You Envy Me… and You Don’t Even Know it.

In a perfect world, all cities and towns would have the funding for a library like mine. You will have to forgive me for waxing poetic here, but my diamond in the suburbs of greater Chicago is THE library that all libraries hope to be. It’s so BEAST (a term I have shamelessly ripped off from my horrified son) that I refer to it as UBER LIBRIS.

To borrow a phrase from my sister Kate, “My library makes me feel rich.” It should- you probably pay enough in taxes for it. How well do you know your library and its offerings? Let me put it another way; Do you have ANY IDEA of what you’re missing? In my case, I’d be missing out on free computer classes, lectures, a live music series, assistance with family genealogy projects, resume assistance and career guidance, an absolutely first rate collection of movies and documentaries, and I haven’t even gotten to the books yet- of which there are gazillions. They aren’t all dated junk, either- the New Release section looks like a Barnes and Noble. Oh, and they have this really great Library newspaper (here is an online version you really ought to check out:   http://www.bookpage.com/    that I help myself to each month so that I can read reviews of books I can add to my stack of Things I Won’t Have Time to Read (but I’ll figure it out somehow).

Let me tell you what happened the day I discovered Cody McFadyen. I will confess to being a somewhat superficial person when it comes to books; if the cover looks groovy, I’m probably going to pick it up. On this particular library visit, I was browsing through the New Releases section when I was confronted by this FIERCE looking book cover (plus it had blue in it, and I really like blue) that I simply had to have. It was Cody McFadyen’s latest, Abandoned (Bantam first edition October, 2009) http://www.codymcfadyen.com/content/abandoned.php?id=description. Upon reading the story summary inside the cover, I knew I had found something VERY SPECIAL. Actually, it was a gross and incredibly violent story with all sorts of plot gyrations and surprises that had me yelling, “OMIGODYOUGOTTAREADTHIS!!!” from the living room when I got home. I broke a land speed record going back to the library later that day for the other three books in the series, promptly broke up with my family, and holed up on the couch for the next few days while I immersed myself in all things Agent Smoky Barrett. Despite what you might be thinking, my kids and husband did not seem to mind (especially after day two, when it was pronounced that I was starting to smell a little “corn chippy”…whatever.)

 I don’t know that I would have found this book right away in a bookstore, may not have paid money and taken a chance on an author I had never heard of. Libraries are great like that- zero investment, and if you hate the book, who cares? Conversely, if you become obsessed, as I did with McFadyen’s Smoky Barrett series, you can indulge in the joy of a HARDCOVER book (I love them… I just LOVE them) for free. Your library is YOUR book collection, albeit at its offsite location. Rockefeller had offsite collections of stuff. So can you. There- now don’t you feel wildly wealthy?