I was going to title this post bibliothèque and then began feeling like it sounded really familiar. Yep – I already have a post with that title. I’m starting to plagiarize myself.
I went to the Granite Bay library this afternoon and signed up for a library card. We’ve only lived here for six years (hey! Tomorrow will be our six year anniversary of moving here) and I’ve driven past it about a million times. What prompted today’s visit was a hard look at my budget and trying to figure out where in the heck all my money goes. Apparently it mostly goes to heating and cooling this house but Barnes & Noble get their fair share too.
So as long as I don’t rack up overdue fines my plan for curtailing my reading spendthrift ways should work. During my childhood we (my family) were pretty much banned from using the public libraries because we loved reading voraciously but returning books ~ not so much. It would be mortifying to try to check out a book and have the librarian peer over her glasses and announce "Oh. One of the Shyne girls…" with a withering look.
I actually tried to run my own library when I was about eight. My best friend and I gathered up all our old Little Golden books and made pockets with checkout cards and invited all the neighborhood children to check them out. I think we lasted about two days before our inventory ran out and we abandoned the idea.
Remember how when you used to check out a book the librarian would scan the card somehow and when she slipped it into the pocket it would be warm?
I have always felt very at home in a library. When I was 15 we moved across the country in the middle of the school year. I knew exactly no one at the new school and after one or two desperately lonely lunch hours in the cafeteria I took to going to the library and eating my lunch there, getting lost in the stacks of books. I don’t think I was supposed to be eating in there but the librarian took pity on me. For four months she was the only friend I had at that new school.
When I was 19 years old I took a summer job at the Falconer library at Stanford University. I can add understanding the Dewey Decimal system to my list of talents. I would occasionally get lent out to one of the other libraries on campus when they were short on help. Once I was dispatched to the engineering library and was given the task of calling a list of professors who were the worst offenders of checking out books and not returning them. The first person on the list? My very own father – professor of Material Sciences.
Stanford has this creepy system of tunnels under the campus where you can go down into the stacks (creepy places themselves down in the basement) and enter a tunnel where you seem to walk for miles and then come up all the way across campus in another library. I hated having to do that. I was sure I would get lost and wander for the rest of my life trying to find the light of day.
So I have two new books and a book on CD that I checked out today. I need everyone that reads this to email me in 2 1/2 weeks and remind me to return them.
Photos courtesy of istockphoto
You’re hilarious! The good news is – you can renew your books online. As soon as I see a book I want to read or even look at, I go to our library’s website and reserve it. Sometimes I check it out to make sure it’s a book I want to buy.
Thanks for the laughs! Seriously, my kids and I are the same way. We just can’t seem to remember to return the library books. Thanks for writing this, you just reminded me that I owe 40.00 in fines. I prefer to buy the books!
I agree, the library is the way to go. Since my income has been reduced lately, I have discovered the joy of the library too! Let’s see how long I can keep in their good graces…
Too funny! Years ago, my kids and I were self-banned from the libarary as well as the video store for the same reason!! LOL!! But very coincidentally, my husband and I just had the conversation about Barnes & Noble! It’s a great place, but I always feel a little like ‘highway robbery’ has just taken place when I leave there!! I pretty much refuse to go. We’ve taken the library route as well. Free books, go figure! And in all reality, how many books to you read more than once anyway?! 🙂
That library looks like a museum! Good laugh over plagiarizing yourself. I thought I was doing the same thing myself yesterday. I was sure I had used the same title or something similar, but I can’t find it in my archives. Don’t you miss having the hand stamped due date cards in the library books? When I saw your picture, I remembered how I liked to study them to see if the book had been checked out very many times and when was the last time.
I wonder how many times in the history of the world a library has saved the life of a lonely child? I love the library – the smell of it. Remember the little machine they put that card in and the thunk-thunk sound it made? I used the library a lot when my organized father took me and he always remembered to get us back to return the books – he didn’t want someone else to miss out because WE forgot to take the books back. But alas, I am not that organized. So I am one of the people who keep BN alive and kicking I’m afraid.
But I also love the used book store. That redeems me somewhat, doesn’t it?
Karen
I LOVE Libraries, they were my favorite places to hang out when I was a child. Stamford Lib sounds interesting, I would love to visit. Whenever I visit my son’s campus we go to the library and walk around, its a great place. Good luck on remembering, I don’t go as often as I used to, I am also buying too many books. I can actually smell the library as I sit here at work.
What a wonderful walk through your childhood. Thank you so much for sharing.