The Public Library

I've been a big fan of the library ever since I was a child. We would do every Saturday as a child. It was always a magic place, with its own smell and feel, a place where I could always find a book that would transport me. I took the Boy, for the first time, when he was less than a month old, knowing full well that he couldn't really see the library for what it was, but knowing also that he could learn its smell and sound, and would return to it as he got older. He repaid me by getting a PhD in Modern American Literature.
I've read two books lately that are worth passing on, one quite new, and the other written in 1967, seemingly not translated from the German until 2000. Both came from the New York Public Library, a source of great joy and treasures, and as I recently found, a bastion of civil liberties as well. I know this because when I tried to go back in my reading history to find a book whose title I had misplaced, I was told that the NYPL doesn't track reader histories, inasmuch as revealing what a person has been reading might be revealing information that they don't want shared...and I believe them.
The new book is the one I can't remember the title of. It's non-fiction, and I thought the title was The Edge of Desire, only to check amazon.com to find out I was mistaken. The book is in four different sections, each one devoted to the story of a sexual deviant of some sort---one an extreme foot fetishist, one a man sexually aroused by women with truncated legs or missing legs, the third a child lover and worshipper, the last a female sadist. I found the last particularly breathtaking, and discussed it with my friend viviane, who has met the woman.
The older book was titled Dark Spring, the autobiographical novel of an artists companion, model, mistress who was deep into the bdsm world, and who ultimately committed suicide, much as she had written about her character in the novel.
Both are fascinating reads, and I would recommend them highly.