Skip to main content

Libraries are weirdly controversial places for book people

Remember that time on Once Upon a Time when Regina (Evil Queen) showed up to a party and everyone else was all "The fuck?" but Emma Swan made this face?:


Yeah, so Swan Queen is canon. Done.

I think I tend to assume other people have the same relationship with the library that I do. Or at least other book-liking people. Turns out, NOT necessarily the case.


Chicago has a kickass, eight floor, whole-city-block-inhabiting downtown library called the Harold Washington Library Center. It has escalators. It has many many reading corners. It has a convenient popular library on the first floor for the lazy among us who either want the latest Jodi Picoult or free DVDs because Netflix Instant somehow just isn't enough. I love this library.

The main things that seem to keep people away from their respective library branches are: 

 1) Germs are gross. DO YOU KNOW WHAT PEOPLE DO WITH THOSE BOOKS. I don't. But I do know I once dropped a library book in a (clean) toilet. So think on that. 

 2) I didn't return a book this once and now I'm worried the librarian's gonna come after me with a pickaxe. Librarians do not do this. They are busy folk for the most part, or bored circ workers who don't care. Speaking as a former bored circ worker, the only way they'll give you shit is if you act like an entitled asshole. Otherwise they'll help you clear your record. 

 3) I just like owning the books I'm reading. Perfectly acceptable reason. I find no fault in this. Unless you have a lot of credit card debt, in which case omg just go to the library. 

 4) I work at the Parks Department. Well then.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book Blogger Hop, Pt II

All right. The question for this week is:  "Do you read only one book at a time, or do you have several going at once?" Oh-ho my. I have an issue with book commitment. I start a new book, and it's exciting and fresh, and I get really jazzed about it, and then 20% of the way through, almost without fail, I start getting bored and want to start another book. I once had seven books going at the same time, because I kept getting bored and starting new ones. It's a sickness. Right now I'm being pretty good and working on The Monk , Northanger Abbey , Kissing the Witch , and I'm about to start Waiting for the Barbarians since my friend lent it to me. But The Monk and NA are basically books I only read when I'm at work, so I don't see it so much as working on four books, as having books in different locales. Yes. This entry wasn't as good as some of the others, but I shall rally on the morrow. Yes I shall.

Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy: Readalong Signup

You know what was the third bestseller of its time after Uncle Tom's Cabin  and Ben-Hur ? THAT IS CORRECT, Looking Backward  by Edward Bellamy.  No one talks about this book anymore, but it was a sci-fi utopian novel about a young man waking up in the year 2000, which is a socialist utopia . Looking Backward  spawned over 150 "Bellamy Clubs" that got together and discussed political issues, and it looks like a damn fascinating book. It is also available FOR FREE online. Here's the Project Gutenberg link . So read this not too long book with me in February and get familiar with a bestseller of the 19th century!

Minithon: The Mini Readathon, January 11th, 2020

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us. The minithon lasts 6 hours (10 AM to 4 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon. By 'read for six hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners. The point is, justify it or don't...