Every public library is an exception. The world outside is costly and cordoned off, but here no one is charged, and no one is turned away. People browse for books and go online.

Step into a public library and you know what to expect. First, there’s the smell: a paper bouquet of nothing and everything, including notes of vanilla, sawdust, wet coats, rubber soles and school.

And in case you were wondering, 2024's most-borrowed poetry collection at the New York Public Library was Ocean Vuong's Time Is A Mother, about the loss of a parent and the Covid-19 pandemic.