Books, Books, Books

I love to read. But I'm also very frugal, so I don't usually buy books. Why pay $20 for a book that I'm going to be done with in 5 days, and probably never read again? I get all my books from the library, and I have a system so I get to read bestsellers almost as soon as they come out.

In the Twin Cities metro area, we have five different library systems - one for each county. Although your library card needs to originate from your home county, you can activate it at any or all of the metro library systems, so you have borrowing privileges everywhere. I work in one county, live in another, and live close to yet another, so I've activated my card at three of the library systems and I can access all of their websites. One of these libraries publishes a "new and upcoming fiction" newsletter about once a month, which is delivered to my email inbox. I scan the list for my favorite authors, and place holds on the books through my home library's website. Since these books are all months away from actual publication, I'm usually one of the first 5 people to request the book, so I get the book within a couple of weeks of its release.

The only problem with this is - whether because of publisher's release dates, or the library's process for obtaining new books - they tend to come in groups. Once a month, I usually end up with a stack all at once and then need to scramble to get them all read. This month is no exception, but I'm faced with an especially difficult choice.

You see, two of the books in this stack are bestsellers, which means a two-week loan period, with no renewals. I've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of both Scarpetta and The Hour I First Believed. And one book is 500 pages, and the other book is 750 pages. What's a girl to do? There's no way I'm going to get both of these books read in the next two weeks, especially with all the Christmas baking, decorating, shopping, and wrapping I need to be working on. Ah well, I'd better get cracking, because I'm sure going to try my best to finish them both.