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Carissa Green Reads

I read widely from many genres. Perhaps this blog will feature fewer ratings and reviews, but I certainly intend to write about my reading life - it's the subject I most find myself wanting to talk about.

Currently reading

D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of WWII
Stephen E. Ambrose
Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
M.T. Anderson
The Path Between the Seas
David McCullough
Chekhov Four Plays
Anton Chekhov, David Magarshack
The Gay Science: with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
Walter Kaufmann, Friedrich Nietzsche
A Kierkegaard Anthology
Robert W. Bretall

Library Love: Hat Trick

To Distraction - Stephanie Laurens

As of this afternoon, I have borrowing privileges at three different libraries. I'm practically giddy with excitement. 

 

The city in which I live is home to the state's largest university, and the main campus library is less than a block from my office. That makes me so happy. With well over a million circulating volumes, it's book central and my reading "home base."

 

Then there's the city library, for which I've been a card-carrying member since I was a child. It is more than 40 years old, getting shabby, and is no longer modern or properly ADA compliant. The library board is working on a plan for something new, but in the meantime, it still serves my book and DVD needs quite well. 

 

The city in which I live is situated on a river that is the eastern border of our state. On the other bank of the river is a smaller city. The closest library to my home is that city's library. They boast "more than 50,000 books." Only 15 years old, it's nice, tranquil, with big community rooms, a little bookstore run by their Friends of the Library group as a fundraising venture, and generous-sized study tables in front of generous-sized windows that overlook a park. I spent many hours at those tables a few years ago working on my master's thesis. But I never had user privileges for this library until today.

 

As it is situated in another city, another county, another state, I do not automatically get borrowing privileges (as I shouldn't, because I'm not a local taxpayer there). But I looked into it, and it costs only $10 per year for a non-resident card. That's less than $1 a month; I don't even have to do the math. Totally a bargain and a great way to show support to a good community, even if I don't check out many books (and it's likely I won't, as libraries 1 and 2 serve my needs well enough).

 

What precipitated this? Well, I'm reading Stephanie Laurens' Bastion Club romance novel series. Books 1 and 4 were loaned to me by a friend. Books 2 and 3 came from my city library. My city library, however, didn't have book 5, "To Distraction." And what's one of the rules of reading in Carissaland? "Always read series in order." I'm sure my city library would have retrieved it for me through interlibrary loan, had I requested (they ask a $2 donation for the service, which I'm happy to pay). I could have checked our local used bookstore, on the off chance they had it. I could have ordered it from an online seller or downloaded it as an e-title (yuck). But it was available at library number 3, right off the shelf, mass-market paperback. No excuse needed, it was time to sign up, get my title, and be more than a symbolic supporter. 

 

I'm not one to believe in omens or signs, but the female hero in "To Distraction" is a reader, too. That's a nice coincidence.

 

-cg