A recent survey in the US found that Gen Z-ers and Millennials (千禧一代) visit libraries more often than their parents or grandparents. The young love libraries because they are secure, comfortable, free and — as my 11-year-old would say — “aesthetic”. This means they look good in the background of an Instagram post or TikTok video. It’s also a great place to meet people. If you’re both young and in a library, chances are you have similar interests.

And then, too, there are the books. Gen Z-ers are turning out to be big readers, especially of paper books. Even though, or perhaps because, they have in their pockets the most limitlessly distracting devices ever invented, many are deliberately choosing to pick up a piece of 15th-century technology instead. They like the fact that books are self-contained and require concentration.

There is, sometimes, a sense of nostalgic (怀旧的) cosplay in the way young people read. In New York, for example, the latest TikTok-fuelled craze is reading with strangers in bars. You have to buy a ticket in advance, and then you all gather and sit in silence for 30 minutes, reading whatever book you’ve brought along. Like an expensive version of going to the library, except that afterwards you all have a drink and talk about books.

The very thought of it makes me suffer, but that’s because I’m a child of the 1970s and 80s. To me, reading is a private pleasure, while screens — TV or cinema — are social. I did once, in a fit of ambitious parenting, introduce a “family reading hour”, during which my husband and children were pressed to join me at the fireside for some silent reading. It could not have felt more performative if we had dressed up in top hats and crinolines (旧时的衬裙). But still, I applaud these young readers — for knowing what is good for them, for seeking out human connection, for finding the beauty and pleasure in old institutions, and for bringing new life to the library.

Londoners are great readers. They buy vast numbers of newspapers and magazines and of books — especially paperbacks(平装本), which are still comparatively cheap in spite of ever-increasing rises in the costs of printing. They still continue to buy “proper” books, too, printed on good paper and bound(装订)between hard covers.

There are many streets in London containing shops which specialize in book-selling. Perhaps the best known of these is Charring Cross Road in the very heart of London. Here bookshops of all sorts and sizes are to be found, from the celebrated one which boasts of being “the biggest bookshop in the world” to the tiny, dusty little places which seem to have been left over from Dickens’ time. Some of these shops stock(贮存), or will obtain, any kind of book, but many of them specialize in second-hand books, in art books, in foreign books, in books on philosophy, politics or any other of the myriad(无数的)subjects about which books may be written. One shop in this area specializes only in books about ballet!

Although it may be the most convenient place for Londoners to buy books, Charring Cross Road is not the cheapest. For the really cheap second-hand volumes, the collector must venture(敢于去) off the beaten track, to Farringdon Road, for example, in the East Central district of London. Here there is nothing so impressive as bookshops. Instead, the booksellers come along each morning and pour out their sacks of books onto small barrows(流动集售货车)which line the gutters(贫民窟). And the collectors, some professionals and some amateurs(业余爱好者), have been waiting for them. In places like this one can still, occasionally, pick up for a few pence an old volume that may be worth many pounds.

My mother in-law(婆婆) seemed slightly uncomfortable when she told me what she’d bought for my two young daughters, her granddaughters.

“It’s Nancy Drerw,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “I hope that’s OK.” I tried to be comforting her. “Of course, it’s OK!” I said.“I loved Nancy Drew when I was a kid!”

But to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I thought. My girls loved reading. But their books tended to be about kindness, equality, being nice to people who are different and having self-confidence. They had read nothing to prepare themselves for gangsters (匪徒), car ruins, and grown-ups who lied.

I had tried to protect my girls from the dark corners of the world. I wanted only positive role models, and only sunshine. Through this standard, many of my old favorites didn’t make the cut. The Secret Garden? Within the first few pages, there is death, and an emotionally distant mother. Babar the Elephant? Almost immediately his mother is shot bya “bad” hunter and baby Babar is left crying. Nancy Drew? The old- school Nancy has some totally violent experiences.

And yet the books were attracting. So one afternoon we sat on the couch and read. Within pages, my kids were interested. So was L. Nancy was a superhero. She saved friends from drowning, faced down thieves, and drove in car chases, She comforted the sad people and wasn’t afraid to risk going into dark places. Yes, she was all girl power. And girl power, I saw, meant more to my daughters when it was faced with something real. It was fiercer when its opponents (对手) were fierce.

A week into Nancy Drew, I realized something. Nancy had solved a trouble mystery for me. She had helped me discover that my girls will go out into the world as the powerful. confident, and morally centered young women. And she had helped me uncover the world again, with strength, not fear.