"When I got my library card, that's when my life began." ~Rita Mae Brown

I'm a little disappointed with my numbers on Goodreads this year:

I will finish a couple more by year's end but I'm still sad to not continue the upward trend.  While I can come up with a couple of legitimate reasons for the decrease (and a bunch of ridiculous ones), I'd instead like to focus on the fact that hardly any of these books would have been read by me without the help of my local library.

While everyone in my county (hopefully) pays taxes which sustain our beloved libraries, I'd be curious to know how many actually take advantage of them.  People usually seem to think it's surprising and/or quaint that I still get books from the library.

Here's the thing: the library is not a dead institution.  Every time I go, there are lots of other people there checking out books and DVDs, using the public computers, and attending events.  And you don't even have to physically go there to use their resources!  You can check out eBooks on their website, renew a book, or request materials to pick up at your nearest branch.  I love it so much; I can't even fully put it into words. 

So anyway, this is my PSA.  If you have a local library that you're paying for, please use it and love it.  The alternatives are to either spend a lot of money on books that you'll probably only read once anyway or to not read.  I don't want either one of those lives.

"Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world." -Voltaire