Jose Alberto Gutierrez’s life would never be the same again after finding a copy of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy in the garbage 20 years ago. It happened while he was driving his garbage truck through wealthier neighborhoods at night and seeing deserted books. It sparked his desire to start rescuing books from the garbage. He took home between 50 and 60 books every morning after his nine-hour shift. Eventually, he turned his book collection into a community library.

Colombia’s capital city of Bogota has 13 million residents and 19 public libraries. However, these libraries tend to be far away from where rural and poorer communities live. The option of buying new books is non-existent for families struggling to make ends meet. Having access to a library of books and being taken away to another world while immersed in a book is a luxury for the kids who visit Gutierrez’s library.

Gutierrez grew up poor, and his family could not afford to educate him beyond primary school. Nevertheless, his mother was a keen reader and read stories to him every night. Her love for books left a deep impression on Gutierrez, who never let a lack of formal education stop him from reading classics by the likes of Victor Hugo, Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Today, his community library, called “The Strength of Words”, occupies most of his home and is piled from floor to ceiling with fiction and non-fiction titles. Everything from school textbooks to story books can be found in his collection of more than 20,000 books!

The Strength of Words library opens every weekend. It is not just school-going children who are enjoying the benefits of The Strength of Words library. Adults are also welcome to expand their horizons and develop new skills to build a better life for themselves.

Despite having done so much for his community, Gutierrez is not yet content to call it a day. He continues to search through bins for reading material and has even travelled to book fairs in Mexico and Chile to sell his idea of building library from unwanted books.

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As a child, I had a library phobia（恐惧症）.I associated going to the library with doing research for a school project or a book report. I defined reading as work, and books came from the library, so going to the library for fun was out of the range of my thinking. As hard as they tried, my parents could not get me interested in reading. They purchased a few of the Hardy Boys series.

The books collected dust. The closest I came to wanting to read was The Big Green Book by Robert Graves, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, a gift from my aunt. Its lead character, a boy of about 8, my age, discovered a book of magic spells. I was fascinated Spells were not in the book, but I drew an imaginary magic circle with a long stick in my bedroom, stood inside the circle, took three deep breaths and made up my own spell. I never became invisible（看不见的），which was my goal. This was my favorite book. I read it again and again. Certainly no need to go to the library.

Eventually, I started reading novels in my 20s. To avoid going to the library, which was only seven blocks from my Brooklyn home, I joined various book clubs. I didn’t mind having to buy a book a month as long as I didn’t have to go to the library.

My library phobia was cured 23 years ago when my family moved to Long Island. The East Meadow Public Library, a two—block walk from our home, became a regular destination for me and my family. My children were introduced to books through the children’s section with free programs that even my wife and I enjoyed. My children made friends , and my wife and I made friends with the parents.

My library card is faded, the edges are ragged and I renew my membership time and time again. I have given up mail—order books, and when I go to a store that sells books, I snap（拍照） pictures of the book jackets that enthral me and put the book on reserve at the library.