Jenny Lindh: Your stomach may be the so-called boktarm

I am critical of the fees you are at the library take it out, despite the fact that you are a tax-funded activities! Late fees here, reservation fees there, costs for printing and so on, and the worst part is the toll the toilets, you might think that a local public is required to provide free toilets for the taxpayer? I spend many afternoons at the library and it goes without saying that the cost will tempt you when you need to do needs more times (five visits will be £ 25 per day, is it reasonable?).

Ironically enough, they are more accommodating in my local bookstore. No problem to borrow personaltoan there, and the smile is just as free. It is more than what you can say about librarians. Look forward to your opinion on the issue of the fee-based services.

the Educated but penniless

Dear educated but penniless. You raise a pertinent question with widespread political implications and I can not but agree: the fees should be minimized, the citizens must get value for the tax money and the library should, of course, offer the best possible service and show the utmost respect for borrowers ' needs: it is after all about values. After all, this is about justice. After all, this is to you, an honest, hard-working intellectual who ränner on the toilet at a rate that may China's carbon dioxide emissions to operate hårdreglerade, to feel just as welcome as other, more ”normalnödiga” visitors.

This is important.

Now on to something even more important.

every day you met an intestinal flora which may, William Burroughs guts to appear as the garden of Eden, so please tell us more about your diet – it prunes all the way? Laxatives for lunch? I'm curious – have you in the capacity of bildningsorakel possibly embraced some destructive författardiet, such as Walt Whitman,-diet based on raw beef and halvfärska oysters? Tolstoy-the diet with the unfortunate focus on yeast hästmjölk? What is your opinion about Honoré de Balzac-the method with fifty copper raven cook coffee on the day, straight down into the magsåret?

Possibly if you eat healthy, or in any case, so healthy that you can expect of a hard-working, spränglärd borrowers who pulls down his pants as panic-stricken as the Swedish Academy selects new members. In that case I apologise. Another possible explanation is that you are suffering from the so-called Mariko Aoki phenomenon, also called the ”boktarm”: a traumatizing disorder, mainly described in Japan, where it is defined as an acute compulsion to empty the bowel during a bokhandelsbesök (alternatively, in the library, bookstores or in other bokrika, public environments).

the State is reminiscent of a food poisoning with chills, shivers, severe abdominal pain and a sinister ”kobent gait” – according to Wikipedia – and in some studies as many as 26 percent of the participants affected. The reasons are unclear but there are many interesting hypotheses – including toalettbehovet stimulated by ”browsing” (that is to say, when the eye moves along the exciting bokryggar) or that nervousness plays a central role (for example, the author Jiro Asada argued that the symptoms increase when he is approaching the more advanced literature).

however, is that the reaction is induced by papperskemikalier, an idea which, incidentally, drove the philosopher Kenji Tsuchiya to a famous, daring experiment in which he for ten minutes djupandades with the nose nedborrad in the books. Unfortunately were no matförgiftningssymptom. Tsuchiya went to sleep. And treatment is still lacking.

Oddly enough, it seems, as well as that it is strange that nobody thought about the economic consequences: how can you justify toalettavgifter at the library when toalettbehovet in fact, caused by the library? In and with your letter, perhaps we can bring about a change, dear educated but penniless. For you is well not just bad? In that case, I recommend you, you are decent, ruined taxpayers who apparently has a bladder which may the melting of the polar caps that seem harmless, to simply read more and drink less.

Jenny Lindh, a librarian

● ● ●

When was really the first book for children? Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

I love to read books together with my grandchildren, an interested girl who is curious about everything that happened ”in the past”. Yesterday evening, she wondered if there were any children's book from the middle ages we could read. Is there? When was really the first book for children?

Ella, sagotant

Dear Ella. As you probably expect, it is a tricky question to answer, not least because ”childhood” in the sense of the word today, we think us did not exist during the middle ages (just books either, for that matter). Anyway I've found a few possible titles from renässanstid, such as the moral etikettboken ”Puer ad Common” – the Child at the table – from about 1430, the moral etikettboken ”The Babees Book” of 1475, and the moral etikettboken ”Een sköön and glory, c jungfw speghel” from 1580, but I don't know, from a reading perspective, it is perhaps not directly the top? And you wonder – is this the sort of morally questionable shots of vodka as today's literary critic longs for when they call the modern children's books prim and proper?

was probably more thrilling. It feels reasonable to think of small loppbitna branches in pantaloon/cunning hidden/bow (sorry the clothes Ella, all I can about medieval fashion is taken from the fantasyböcker) that amazed, listening to a wandering bard, maybe with Beowulf or any musty vikingasaga on the repertoire. Either way, it is only in the 1700's, more specifically, 1744, as the first ”real” children's book published. ”A Little Pretty Pocket-Book” was written by the englishman John Newbery, who was also a crafty marketer. For every copy of ”A Little Pretty Pocket-Book” was attached to a gratispremie – a fun ball for boys or a (moderately fun) pincushion to the girls. Much like in today's Happy meal. Even then you understood that mutan is the best corporation.

Jenny Lindh, a librarian

● ● ●

the Librarian recommends

It feels like further evidence of the autofiktionens stranglehold: the infiltrates and with its absolute motsatsgenre. But, as usual, makes the fantasy all much more fun. Jagböckerna in the uk Bridget Collins current, wonderful boknördiga megasuccé ”The Binding” consists of one hundred percent authentic, the memories of quite literally been sucked out of the traumatized people, or alternatively, sold by poor people in desperate need of money. A young man taught up in the art of creating classy leather books of embarrassing secrets, and eventually makes a cataclysmic discovery in the bokbindarnas basement.

More questions to the librarian here

Jenny Lindh? Send an email to kultur@dn.se