sometimes reading fanfic is like enjoying a gourmet tasting menu from a team of expert chefs who all have different styles and approaches to a favorite cuisine
and sometimes reading fanfic is like standing in front of the open fridge at three in the morning shoving handfuls of shredded cheese into your mouth
Hey hey, as a librarian, can I just say don’t pace yourself at the library. I get a lot of customers saying “oh I shouldn’t get too many books out at once” but like you should!!!! Max out your card, take everything we have on a subject you’re interested in, make a book fort in your home. We love that shit! It doesn’t matter if you read them or not; just take them for an adventure and bring them back whenever they’re due!
For public libraries, one of the ways we secure funding year to year is lending. Governments don’t want to fund more books if they’re not being used and the way we measure use is by issues. Regardless of whether you read it or not, whether you have it for a day or a month, if you issue it to your library card, we get the stats! It makes the library look good!
Help your local library; get books out even if you know you can’t read them all!
Literally, this helps us! Even if you loan it and return it the same day or day after. (Especially titles important for us to keep ie queer titles, books from minority authors and more).
My library doesn’t have a max loans per card for physical books either. So what the heck grab a couple, walk around for a bit and try them out and return the ones that didn’t hook you.
From A to Bellarke └ Elements:
The ancients believed the World to be composed of 4 basic elements – Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. These were considered the critical energy forces that sustained life. Maintaining a balance between these elements was advocated to ensure physical as well as psychological well-being.
And it turns out that she doesn’t want to be a teacher, or a scholar, or a librarian, or an editor, or to make television documentaries, or review books, or write articles. The list of things that she doesn’t want to do is as long as your arm. Apparently she wants to do what she does—read, and go for walks, eat and drink with pleasure, tolerate some company. And unless people can value this about her—her withdrawals, her severe indolence (she has an air of indolence even when she’s cooking an excellent dinner for thirty people)—they don’t remain among the company she tolerates.
– Alice Munro, from “Oranges and Apples,” Friend of My Youth: Stories (Vintage, 1991)
