Library Luck, or Books Everywhere

Although right now the heat where I live makes my brain melt, it also does something amazing - it chases almost everyone else away. Mwahahaha! 

No, seriously. Come summertime all the snowbirds fly on back to wherever they live when it's not covered in snow. For full time residents here, this means all kinds of things, like less traffic on the roads and discounts to restaurants and . . . way less waiting for books at the library!

Yes, I am letting my geek girl flag fly because few things makes me happier than coming home with an armload of books from the library. New books that normally would've been plucked up by those pesky snowbirds are just sitting on the shelf as if waiting for me. Bestsellers and big to-do books I'd request then have to wait forever for, I now get the week they come out. (Who needs a vacation? This is my vacation. No sunscreen or bug spray required!)

I am fortunate that I can - and do! - buy lots of books. (The Barnes and Noble Cafe should name a drink after me.) But the library is a fantastic place to try out the work of new-to-you authors and explore different genres. As you can see from the tower on my nightstand:

This does not include the other stack of library books on a different bookshelf. Or the stack of books I recently bought. Or . . . Never mind.

How often do you go to your library? (I'm there once a week, pretty much.) How many books do you have right now sitting on your nightstand or on your Kindle? Does the population where you live change with the seasons or is it pretty much the same all year round?

Where's Bookman When You Need Him?

The other day, I was reading a library book and a few pages in, I saw that someone had taken a pencil and crossed out the word "was" and wrote in the word "were" in one of the sentences. 

Now, maybe this person was right, I don't know. Grammar is not my strong suit. What bothered me is that this correction made me stop and read the sentence again. It took me out of the story. Some person - not the author - decided to "fix" what was maybe a problem, and ended up causing a bigger issue for me the reader. 

I've wanted to fix things in books. For me, it's more about typos. You know, where the word is "if" and it should clearly be "of," that kind of thing. But I've never done that. Partly it's because I harbor a fear of marking up a library book (anyone else remember that "Seinfeld" episode with Bookman, the library cop?) But it's also because I don't want to do something that will take another reader out of the story. I "fix" the typo in my mind, and I figure other readers will do the same.

This is all just my opinion, of course, and maybe some of you appreciate someone fixing the typo for you, or someone correcting grammar mistakes in your library or used books. But here's what bothered me the most - a few pages later, this same person underlined basically an entire sentence about a character seeing herself reflected in another character's eyes, and then wrote "doubtful" in the margin. I mean, really. Was that necessary? Sheesh. 

Where's Bookman when you need him?

Lifelong Readers

What do my three and a half year old nephew, my two year old niece, and myself (who is waaaay older than either of them) all have in common, other than being related?  Books!  We love books!

B (my nephew,) T (my niece,) my sister and myself took a trip to their local library.  It's been a long time since I've been in the children's area of a library but I loved it - loved how everything is smaller, lower, more accessible.  The picture books on the tops of the bookcases stood open and out, their colorful covers eye candy for all the little ones passing by - including my nephew.

"I want to look at this one," he said, pulling down one of those books.  He asked me, "What does it say?"  I told him it was about the tooth fairy and, even though he's years away from meeting the tooth fairy, the book went in the pile to go home.  

My sister, who's a teacher, walked around picking out titles and authors she's familiar with while I read to the kids.  We read a book about a little girl who thinks she's a chicken and we read a book about a robot - B loves robots.

It was so much fun for so many reasons - being surrounded by books, being surrounded by colors and words, having T on my lap and B sitting next to me, watching them watch the words dance across the page, the story coming alive as if by magic as I read those words out loud.

A number of times over the next few days, B would ask me, "What was the name of that robot again, Aunt Maddie?  The one in the book we read at the library?"  And I would tell him, all the while hoping that this was just the beginning, hoping that we'd have many, many more conversations about books in the years to come.