Of Book Love and Libraries

I devour books. Devour them, I tell you. Which also means I end up reading them way too fast because I'm so excited to finish reading them.

Take for instance, Rick Riordan's first book in the Kane Chronicles series, The Red Pyramid. I bought it for almost $20 (man that was expensive!) and was disciplined enough to save it for a 5 hour plane ride. I finished all 516 pages in two hours.

Michael Scott's long awaited fourth book in his Nicholas Flamel series, The Necromancer, also came out. And I bought it. For $15. And I read it in one sitting. All 401 pages of it.

 Notice they're both hardbound too.

Buying books, especially brand new books, adds up. And when I end up reading them way too fast, I end up feeling gypped. Cause I spend so much!!!

But alas, I would be poor if I bought all the new books I wanted from Barnes and Noble. Lucky for me, there are other ways of getting my hands on them.

Booklover's alternative to new books #1:

The Public Library

I know it sounds very retro, I haven't stepped foot in a library since college (where I only went there to study, and not borrow books.) But as a child, I would spend my afternoons there, always borrowing the maximum number of books every day which only amounted to the pitiful number of three.

So one day in the recent past, I decided to look up the nearest library and I headed over there.

Sure, there books aren't super recent, but there's a decent enough selection to keep me occupied. And take note, I can borrow a lot of books at a time, keep them for three weeks, and best of all, it's absolutely FREE. I found the last few books in The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series that I'd been too cheap to buy for myself, as well as few other odds and ends. Sure some of the books I picked up weren't great, but hey, what did I lose? And during my library trips, I even read a few issues of my favorite magazine, Real Simple. 

Public libraries here in the US are such an untapped resource. Aside from borrowing books, you can also read magazines, borrow DVDs and even surf the internet. I've even found that you can log in to your county's website, search for titles you want, and have them placed on hold for you at your local library! And since all the county's libraries are linked, you've got access to all of them!

I wish we had public libraries like this in the Philippines. Yesterday, I brought home seven books from the library and I didn't spend a cent. I already went through two yesterday though. At least this time I didn't feel bad about reading so fast. More alternatives to buying new books in the next post.