When I was preparing for my medical entrance exam in Dhaka, I spent almost every afternoon for four months in the reading room of a small private library near my coaching centre. It was on the second floor of an old building, above a pharmacy, and you'd never notice it from the street.
The exam decided whether I could study medicine at a government college, and in Bangladesh that is a huge deal because private colleges are so expensive. So the pressure was enormous, and home was too noisy, with my two younger brothers and the television on most of the day.
At the library I paid a small monthly fee for a numbered seat. I'd arrive at about two, after my coaching classes, and stay until the library closed at nine. Mostly I worked through past papers, timed myself, and then marked my answers and rewrote the ones I'd got wrong in a separate notebook.
What made it suit me so well was the atmosphere. Everyone in that room was preparing for something serious, whether it was a civil service exam or a university test, so nobody chatted or played music. There was a strict rule against phones, and the old librarian would actually come round and glare at you if you whispered. That sounds harsh, but it was exactly what I needed. Seeing thirty other people working so hard also kept me motivated on days when I felt like giving up. I passed, by the way, and I still sometimes walk past that pharmacy and look up at the window with a lot of gratitude.