bookish

i'm happy to announce that i'm back on good terms with my local liberry! i received a bill from them about four months ago announcing that i owed them thirty-five dollars to replace a book that i had never returned. i was kind of upset about it, since i'd actually been pretty organized with that bunch of books, and i was fairly certain that i had actually returned it on time. i searched my house, contemplated paying the thirty-five bucks and considering it a donation to a lovely institution (theoretically, anyway), and put off doing anything about it for a long time. yesterday i took bean to the library to get a book about afghanistan (also some about germany, notably an adorable picture book-style little kids' dictionary). i had my overdue notice with me, so i took it to the stacks, where i found two copies of the book i supposedly lost. i did some nancy drew-type detective work, picked one of the books, and confronted the librarian with my evidence. at first, she said, looking at the computer, "no, it says here the book was never returned," but then she examined the book i'd found on the shelf and admitted that it was the one i had checked out. so i'm clean. and i was right all along, too, which i love.

the library is not an excellent one. i hate to criticize it, because it might be fabulous given a much better financial situation (i.e. if we were not in a recession, etc), and it is a big building full of books, magazines, videos, dvds, computers and homeless people with nowhere else to hang out, and what's not to love about that? but i have seen gorgeous modern public libraries (especially this one), and this is not one of them. things are kind of a mess in there, and they never have newish books you're looking for. and with a few exceptions, the librarians are not the young hip kind.

but i'm still pleased that my record is clean now.