Inspired by the book club my friends and I have started, I am back to giving my library card a work out. Yes, a library card...like the one you had when you were a kid. Sure, I love perusing the aisles of Barnes & Nobel and The Strand, but why would I pay for a book when I can get it for free and then not have to keep it around cluttering up my apartment.
If you haven't been to a library in a while, let me tell you...things have changed since the days of the card catalog I remember from elementary school. Here in New York the public library has small branches all over the city with equally small collections, so the real gem is their Netflix-for-books style website (I am sure plenty of other cities are doing this too). Log in and search thousands of books, DVD's, e-books, etc., request the ones you want (or save them in your list), and you will be notified via email when will arrive at your local branch. I use the one by my office so I can zip in during the day to pick up and return. EASY! No Dewey Decimal system. No forgetting when books are due. No searching for that misplaced book they say is on the shelf.
At the end of the day, we all know that going through life reading little more than US Weekly magazine is a bit sad, so it's time to broaden your horizons....don't worry, Rachel Zoe and Lauren Conrad are 'authors' now.
NYPL.org
Love this!!! Must check to see if SF has this fancy of a system.
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