Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Manchester John Ryland's Library Books

 

What is a library without it's book. In the age digital text and social media, it's amazing that books somehow survive into the new era. I myself am a fan of digital books and digital libraries due to their easy access and lighter weight and unlimited supplies of books available at your finger tips. Hmmm I wonder if I can link my kindle to my library..... Maybe I should try that......

On certain timing, the librarian here would bring out an ancient rare book for display at the front counter. I was lucky enough to experience that when I was there. You can get up close to it, but you can't really touch the book. I love that they have such showcase here. On the day we visited, it was an old copy of a bible. I think I spend a good 30minutes there with another guy asking questions and looking at the lovely book.

You can ask any questions to the librarian and she would help to explain more about the book. How old it was, what book was it, why it was written this way and that, how it was bind etc etc. You could also ask her to flip to any pages or any specific thing you would like to look at. They only showcase the book for like 30mins to an hour, so yeah, try to catch a session if you can. For the above photo, she showed us a page that was stained with red ink, making this book even rarer than other copies!

She also showed us about the unique text in the book, and the art of alphabets at the start of paragraphs or chapters. 

She also showed as unique markings on the books.

Look at the writings. I can't remember whether she mentioned these were hand written or printed. They looked lovely to me! I love ancient books! 

Apart from the rare books, there were also walls of shelves with old books. 

I didn't dare open any of the glass shelves, but I took some photos of the book I saw from the outside. I though their title was really interesting, how old their look. I have a few old English book on my bookshelves too, a few pass on to me by my mother. I still keep them cause I admire how old they look. It was like holding a piece of the past with you. In order to make the photos memorable, I decide to take photos of travel books, and specifically to look for Asian books!

I found a selection  of beautiful eastern travel books, or maybe just books about the eastern countries. I couldn't find any of Malaysian or Singapore. I could have spend more time there just looking at books, but my husband was getting bored and was already waiting for me outside the library, so I spend maybe just ten minutes at the book shelves. 

I did manage a photo of this beautiful white peacock book of Burma (now Myanmar). I wonder why this was a more prominent book instead of other countries in South East Asia. I love how beautiful books used to look in ancient time. They almost looked like jewels or treasure. 

Here is a selfie of me in one of the book corner. Frankly, my bucket list of Manchester was ticked off then and there. Everything else after that place was just a bonus for me. And strangely enough, there were a lot of bonus on that day!