What Would Jane Read? Episode 10: LFL #12365 in Spartanburg, SC
In September I traveled south for a conference in Greenville, South Carolina. Before I left, I researched Little Free Libraries along the way and in the Greenville area, as well as in nearby Spartanburg, where I planned to visit my sister for a day after the conference ended. Greenville, the artsier of the two cities, has quite a few LFLs, more than I'd have time to visit. But Spartanburg has just three, and we had time for only one of them. We chose well. Of all the LFLs we visited on our trip, this one, Little Free Library #12365, was a favorite, both for me and for Action Figure Jane Austen.
It wasn't easy to find. Jane and I drove around in the early morning, through an intermittent drizzle, along the streets of an attractive, well-maintained subdivision of large houses and wooded lots. But I didn't have an exact address, just the street name, and I was having trouble locating the right spot. I was almost ready to give up when Jane spotted the Little Free Library in a backyard, at the base of a low treehouse.
We found a lot to like about this LFL:
- It's run by a little girl named Olivia B. The sign called it Olivia's Little Free Library, with the name printed in a child's writing. How can you not like an LFL stewarded by a child?
- Jane appreciated the lovely teal color that blends so nicely with its surroundings.
- It appears to have its own mailbox.
- The book house was quite full, stuffed with a gloriously haphazard melange of books, mostly for children, that appeared to be trying to climb over each other in their eagerness to be selected by Jane and taken home.
- And best of all, this Little Free Library has a cat! The LFL cat saw me taking pictures and came over to investigate. After a few minutes, this literary tan-and-white feline must have decided that Jane and I were harmless, and started rubbing up against my legs as we explored the contents of the book house. It even posed for pictures. Unfortunately, we had no cat-related books to give it.
We did managed to slip a few more children's books into the LFL (Magic Tree House books) and then Jane had to choose a book for herself.
So, What Would Jane Read?
There were so many books to choose from! Jane finally settled on Jan Karon's novel, At Home in Mitford. For one thing, it's set in western North Carolina, and all this traveling was making Jane curious to know more of life in this region of the country. (We were actually in western South Carolina, of course, but Spartanburg isn't far from the border, and there weren't any actual South Carolina books to choose from.) The book is about a charming place in the hill country, with friendly people, a bachelor rector, a jewel theft, and a sixty-year-old secret. Now doesn't that sound like something Jane could enjoy?
Well, the rain was coming down harder, we had a long drive ahead of us to reach our next overnight stop (Williamsburg, Virginia) and we had other Little Free Libraries to discover along the route. So Jane and I bade goodbye to the cat and to Olivia's library, climbed back into the Prius, and continued our road trip.
Stay tuned for another Little Free Library visit, sometime soon, in the next edition of What Would Jane Read?
