The library in my life

I've rediscovered the Gilroy Library in recent months. The local library was part of my life long before I even remember it. My parents' first apartment together when they got married was a small one next to the library, where the City Hall is now. My mom would take me on walks to the library at least once a week to check out kiddie books. When I was old enough to walk on my own, I'd collect leaves along with the books.

Storytime and summer reading clubs were a part of my life when I was a kid and 'tween (well before the that term was invented.) My sister and I would sign up for turns on the computers in the kids area to play computer games such as the Oregon Trail and Reading Rabbit, since we didn't have a computer of our own at home.

Every three weeks, we'd turn up to turn in the books we'd finished and check out more. I'd leave with an armful of books I could hardly carry, many from the adult section of the library long before I was an adult. I devoured Christopher Pike books and William Faulkner and anthologies of poetry.

When I was a teenager and spent the summers babysitting a toddler cousin, trips to the library became part of our ritual, too. In the kid's section, there was a tub of wooden puzzles for little ones and my cousin could play with them forever. He loved pop up books and the kids' books on tape where the narrator would make different voices for each character.

I stopped going to the local library when I went away to college. My time for leisure reading dried up, and when I finished school and had more time to read again, I also had more discretionary money. I started buying books. It was easy when Barnes and Noble opened up in town, and then Costco with its discounted Oprah Club books. I created an Amazon.com wishlist and it made it easy for people to get books for me for birthdays or Christmas.

It was just a few months ago that I decided to mix in a book or two with my regular reading of New Yorker magazine. But instead of buying books, I thought I would save the money (and the space since my bookshelf is already overflowing) by going to the library. I was a little embarrassed when I went back and tried to use my library card only to discover it had expired. But it's the public library so I had a new card in minutes and an armful of books.

The great thing about stopping in at the library is that since I don't have to pay for the books I can pick up things on a whim. After all, if their no good, I can just return them in a few weeks with no money wasted and just a little time. And with the online Web site, I can request books so that I have access to books from the entire Santa Clara county public library system so there is a lot to choose from. That means now when I read a book review that looks good, I can just log into my library account, request the book and then I get an e-mail when the book has arrived in Gilroy. Easy.

On my last trip I checked out a book I'd read about in a magazine that I'd requested, "The Girls from Ames" and I picked up two books from the new arrivals shelf at the library. All in all, it's been good to get back to a public place that has been such a part of my life. The only downside is that I've stayed up way too late engrossed in a good book a few times, just like I used to when I was a kid and I would read until 2 a.m. to finish off a novel.