My library system closed down in March. So I started ordering books from Amazon instead.
The thing is, I read really fast. (Or I read normally and y’all are slow). I need 2-4 regular-sized books for shabbat alone.
The library opened again a couple weeks ago, but now I’ve got this big pile of books in my living room that I don’t know what to do with.
Maybe three or four of them are books I would probably reread (though most of those are scattered around the house instead of in the pile). I don’t suppose any of you live in New Jersey and are really into fantasy? (Just kidding). (Probably).
I started keeping track of when I finish books, and I’ve read 42 since the lockdown started. (No, Hitchhikers is not one of them.)
In high school and college and grad school - and later - I kept steno notebooks recording when and where I bought my SF books and magazines and when I finished them. I often read three a day. But this was when I had no TV and no internet to slow me down.
I’m going for 100 a year. I’m and 62 so far this year, so there is hope. You see, I plan on not dying before I finish reading all the unread books in my collection, which should take me until I’m 95 or so.
Assuming I don’t get any more.
If you have any Little Libraries where you live you can stroll around and leave a few books in one (very easily done socially distanced). Win/win. You get a walk and the joy of sharing good books and someone else will get to read them and hopefully pass the book on by bringing it back to the Little Library.
The trick is to not take any books out when you drop off yours or else you will be right back with the same sized stacks of books you started with.
BTW, my library still has ebooks available. You can now pick up books (and return them) on a no touch basis. My wife has done it for some research, but it is a pain in the neck.
I used my library’s ebook options exclusively for the first 4 months of the sequestering and it was a godsend-sure vastly better than no books at all. I do only fiction and haven’t run out of books yet. I can even go onto my library’s on line catalog, search for a book or author and put a hold in for the ebook version and it is usually available in a few days to a week.
I don’t find it a pain in the neck compared to driving to the library and browsing the selection available on the shelves, especially in these times. The pain-in-the-neck experience for me was learning to work the sites to set up filters to winnow for my preferences. Once I learned that, it could be easily done in my pjs sitting on my couch drinking fresh brewed coffee. I use the Libby app and the Overdrive app. The Hoopla app is good for children’s books if you have a chance to cuddle with a grandkid and read books together. The Libby and Overdrive apps have children’s selections also but my grandgirl (3yo) enjoys operating Hoopla by herself and I don’t have to worry about her clicking on a lurid novel’s cover.
