Public Libraries Keep Me Happy

I really enjoy reading books. I'm usually reading two or three books at a time. You'd think my house would be overflowing in books. But only one wall of one room has filled bookshelves. I used to have many more than that, and I also once vowed I would always buy a copy of my friends' books. There is a long shelf on my wall filled with autographed books of friends. But I couldn't keep that up; so many of my friends are writers—rather successful writers, too—that I would have gone broke in two years. But I'm able to appease my reading habit (greatly increased in the winter months) by going to the Lewis and Clark Public Library. The "New Books" shelves are where I start browsing. Every week I'm there, returning five or six books and borrowing six or seven more. I recently came across mention of a title online that I thought I'd enjoy. My library didn't have it. BUT, they ordered it for me on Interlibrary Loan. No charge. I used that service quite a bit when I was doing research for a science book I wrote. Then I borrowed books from Portland and Chicago, from military libraries and universities. Our library foundation is oldest in the state, from the 19th Century—one of the first West of the Mississippi River; the building that holds it now is much newer and was recently updated. The library fills other of my needs, too, with lectures, workshops, visiting authors and more. Ninety-nine percent of the books reviewed on this blog I found at my public library.