I love technology

I really love to read. I mean, I really love to read. I devour books. I especially love it when I find a good series made up of 10 books where each book is 800 pages long. I like slowly unfolding political dramas, I really love books with betrayal and murder. I really like thrillers, spy novels, alternate history books, fantasy, science fiction, history. It's all good.

Let me tell you about the new way the I have to feed my addiction.

Books are expensive. Even paperback books are like $8.00. Even though I do like to re-read books, I still can't afford to buy all the books I want to read. And then there's the book storage problem. Books are big and heavy and take up a lot of space. So I get a lot of books at the library. I live in a small county and our libraries are very poor. The library by my house might have book 1, 3, 4 and 7 of an 8 book series. I don't have time to drive to 3 different libraries to get the books I need to complete a series. Plus, I'm almost always at the library with my kids, and they don't have enough patience for a lot of browsing. It used to be really frustrating.

Notice that I said "used to be." A few months ago I figured out that I can access my county's library database through their website. I can browse for books there. I can also see if the branch I use has copies on the shelf, or at least when the book I want is due.

The best thing of all? I can request books. I put in my card number and my secret pin number and I can request any book to be picked up at any branch. It doesn't matter if a certain branch doesn't have all the books for a series, I just request the missing books. So, whenever I hear of a book that I might want to read, I log in and request it at the library that I drive past on my way home from work. Then, in a few days I get an email saying that it's ready! I just stop off on the way home and walk up to the counter. They have my books all wrapped up for me on the shelf there and I'm out the door. Slick as black ice.