Loving the Public Library

When I was little, my mom and I would spend hours each week picking out dozens of children's books each week.  In Elementary school, I was a top accelerated reader and always got my free pizza at Book It.  I used to volunteer in my school library and when go through the stacks of novels and make a long list of books I wanted to discover and read.  However, when I went to middle school, because I was reading so much earlier, I couldn't keep up with my accelerated reading goals and started to get punished for not getting enough points.  Needless to say, once your punishment is to read more, you stop seeing it as something you really want to do everyday.  I started back reading a little bit over the summers in college, but once law school started, the casebooks took the place of those novels and pleasure reading. 

Well I have rediscovered my love of reading.  I guess it started when I was told that on my long 6 hour drives back and forth between SC and FL that audiobooks make the time go faster.  Well after listening to these wonderful stories in my car, I realized that I could be reading outside of my car as well.  I went downtown to go get my library card.  There were soooo many books there, and I had forgotten how overwhelming it would be.  So I just went to a standby authors name and got two books from her.  However, the internet has made things much easier since the last time I was a public library customer.  Not only can I search for good books on the catalog and find out whether they are available, I can renew books I have out, I can place books on hold and let them email me when they are available, and I can also download audiobooks to my ipod for my car trips.  It is so great to finish a book and then get an email saying that your next book is ready to be picked up.  I didn't even have to go searching in the stacks for it.  They had it ready for me at checkout.  Also, thanks to the good reads website, I can get book ideas from my friends based on their recommendations of the books that they have read.

I have just started Phillipa Gregory's queen books, and I think I am going to go read a chapter before I go to class, and maybe another chapter while I wait at the bus stop.