Travels in my local library

The story of one devoted reader and the local libraries he has frequented from childhood on. Mouloud Akkouche is a self-taught regular reader at the public library in Montreuil-sous-Bois, “with part-shares in the town’s only library… which became my first homeland”. He describes the constant presence of books throughout his childhood, the difficulty of keeping up the reading habit as a teenager, then his adulthood as “a jobbing author”, in which libraries still play a vital role. “Today, I’m nothing like my own children. Because of –or thanks to– the books that I borrowed every week, I moved out of my social class… but never found one to move into.”
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