Reading News

Finally I have been here three whole months, and my public library record is unlocked. (Actually, a merciful circ clerk released it two days early.) I rushed straight home and started entering requests for the next 20-odd titles on my wish list. I try to keep it at 24 requests, the limit being 25, so if something comes up that I want to add right away there's room for it. If I remember that I didn't get hold of The Green Glass Sea before I left New Mexico, voila, now I'm on the waiting list. Finally, it's that easy.

It is such a relief to return to my normal relationship to the flow of books. Reading greed demons, be gone!!

So I presently have checked out three mysteries, one science fiction book, and five nonfictions. And last night I gave a thorough page-through to two nonfictions that no-I-am-not-going-to-actually-read, Colin Tudge's The Tree and Eric Jay Dolin's Leviathan : the history of whaling in America. I mean, they were on my wish list for the whole three months, because I never wanted to spend any of my five checkouts on them.

Yesterday as I was happily checking out Everything I Wanted, I overheard some poor guy going through the familiar routine at the desk. "I just returned one." "Oh ok, you can have one more." Is this any way to treat your natural support base, the passionate readers? As a matter of fact, is this a respectful way to treat anybody at all? As soon as I figure out how to do it without triggering their resistance, I need to suggest ever so gently to the library that their restrictions on new card-holders are really REALLY cruel. And rude.