly interrogated a bit further, because I think what we had there was Folk Survival of Humoral Theory.)
But I was latterly given to think about this with a little flurry of people talking about Mary Stewart and her modern gothic romances hither and yon on DW, Goodreads etc, and vaguely recollecting that I'd read one or two or maybe three in my adolescence, and having a feeling that Nine Coaches Waiting was one I found on the fiction shelves in the school library. (Hardback. Still had the green dustwrapper but with a library protective cover over it.)
And this made me think a bit more about Books I First Encountered On The Fiction Shelves of the School Library (Mary Renault, The King Must Die - and, I think, The Bull from the Sea, not so sure about The Last of the Wine - Anya Seton, The Winthrop Woman - Aldous Huxley, Island) (also Middlemarch) and to wonder -
Who chose the books and on what criteria?
The Renaults and the Stewart were fairly new, although there were a fair amount of what were presumably legacy items about.
There were designated pupils who had some library responsibilities but I think that was mostly about keeping the shelves tidy and in order.
Somebody must have been making decisions on buying books.
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