This! I'm from Oregon but live in Thailand, where there are ZERO libraries. My absolute favorite thing about going home is just maxxing out my library card and seeing how much I can get through before heading home (I can do ebooks and audiobooks while abroad with Libby but I'm one of those obnoxious people that always prefers physical)
This is an exaggeration. I also live in Thailand, and I just got a library card at the very stately Neilson Hayes library last week. A bit pricey (3000 THB/year) but amazing ambience since the library was built in 1860.
Yea $100 bucks a year for a small historical library with a very limited selection of English books (that's 45 minutes away from me) doesn't really compare to a free library that's in every city in the US (or many libraries in bigger cities)
it's odd to me that you'd expect a large stock of English books in any regular Thai library
even in Japan, with perhaps the very strongest reading culture in the world, you're going to find a relatively limited selection of books in library outside of their own language
you'll likely have less success finding a varied stock of Thai books in Oregon, to the surprise of nobody
There are hundreds of great ones, but Tale of Genji (classic), The Master of Go (amazing if you like the board game Go), Coin Locker Babies (Ryu Murkami > Haruki Murkami), Out by Natsuo Kirino.
I mean there are actually quite a few public libraries here, but of course the selection is primarily in Thai. I don't know why anyone would expect otherwise.
To the above posters credit, it sounds like their claim of exaggeration was spot on (he didn't say it was a lie). You didn't say their libraries don't compare to US ones, you said they don't exist.
I haven't been to Thailand, but I assume there are also libraries at the universities. The parent appears to be referring to a tradition of public libraries, so these are not really counterexamples.
I've used private English libraries in various countries of the Middle East and East Asia. For the expat community, they were really a treasure before the internet.
University libraries are sort of a mixed bag. They're not really advertised but they're fairly open to public browsing in some cases, however pretty locked-down in others.
