Libraries
I’m rediscovering the joy of visiting the library. I’m not talking about academic libraries (I visit them a lot) but public libraries, and borrowing fiction books. I used to be a frequent visitor when I first moved to Oxford, but at some point I lost my library card, and couldn’t be bothered to get a new one. Mr. Bsag had one, and he used to sometimes get me books, but somehow that wasn’t quite the same. Now I’ve joined the Birmingham library system, and I wander around like a kid in a sweetshop and emerge with an armful of books.
I do a lot of my reading during my commute, so about half of the books I get have to paperback and fairly small so that I don’t injure my back hefting them around every day (lugging a PowerBook is bad enough). These commuting books also need to be reasonably ‘light’ in content as wellâdense plots are hard to follow when you can only read small chunks at a time and you get distracted. Also, if it’s too gripping, you tend to miss your stop.
