Library Love

As in, love for the library, not love in a library, because then this would be a completely different kind of blog ("Dear Floyd, I never thought this would happen to me but [...] and then the reference librarian chased us out with an oversized atlas of northern Canada's waterways.")

No, this post is all about how much I love the library that I currently use, the ones I've used in the past, and the concept of libraries in general. Maybe I'm just on a library high because no fewer than five (5!) books that I've wanted to read for a very, very long time (like, maybe even, months!) all came in today and I just wanted to throw them on the bed and roll around with them but that would be gross a)for me and b)for everyone after me. So I didn't do that. But I did look at my bag o' books longingly all afternoon, waiting for the work day to end so that I could take them home and we could be alone...

Ahem. Moving on. Now, I'm not a super spendy (why yes, that is a real word, thankyouverymuch) person in general, but books have always been the exception that proved that I was a big liar. Graduate school was probably the worst time for this, because I spent so much time with smarty-pants academics with offices lined with smarty-pants books that I spent hundreds of dollars trying to look smarty-pants myself ("look" being the operative word, as the academics with their book-filled offices had, in fact, written or contributed to or worked with the authors of many of those books, whereas I mostly bought them, held them tight to my chest, and then put them on the shelf and admired them from afar) on a research topic which I eventually abandoned. (In a completely unrelated bit of information, if anyone's looking for some collections on the public sphere, I can totally hook you up.) It was just so convenient - go to Amazon.ca, click a few times, enter your credit card number and blammo! Brand new box of shiny books to be read once (maybe) and then collect dust on my bookshelf. I felt smarter just looking at them.

Now, film buff that I am, I've still never had this problem with movies. I love watching them, but I've never really owned many, mostly because there's maybe a few dozen movies out that I've actually watched more than once (although what I lack in quantity, I make up for in...a different kind of quantity, having seen The Lion King 30+ times back when it was the only kid's movie we owned when my oldest younger brother was...er, younger, not to mention having seen each of the Star Wars trilogy 25+ times). There's even fewer books I've read more than once, and yet I have such a hard time parting with them that I've finally realized the real solution is to just stop buying them.

And now, thanks to the power of the Intertubes, getting books from the library is almost as easy as buying, plus free, so if you include the work I have to do to earn money to buy books (which I do now, because that is how I roll) then the library is easier than a frat boy during rush week. (I actually have no idea what rush week really is, but I think it has something to do with frats, so that's my joke and I'm sticking to it.) Instead of going to Amazon, I go to the library site, look up the books I want, place a hold, and then go pick them up at the library when they're ready. IT IS SO AWESOME I WANT TO BARF, THAT'S HOW AWESOME IT IS. I pick out books, and the magical book fairies find them and email me and I come get them and sign them out and it's all FREE FLOYD AND LIBRARIES BFFFS 4EVA.

Of course I guess that makes me a business-hating, economy-killing, tree-hugging, freeloading socialist. So be it. They can have my library card when they pry it out of my cold, ink-stained fingers. Of course, then I'd just go to the customer service desk during operating hours and get a new one. And maybe browse the magazine racks at the same time, suckas.