Ode to the Library

I returned home from a hiking trip to good news on the answering machine! Four of the books I wanted to read from the library came in and are waiting for me to pick them up. In my opinion, there is no greener building than the public library. Each library serves thousands or tens of thousands of patrons, and each library patron is likely to take out a lot more than just one book. If we all had to buy each book we wanted to read....think of the resources that would have to get used! Not to mention the fact that I'd need to have bought a 10,000 square foot house so that I'd have room to keep all my books.

Frankly, a lot of the books I've read I don't really need to read over and over again. I have a few that I keep around for reference, more that I just really liked and will re-read, and a few more that I couldn't wait for a reserve to come in at the library (I was one of the people at the bookstore at midnight when Harry Potter came out). The library lets me check out a wide variety of books, and if I find some I particularly like, I can start looking for them on bookmooch or at Chapters. Right now, I have eight books out from the library:

1. Cook for a day, eat for a month: frozen assets lite & easy; by Deborah Taylor-Hough
2. The dinner fix: cooking for the rushed; by Sandi Richard
3. Edible garden weeds of Canada; by Adam F. Szczawinski
   
4. Frozen Assets: how to cook for a day and eat for a month; by Taylor-Hough, Deborah
5. Green for life: 200 simple eco-ideas for every day; by Gillian Deacon (coming to me soon through bookmooch!)
   
6. Instant immersion American sign language (a computer program)
   
7. Into the Fire; by Suzanne Brockmann
8. Walden; by Henry David Thoreau

As you can see, I'm going through a cooking phase right now. Mostly I look for cool recipe ideas, but I don't want to actually keep that many cookbooks around with all their recipes (I have no interest in remembering how to make Crab Quesadillas, Crab Rice Chowder, Crab Quiche or any of the other Crab recipes). Most of the time when I want a recipe I just go to allrecipes.com and it's there in a printable format, with a lot of reviews and suggestions for tweaking the recipe.

When I go to pick up my four new books, I may even make my trip a little greener by biking or walking down to the library. At our library you have to check out your books yourself using a self-checkout, and you also have the option of not printing a receipt with your due dates. Since I use the internet to check when my books are due (usually I remember to check before I go overdue), I'll skip printing the receipt as well.

Check out your library - it's been in the reduce (your book buying) and reuse (book-sharing) since long before reduce and reuse became fashionable.