If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. – Cicero
The Abagond Library does not exist – yet. But if I ever come into a lot of money then I would love to build it. It would be my own private library and retreat.
It is in the mountains in the middle of the woods, but less than two hours from New York. It is at the end of a little walkway made of white stones twisting through the woods. You do not see the library till the last minute, there in a small clearing.
It is a round building with tall windows and a dome on top. It has two floors.
The top floor is not much: just four small rooms where people can sleep overnight or work. They each have a bed, a little window and a computer that goes to the Internet.
The ground floor is grand but comfortable. To the north is a fireplace, to the east books from China, to the south books from India and the Muslim world and to the west books from the West. Between the books are tall windows.
Books: It would have all the great books from those parts of the world, in both English and the original tongues. It would have books to learn Chinese, Arabic, Sanskrit, Latin and Greek. It would have
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Migne’s Patrologia
- The books of Augustine’s library
On the south wall stands a grandfather clock that tells not just the hour and minute but the day, month and year.
If you look up you see stars and beasts painted gold on deep blue. It turns to match the sky. In the dark it lights up.
On the floor is a large Persian rug with a map of the world done in the style of the late 1500s. You can follow the map to the books from that part of the world.
Round the rug are large, comfortable chairs. You can sit in them for hours and read or talk and lose all sense of time. You can even fall asleep and not get a neck pain.
Next to each chair is a small table with a reading light. It is a place for your books and your cup of tea and maybe some cake.
In the middle is a large, round table.
Next to the fireplace is a door. Through it is a place where you can make tea or get something to eat. It is also the way to the bathroom and the steps that lead to the upper floor.
It is not just a place of books but also a place to get away and get some work done. Or be with friends for a weekend.
I should be able to live there at least a week at a time. If I did not have a family, it would be my house, or at least my country house – I would want a place in the city too.
See also:
Abagond 
Shoot, you sound as if you’d make a good interior decorator!
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You painted a very vivid picture of a place I would frequent. Plus I LOVE cake-no icing just cool whip. I went on a home tour in Toledo. There was this Greek revival with a library I think you would’ve liked. 1.5 stories with a spiral staircase and club lounges. They had a collection of leather bound volumes by the Grimm Brothers and a handcrafted bible from the 17th century that weighed >100 lbs. It was magnificent. There was a world globe made of quartz and copper. Lots of walnut, nail-headed leather, and view of the grounds. That was almost 13 years ago though..lol.
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Abagond, I so much enjoy your blog. Mostly the posts about racism, philosophy and books. There has to be an end point where I stop thanking you.
So, while I am nursing the flu, I thought I could indulge myself by daydreaming about my ideal library, should I come into money.
Apologies that my comments would be long.
My library would be dedicated to my mother. She was a child slave and received one year of education. However, she was a voracious reader, a bibliophile and a logophile. She is the only person I know who had finished reading Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. She would read with a magnifying glass before she went blind.
It would be a non-lending library with a bookstore. Since I do not know a thing about library science, I would engage the services of my friend who is a librarian and a graduate with a degree in library science.
I would also employ an African designer who would knit together a contemporary, functional African- themed space, with well-chosen pieces of art. So, for example, in the music section, I might commission a mural of African jazz pioneers, a portrait of my cousin, who was a well-beloved jazz musician and a collage of Black American music icons. Similarly, in the literature section, walls would be adorned with mural of African writers or some space dedicated with portraits of James Baldwin (my mother loved James Baldwin) or Bessie Head. As I am a sculptor, and had made a head of Nelson Mandela, I would also add one of Steve Biko in the section dedicated to the Black icons or in the biography section. In the art and sculpture section, I could place one or two of my abstract sculptures. One small section would have an Ndebele mural. Visitors could sign their names, write quotes, dedications and suggestions on a large glass wall. I would play Jazz and Blues in the background. It should have as much natural light as possible. It would surrounded by huge trees. My library must be an annex to my home. Besides, I am sometimes overdue on my books at my own library.
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I live in Cape Town. My ideal library should be in an area as accessible as possible to the politically conscious, university students, refugees and immigrants from other African countries, namely, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, etc. children, bibliophiles, poets, jamming musicians, artists, tourists and all the rest.
At my local library, many books are white South African and European centred. One has to really search for Black African, African American, Original people and other diasporic writers. In the biggest bookstores in Cape Town, I could not find Mark Mathabane, Frantz fanon, James Baldwin, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Langston Hughes, Tsitsi Dangaremba, Wole Soyinka, Bessie Head, Senghor, etc.. But it was stocked with Pirsig, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Joyce. One can visit any second hand bookstore, and you can easily lay your hands on Greek philosophy, but not African, Classical and contemporary white literature, but not Black. No Toomer, Brooks, Mafhouz, Baracka, Morrison. Churchill, but no Sobukwe.
The Anna J****n library would be dedicated to mostly African, Africans in Diaspora, American (not white) and Aboriginal works. Of course, books on and from Asia. It would mostly reflect my interests, but not all- African and African American literature, American (First People) history and culture, Black philosophy and poetry, sport (chess, powerlifting and athletics), quantum physics and astronomy- not that I understand much of it, the blues and jazz and art.
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Categories in my ideal library:
1.Anthropology.
2.Astrophysics.
3.Astronomy.
4.Quantum physics.
5.All other relevant science.
6.World cuisine, esp. African.
7.Music: History of Black American music.
8.Biography and music of Black music icons.
9.World Music, excluding white expression.
10.Art: from Africa, Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, The Americas, Asia and The Middle East.
11.Fashion and Beauty emphasising African Beauty.
12.Indigenous religion and beliefs.
13.Black inventors and innovators.
14.Biographies, autobiographies and stories of Original, African and Africans in Diaspora, Indian, Japanese, Aboriginal, etc.
15.Gender and intersectionality (not feminism).
16.Mathematics.
17.Black philosophy.
18.Eastern Philosophy.
19.Belief systems, philosophy, cultural practices of Original people and hunter-gatherers.
20.Black atheists and atheism.
21.Poetry excluding all European, British and white American poetry. No Tennyson or Whitman.
Blues Poetry, African love poetry, African American, Japanese, etc.
22.Black Icons- Ms Tubman, Martin Luther King Jnr, Malcolm X, Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko, etc.
23.Travel writing by Black writers and others.
24.Short stories, esp. South African.
25.South African politics from a Black perspective.
26.African politics from an African perspective.
27.Colonialism told from an African perspective.
28. Maafa.
29.Sport, featuring Black excellence- Jessie Owens, Muhammed Ali, Serena and Venus Williams, Sir Basil De Oliveira, Yvonne Goolagong, Pele, Husein Bolt,
30.Literature: a. Afro-Brazilian writers- Machado de Assis, Paulo Lins, etc.
.b. Aboriginal- Doris Pilington,Margaret Tucker, etc.
c. Indian- Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Rabindranath Tagore, etc.
d. American- Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexi, etc.
e. African American – of course, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, Phyllis Wheatley, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baracka, etc.
f. African- Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta, Ben Okri, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nurrudin Farah ,etc.
g. South African – Peter Abrahams, Lionel Abrahams, Bessie Head, Mongane Wally Serote, Njabuli S Ndebele, Sol Plaatjie, etc. And many other authors from different times and places around the world.
31.White history: Spanish inquisition, European kidnapping and enslavement of Africans, colonialism and neo-colonialism, extermination and genocides against, Americans, Africans, Aboriginals and Asian.
Lynching, Jim Crow, apartheid, wars the US has brought upon the world. US imperialism. Scientific experimentation.
32.Mental illness and behaviours (alcoholism, drug addiction, promiscuity, etc.) as a result of racism, slavery and colonialism.
33.Archaeology and Ancient Egypt.
34.Dictionaries: Oxford English Dictionary. Bilingual dictionaries: Xhosa, Zulu, Portuguese, French, Swahili- for Ethiopians, Mozambicans, Senegalese.
35.Roget’s Thesauri. I collect Roget’s Thesauri.
36.Woman writers from around the world.
37.Children stories from around the world.
38.and more…
I was toying with the idea of including Shakespeare and James Joyce, but I reckon their works are easily available in bookstores and libraries. I can keep them on my bedside- table.I have been grossly miseducated and brought up reading white literature and the distorted version of white history. It should be space where people can feel validated.
A book version of your blog would be tremendous.
Thank you for the indulgence.
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Apology for such a long posting and any typographical errors.
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