World Book Day is coming up on April 23.
So, this week we hear from Lucy Barber, a student at the University of Missouri who’s studying education.
She spoke with the Missouri on Mic team at the Daniel Boone Regional Library in February about her love of the library and her renewed passion for reading.
Missouri on Mic is an oral history and journalism project documenting stories from around the state in its 200th year.
Lucy Barber: I grew up in Peoria, Illinois. That's like Central Illinois. It's about five hours from Columbia, but now I live here in Colombia – I go to school here. I'm studying elementary education.
Maybe let's talk about the library, since we are here! Obviously, reading is why I'm here today. So, I actually ended up just reading a book at random, and my girlfriend and I decided to do a book challenge together – and we did it.
After that, I was like, “Oh my gosh,” like, “I bet there's another book I'd like,” and so, I just started and then I realized I really liked reading.
So, I was like, “let's make a goal to really like keep this passion of mine going,” and that's turned into my favorite hobby. I actually picked it up last year. I set a reading goal for myself – to read 52 books, which came out to like one book a week.
So, I'm just trying to do the same thing again this year.
It's gotten me to find a lot of authors I hadn't heard [of] before, and that's allowed me to connect to some of my friends – we share books and find out what each other is reading. So that's been really fun.
I think last year, my favorite book I read was called “Blush,” and it was just about a vineyard. It was very like a beach read. It was very easy to read, but it was just – it was a fun, light-hearted story.
"I just love the atmosphere of being here. I feel like it's kind of a hidden gem for college students, you know, most people just stay on campus, but I've loved just coming here and just using the resources."Lucy Barber
And I just felt like, “Oh, now I want to own and run a vineyard myself,” but, you know, I don't know if that's in the future, but it was fun to think about.
Today, I'm definitely looking for some fiction. I just picked up some books that I checked out for school for a couple projects, but now I'm just looking for like maybe one casual read to be my “Book of the Week.”
Last year, I read a book called “On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous,” and it was kind of a memoir book that was written about a son and mother who are immigrants to America, and they actually had kind of a toxic relationship.
It was a little bit abusive, and they had a lot of struggles – like navigating American life as a mother and also as like a first generation [immigrant] growing up in America.
And it was just really touching to read like how they navigated their interactions and how they, you know, were able to find a build their life in America together with the struggles that maybe you don't always see.
So, it was it was a really touching book for me.
I just love the atmosphere of being here. I feel like it's kind of a hidden gem for college students, you know, most people just stay on campus, but I've loved just coming here and just using the resources.
I think it's really helpful like to check out books for school – especially since they don't like fine you for anything, and they have like an extended checkout date, which is really nice.
So, I just love that they're here for us, and they're not trying to make this like a difficult task to overtake by checking out books at the library.
That's about it! And I'm excited to find my new book
If you're interested in checking out the books, movies and games that Daniel Boone Regional Library has available, visit dbrl.org.
