Reading opens the world to everyone, as Mayor Adams himself knows

Of all the budget cuts Mayor Adams is proposing, the $20 million he wants to trim from the city’s libraries is the most painful to me. The NYPL has played a crucial role in my life, even though books and I got off to a rough start.

For most of my childhood I was dyslexic, before special education was widespread. It took years for my parents to find a therapist to teach me to read and write. By middle school I finally read at grade level. Nonetheless, I associated books with failure, and avoided reading.

To me, books emitted a metaphysical aura. Holding a hardback, I caressed the cover, sensing I could absorb the essence of the book’s contents through my fingertips. “The answers to life’s questions are inside books,” a friend’s nanny told me. I wanted to unlock reading’s promise. But my insecurity around books got in the way.

I remained wary of reading through college. Shortly before graduation my friend Forrest gave me David Halberstam’s “The Powers That Be,” chronicling the rise of several powerful newspapers. The book ignited the pleasure centers of my brain.

I was dazzled by Halberstam’s ability to summarize the essence of complex events in a sentence. I read Halberstam’s other titles, and works by Harrison Salisbury, Teddy White and William Shirer — journalists who simplified complicated scenarios through deft writing. I filled my bookshelves with history, biography, and memoir. When I looked at a beloved title, I tingled with the excitement I felt while reading it. Then I became mournful, knowing that I would never experience that book in the same way again.

I also began writing letters to newspapers. When one got printed I bought several copies and read my letter over and over, hardly believing an editor had seen fit to disseminate my words.

I wrote in the 42d St. Library’s majestic Reading Room. The 78-foot by 297-foot space featured wood bookcases fronting marble walls, with half-oval-shaped windows. Above was a 52-foot ceiling; decorated with paintings of clouds opening to a bright sky — mirroring how books open the mind.

Rows of cherry-wood desks, illuminated by ornate chandeliers and bronze lamps, gave the room a demure glow. Inspired by my published letter, I submitted essays to opinion page editors. I received rejection after rejection, but my writerly self-doubt disappeared into the Reading Room’s grandeur.

I borrowed books from the library’s Mid-Manhattan branch with its shelves, books and simple tables and chairs — all business. I was overwhelmed by the sense of possibility its rows and rows of books conveyed. This euphoria was followed by a wave of sadness at the realization that I would never get to all the titles I wanted to read.

In my 50s I got married and moved from Manhattan into my wife’s Park Slope Brooklyn house. Our neighborhood library branch is tiny, with a modest book selection.

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I usually go there to collect a book ordered from a better stocked branch, and to browse the shelves. When I stumble on a book I want to read it feels similar to finding a valuable item in a flea market.

My library’s tables are too crowded for writing, so I mostly write at home. Many of my essays have made it into print, but I sometimes miss the emotional lift from writing in a library.

To get my fix of writing in a book-lined environment I bring my pencils, 8″ X 14″ legal pad, and laptop to the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central branch at Grand Army Plaza, a huge structure with an ornate doorway, leading to a high-ceilinged lobby, with wood walls, and a curved balcony. Renovations have given the reading and research areas a modernistic vibe, but it was the shelves stuffed with hardbacks and softcovers that drew me in.

I peruse the stacks with a mix of nostalgia and anticipation. Seeing an intriguing title, I caressed its cover, hoping that its contents would open my mind, like the Halberstam book that had made me a reader.

I feel lucky to have grown up in a city with a library system that embodied the transcendent quality of reading and writing. Cutting the libraries’ budget — resulting in reduced hours and services, such as literary programs — would limit the access young readers, and late readers, have to the promise of books.

Mayor Adams, who has discussed his personal struggles with dyslexia, has made literacy a cornerstone of his education policy. But the city can not afford to shortchange the institution that best conveys the essence of reading; the thrill of chasing answers to life’s questions.

Krull is a lawyer and writer.