Books, Books and More Books

I love books. I'm not going to call myself an addict but... I really, really love books.

My love affair with books started when I was a kid. For the longest time, I kept one of my favourites... I am a Bunny by Ole Risom with illustrations by Richard Scarry.

It was quite tattered and apparently 3-year-old-me thought Nicholas the Bunny needed glasses because on each page, I drew a set of glasses on him. Not sure why... since no one in my family wore glasses, least of all me! But there you go... don't give a kid a book and a pen...

When I entered grade school, I was introduced to the wonderful world of Scholastic Book Services.

Favourite horse stories

Oh my goodness... the flyers and order forms would get handed out at school in the fall and spring and I would peruse all the offerings and make my selections - usually animal stories... particularly horse stories. I still have three of my favourites: Old Bones: the Wonder Horse, Blitz and Blanco: The Legend of the White Stallion.

But Scholastic Book Services cost money and so my Mom introduced me to the public library. Whoa... soooo many books! At the time, our public library had a super cool kids section. It was a big room that was almost two stories high. A set of stairs led to an upper level which was a balcony that ran around three sides of the room. There were books up top and... the area underneath the balcony was made of up of several shallow cave-like chambers. The ceiling was so low that adults had to duck down to get into each chamber. There were book shelves on three sides of each chamber and... it was the coolest thing ever for a kid... an Aladdin's cave of undiscovered treasure.

I would usually totter out of the library with a massive stack of books and gobble them up over the next week or two. Loved the library.

At the same time... I was a relatively easy kid when it came to Christmas and birthdays... just buy me books: Hardy Boys, Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, anything by Rutherford Montgomery, The Black Stallion...

Library card catalogue - how times have changed

As I moved through the education system, I dabbled in the school libraries... also good, but not as memorable... and then came university.

I loved the twisting rabbit-warrens of UBC's Main Library stacks but the university library didn't really stock a lot of fiction (unless it was 100+ years old!).

While attending UBC, I never got connected with the the Vancouver Public Library system. I think I went there once and requested a library card. Turns out that people living in UBC dorms were not considered Vancouver tax-payers sooo... no pay taxes, no get library card.

It became a bit of a moot point because I started earning some money and was able to feed my book appetite. Science fiction... westerns... mysteries... history novels... I acquired my own library at home.

The only problem was... I moved a lot... on average once every year... and after a while, packing up all those books became a chore. Not to mention I was running out of bookshelf space. And so I'd regularly declutter my books. I don't have my Cadfael books anymore. Nor my Dick Francis, Sharpe, Ramage, Pern, Star Trek, Stainless Steel Rat, Anne Perry or Louis L'Amour books. I still bought and read a lot of books... I just didn't keep them for very long. Kind of... errr... disposable convenience... ***cough*** (The irony of this is not lost on me...).

After a while, my book-buying habit became a bit expensive. Books aren't exactly cheap... a novel nowadays costs around $20. I used to travel a lot and passing through an airport was dangerous for me. I'd wander through the Virgin or Relay bookstores behind security and easily see a dozen books that looked super interesting. Even though I had at least two or three books with me, I would usually end up buying another one or two.

Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten about libraries... but not really. I completed online applications for a library card in Prince George and, later, in Calgary... but I never set foot in the actual buildings and definitely never borrowed a book. I had gotten out of the library habit and established a book-buying habit. Which was fine when I had enough disposable cash to satisfy my book cravings... but not so fine when we went on a year-long sabbatical and found ourselves on a budget.

One of MANY Bookie Monsters out there

My book-buying was cut off and I went into serious book-withdrawal. I became the Cookie Monster of books - The Bookie Monster. [Believe it or not... I thought I had come up with something new and cool with that little rhyme but... Bookie Monster is already a "thing"!]

I bought an e-book reader, figuring that e-books were easier to schlep around and less expensive but... honestly... reading an e-book is not the same as a real book. And e-books, even though they are cheaper than real books, are not exactly "cheap".

I discovered AbeBooks - an online bookstore where I could buy second-hand books from all over the world. Better, but still not great... not for someone with as voracious an appetite as myself.

During our sabbatical, we moved to the Island and... at that point... I rediscovered the public library. A whole new world opened up. I was amazed to discover that libraries have come a loonnnnggg way since the days of card catalogues and microfiche.

Everything is online... even inter-library loans... It's super-convenient and utterly magical. Our library system is even more magical because it's a regional library. We have three physical libraries in our city, but they are not the be all and end all. There are three dozen libraries in other communities that feed our regional library. That's a lot of books. And it's so easy... go online, search for the book I'm interested in and request it be delivered to my local branch. Bing. Done. The book gets delivered... sometimes within a few days... other times... a few months.

Cover - Atomic Habits
by James Clear

That's the only thing... getting books via the library requires patience. This is not going to feed the instant gratification monster within me. Because even though we have 36+ library branches... other people have discovered the library too and the hold lists can be long. Particularly if the book is new and hot.

For example, I put a hold on Atomic Habits (James Clear) a few weeks/months back. I had seen it in an airport bookstore and took a picture of the cover (my new habit) and then added it to my "To Read" list. When I got home, I requested it via the library. Except our library system "only" has 12 copies... and there are 119 holds... of which I am #37... sigh... Patience, Young Grasshopper, patience.

On the other hand, receiving an email from the library informing me that a book I've been waiting for is ready to be picked up... ooohhh... it's like Christmas!! I can't wait to scamper to the library and bring the book home and start reading.

I use the hold system with gusto... I currently have nine books on hold. The only thing is... sometimes a bunch of them come in at around the same time and I find myself dealing with an over-abundance of riches. I generally tend to have more than one book on the go at any one time but... even I can get overwhelmed by the pressure of reading four or five books in three weeks. I am learning to rein in my book ordering bug...

There is one more thing that I like about the library... I know that getting a book through the library means it's going to be a well-used book. It's going to be read by more than one set of eyes (mine). When I buy a book from the bookstore... I will often only read it once and then let it go by donating it to a thrift store. It might get read again... or maybe not. Thrift store bookshelves do NOT use the Dewey Decimal system... and trying to find a specific book is like hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack... with no guarantee that the needle you are seeking is even IN the haystack! Given how many books get donated to thrift stores... it's only understandable that at some point... books end up going to the landfill.

You see... books are incredibly hard to recycle due to the glue in the binding. Our city's recycling system accepts magazines, catalogues and phone books (ummm... glue in binding?) but not paperbacks or hardcovers. I know that some cities accept paperback books for recycling but not if they have ever gotten wet or if the paper has turned brown. This is a bit of a problem... and so I am trying to emphasize the Reduce and Reuse aspects of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".

I still buy the occasional new physical book but only when I absolutely CANNOT wait for it and expect to use it long-term. I do buy e-books a bit more frequently and I still get some second-hand books via AbeBooks. If I'm going to buy books though, most of them come via thrift stores or garage sales. They are cheap and I don't feel bad about reading them and letting them go again, back into the pool of second-hand books from whence they came. But... ultimately... the library is my biggest source of reading material.

The 2018 value of our library cards

The Board of our regional library has an annual report in which, amongst other things, they report on the "value of a library card".

In 2018, based on the number of users and the value of materials borrowed... the average value of a library card was $661.

That number intrigued me and I once counted up the number of books I borrowed in a year and my value was well over $800. That's $800 that stayed in my pocket!

In many ways... getting books from the library ticks a bunch of boxes.

• It's good for me and my finances (more books available to read; less money spent on books, less square footage devoted to book storage, less hassle moving, teaches me patience).
• It's good for the environment (more reads/book).
• It's good for my community (more library patrons=bigger budget=more books).
• It might, however, not be so good for authors (less books sold).

I haven't even touched on all the other services offered through our local library: DVDs, CDs, audio books, magazines, podcasts, online language courses, research services, internet access, study space etc, etc... Heck, our library even has a puzzle table where there is always a 1000 piece puzzle on the go... cool! And it's all... FREE!***

For me, reconnecting with the pubic library system is one small step in living sustainably. It might not be as convenient as ordering a book via Amazon Prime but... I'll trade that for sustainable living... in this instance at least!


***Well... as long as you are a resident of the city in which the library is located. Which means somewhere along the line you are paying property taxes which then go toward supporting your local library. So not really "free" but... why not max out as much value from property taxes as possible by wringing out as much use from the library as possible!