So what's booking?

So whats cooking? Books, books and more books :-D. In the past one and a half months, I guess I have read more than 20 books!! Have I found some kind of a treasure? Yup, of sorts :).

I've always been fond of good books. Reading has been one of my all-time hobbies. I can finish some motu motu novels in hours if I put my mind on it :-D. So since I came to US and heard there are public libraries here in Lexington, wanted to become a member and see what books I can find. But all the 5 branches of the lexington public library were somewhat far away to our previous apartment, hence never made it to them then ;-). As soon as we shifted to our now home, we found that there was one branch very near to our current home. So, finally the day of becoming a library member had arrived :).

It was a lovely surprise when actually went on to become a member. All it takes is a photo id and proof of residence. No money!! Not even a single paisa or should I say cent ;-) :-D. I still don't have a photo id except for my passport and so Sri became a member showing his driving license. I had thought we'll go the next day again and I'll become a member. But it sorta became irrelevant when we found that you could borrow, not 2, not 10, but 35 books at a time!! What the heck were we going to do with 70? :-D.

At first, I was disappointed with the library near my place. It was a bit smaller than what I had imagined to be and there didn't seem to be many books around. But soon the disappointment changed into another pleasant surprise, when we found out you could borrow books from any branch and return anywhere!! Better is the online system. You can search for the books you want and place a hold to collect them in some particular branch of library. If they are available in some other branch, they are actually transported to the one where you want to collect!! You just go to the library and collect them from the counter where they have it waiting for 7 days :). The online site is here, if you want to take a look. You can place holds, check the due dates of the books with you, renew once, all online :).

This scheme of things is not only in Lexington, but in every city in US. So how do they maintain all this, if they aren't taking any money for membership? The money is being looted out of us in another way, but I don't have any complaints since its being put to good use. The income tax here in US is divided into something called Federal tax, State tax and County tax. The Federal tax percentage is comparitively less when compared to the State and County taxes. The county tax is used in laying roads and basically cleaning up that particular county. And it is used for that purpose!! Thats why the roads are what they are here in US. I believe the state taxes go into maintaining these public libraries.

I remember we have some public libraries in India too. The insides of most of them look like a haunted castle, with dust and cobwebs. No cleaning up, no maintenance plus ollllld ollllllld books. No latest books except for some magazines and newspapers. After all you can't keep ancient newspapers, warna they'd probably have had them and no new ones :-p. Here you can get the latest books, DVD and video casettes for borrowal. Of course there is a fee if you forget the due date. If you are within due date, then no fee, nothing. Just shows how things go if taxpayers' money is put into good use, which sadly is lacking in India. Not that there isn't any corruption here, but atleast some part of the money actually is going into good purposes!!

So far, I have ready many collections of Calvin n Hobbes and Garfield in comics and read lots of novels I've been wanting to read for sometime now - Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons", John Grisham's latest "The Broker", Frederick Forsyth's "Avenger", "The Day of the Jackal" and "The Odessa File". Already on hold are Frederick Forsyth's "No Comebacks", Dan Brown's "The Deception point" and "Digital Fortress". Should be finishing them by next week :-D. Frederick Forsyth is my all time favourite author and the best part is, all of his books, I repeat, ALL OF HIS BOOKS, are available in the library. So plan to read a couple of them again :-D. Haven't borrowed any DVD's till now, 'cause my mind's on books right now.

While I have been hogging on my favourite fiction novels, Sri's been reading up on non-fiction and we both are enjoying the library assets in our own ways :). He also made me read Stephen Hawking's non fiction "A Brief History of Time" and yeah, it felt like I was reading a physics text book after oh-so-long :). He also has "Interpretations of Dreams" by Sigmund Freud on hold for me. I have loads and loads to read and yup, I'm lovin' it :-D. And so my love affair with books continues.......... :) :).