I wanna be a Horseback Librarian!

WPA packhorse librarians, Kentucky, 1935-ish
(image: public domain)

 

This year, we've all come to appreciate what is essential to our lives - and it's not always what the government thinks. Yes, we all need food, and sometimes we need medicine. But books are also essential items in my view, and so are libraries - without my local library, I might never have become a reader or a writer, and my world would be much smaller. You can travel through the pages of a book, as well as learn things Google can't tell you.

Another essential part of my childhood was the local riding stable, where I spent my weekends helping in the yard in return for rides, and horses have been an important part of my life ever since. The two activities work well together: one outdoors and active with an element of risk, the other indoors and involving sitting for long periods, if fairly risk-free. Usually, I manage to combine these two passions in the pages of my books. I am the Great Horse, for example, is the story of Alexander the Great told by his famous war horse Bucephalas. Sometimes I add a bit of magic in the shape of a unicorn or two, as I did in Spellfall. But until I read Jojo Moyes' Giver of Stars, I didn't realise it was possible to combine my two passions in real life. 

Giver of Stars 

The novel is set in 1930s Kentucky, when the women who rode out to remote farmsteads carrying library books were known as packhorse librarians. I immediately identified with the straight-talking Margery O'Hare who rides her mule Charley, laden with books, for miles through the forest and over the old Indian escarpments on a mission to bring stories, recipes and education to the isolated families who live in the hills. She is soon joined on the project by English newly-wed Alice, Izzy whose leg brace means she cannot walk very far but can ride fine, and Sophia who has librarian qualifications but the wrong colour skin so works behind the scenes to keep the shelves in order while the others are out riding the trails.

What a brilliant job!!! Combining books, libraries, horses and the freedom of the trail, all rolled into one... shame I was born about half a century too late, and on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Wales is the closest I came to my dream this year, though our saddlebags were rather small so I carried only one book with me - a slim volume of short fantasy stories by Michael Moorcock for bedtime reading.

Riding the Welsh trails
I'm in the middle (in the blue) on a pony called Harry.

What are YOUR essential items in 2020?

And if you could go back in time, what would be your dream job?