Almost trapped in the library

So I was at the library today with my sister, and there was some book I knew I wanted, because I could remember wanting it desperately, and in my mind there was a nice and friendly feeling about this book, but I had no idea what it was. Instead of trying to track it down, we decided to go into the children's section, which is full of friendly books, and find a replacement book for me to get instead of the one I forgot.

OH MY GOD.

The children's section of the library is crack cocaine to me. It sucked me in and it wouldn't let me leave. I kept trying to escape, but there were so many books, and I couldn't get out! I couldn't get out! There was no way to escape! All these books about exciting and interesting things, with plots that happen quickly and if you aren't enjoying it, oh well, it's a kid's book, it reads fast and it'll end soon. And I couldn't get out. Every time I started heading for the exit, I would remember some other author I wanted to check on, and then I would get distracted by other books on the way to find that author.

This is what I miss about going to the library now that I am a grown-up. There is not nearly so high a proportion of decently-written and entertaining grown-ups' books in the grown-ups' section. Why should that be? I never have this experience in the adult fiction section, where I simply cannot stop taking books off the shelves because they all just look so good. I have to hunt for books that don't look a) boring or b) trashy and stupid or c) pretentious. There is no snatching of books with reckless abandon and a vague certainty that at least half of the things you grab will be enjoyable. There is none of that! There can be none of that! Not in the adults' section!

I was telling Robyn that we're going to be old ladies in walkers still charging up and down the aisles of the children's section, knocking over toddlers and snatching Weeny Witch from their little hands. They're little, they'll cave instantly! We'll croak, "Sue Barton! Where are my Sue Barton books, eh? Hey, kid, did you ever read these Sue Barton books? Classic", and the little children will cry and run from us, and we'll be like the old crazy kids' section library ladies.

It's actually sad. I love to read more than almost anything in the world, but now that I am old it is not as exciting as it used to be. Because of the dearth of good writers for grown-ups. It is much more rare that I get a book from the shelves and I can't put it down because the plot is interesting. JESUS, what HAPPENS to grown-up writers? Why can't they write plots? What is so hard about writing plots? With action that happens? Interesting things that make you go, Huh, I wonder what's going to happen next? instead of always going, Huh, I wonder what clever metaphor or play on words is going to happen next? (And that is in a good case scenario, not even talking about the writers who are just not very good writers. I am looking at you, Salman Rushdie. You are a very brilliant writer, but plots? Maybe not totally your thing?)

Which is why I would like someone who knows what books are good to divide the library into Good Books and Crap. Is that so much to ask? Just take all the bad historical fiction and romance and pretentious crap and Tolkien knock-offs and throw them in one section, and leave the good books in another section, and then I can have this very same experience, but with grown-up books. The way God intended.