I discovered the library...
Thursday, February 25, 2010Have you heard about this? This thing called "The Library"?? I always thought it was a myth! Growing up, library is where you went to be quiet and read forty year old smelly things that someone was kind enough to squish a bug in the title page and later it became a place to do research for papers which just meant heavier forty year old smelly things covered in squished bugs.
I feel as though I've had a disadvantage living where I've lived. The local public library was crap. You could read The Guinness Book of World Records- 1982, The History of Mississippi (wanna bet there was a magnolia on the cover?), and every Danielle Steele novel ever written.
Recently I moved to Hattiesburg, which isn't even a bigger place and the term "city" is still used loosely but it is a community built around a university so I guess officials thought there might be enough readers to support a real library.
So yesterday I went into our drop dead gorgeous library. It's huge and clean and marble-y looking and I discovered something amazing. A library is a place that has BOOKS. Get this- in the library you can get a library card and with the library card THEY LET YOU TAKE BOOKS HOME- FOR FREE. I know, right!? It's the most marvelous concept. Not only that, but you get to keep the free books FOR WEEKS and then if you bring them back...THEY LET YOU TAKE HOME MORE BOOKS! Some of the books were even published RECENTLY. They even have them on CD!
I'm shocked and amazed. My reading habit has become almost insupportable on my current salary and here we have this amazing book world that's FREE. So yesterday the library (spoken with much reverence and the obligatory three second pause afterwards) was kind enough to loan me:
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks
Lord of the Far Island by Victoria Holt
Can you send the library a thank you card?
6 thoughts?:
I love my library..That is when I don't have a book to read.
I love my libraries! I recently moved nearer to a really nice shiny (it's sort of glass) one, so I'm always renting books.
When I was younger I used to go to this huge 2 story library that had billions of books. Then my mom had an extremely large late fee on our cards from when we hasd to take an emergancy 2 week trip out of state, so we stopped going. I stopped reading, because I had no source for books. But then I started dreaming about the library (geeky as that sounds) and finally went to the library that by where I live now. It's so small only one room. The YA section is kind of small, only one of those big stands with the individual turny things, and one larger stand that doesnt turn. But, surprisingly I can actually find good books whenever I go there, and they are always getting more. So, my love of the library has been returned
It's so good to have a decent library, or at least one with a decent loan system. I'm very glad to hear that you are discovering the pleasures of a great library!
Libraries are great =D
Your enthusiasm is so contagious. But yep, libraries libraries are the best, aren't they? :)
Post a Comment