On the lending library

One of the hardest things about living in New York City as a young woman with a B.A. and a job that pays at about an even level with her expenses, is that after health insurance, taxes, rent, utilities, groceries and transportation, the next line item on the budget doesn't usually read: BOOKS. Books. Wonderful books. Hardcover textbooks with receipt-thin pages covered in bar graphs and bold print, and sandy paperbacks that smell subtly of wax, and ink, and glue. Nope, books just don't quite make it into the budget. No longer are we required either to partake in that twice yearly college activity of buying loads of course books. There's just no excuse, really. Much more than books, we need to buy underwear and dishwashing liquid and toilet paper, things they used to replace for you in dorms and at home. So how do I get books back into my life?

Well, I have discovered -- or rediscovered, I should say -- the Library. The New York Public Library. The friend's parent's library. The roommate's library. What is a book for if not to read, love and recommend?

In elementary school, there was a library a couple of blocks away on East Broadway, and it was at this chapter branch that I applied for my first library card, in its token maroon color, graced on one side with a white outline image of the NYPL's roaring lion, and on the other, my very silly cursive signature. I never used the card, really. We had an ample supply of books in all of our classrooms up through 6th grade (I fondly remember the John Bellairs collection, and the David Macauley books about city planning in medieval times), and there wasn't ever any reason to borrow anything from the library except for videocassettes of scary movies for my Dad.

When I got back to New York last summer, my New York Public Library card was a distant memory (and the design no longer in use), but my name and address, inactive for almost nine years, was still in the computers. All I had to do to get a new card was give them a dollar (ONE dollar!) and proof that I still lived there (I don't, but my driver's license says so), and I was back in business. All these books for me to borrow and read and not a cent to pay! I borrowed my first book -- White Teeth -- and needless to say the quality of the book only increased my fond feelings for the library.

Recently my roommate told me that she was feeling much smarter these days because she was reading, and I couldn't have agreed more. I've been borrowing books from her, too, and another family friend, who has been generous with her enormous library accumulated over years of working at the New York Times Book Review. And now that I live in Brooklyn and take a single subway line to work, I feel so much more in control of my commute because I can immerse myself in a book without looking up for forty minutes. Forty minutes every day with my borrowed books.

I'm writing this post because I know for sure that, for some strange reason, lots of people I know are not in possession of a library card. And now that I am a card-carrying member of such an institution, this completely confuses me. I beg of you. Get a library card. While away the hours in the stacks. See who's reading classic fiction. Giggle at the cranky checkout desk people. Borrow some great books. You'll thank me later.