Library Strategy

I have a library strategy. I’m sharing it in case it’s useful to someone else, and also because my curiosity might benefit from a little adult supervision.

I go to the library often. It’s my happy place. It’s one of the few remaining public spaces where you can stand among thousands of ideas and feel, for a moment, like your brain has options. I romantically imagine I can learn anything I want from these books. Or at least find something I want to learn about.

Most library visits are not leisurely. They’re stolen. I’m in transit between groceries and parenting and errands and life’s ongoing administrative avalanche. So I move like an octopus in a crab parade, so many tasty bites.

First: the holds shelf. I pick up whatever I requested online during some late-night optimism cycle. Books with little tags protruding, my name on them, like so many presents.

Then I head straight to nonfiction new releases and start sweeping titles into my basket. Not carefully. Not responsibly. Like I’m rescuing them from a burning building. If I’m on the fence about a title, I take a photo or scan it into Goodreads, my file for future selves.

If I have thirty extra seconds of freedom, I do a quick flyby of the magazine section or the nearby graphic novels, just in case the holds or the new releases don’t fix my craving.

If I’ve got real time, rare, mythical time, the kind of time children and unicorns have, I go upstairs to music, film, art, science, history. I wander the stacks and browse spines. Just looking at titles can arouse curiosity. It can also remind you how many lifetimes it would take to read the world. The library is a cathedral and a panic room at the same time.

I grab books for my wife and kids. Anything connected to something we’ve talked about. Anything they’ve shown even a flicker of interest in. This is partly love and partly indoctrination. I want a home where books are integral, everywhere. Where curiosity is ambient. Where you can stumble into a subject without needing a screen, an app.

So yes, our house is often tripping over library books: Santa Monica Public, Santa Monica College, Venice, LA County, DTLA, and sometimes Beverly Hills and UCLA too. Due dates. Holds ready. Missing books. A small logistics operation disguised as a hobby. It’s my personality. Is it a time suck, a distraction, an escape, an illusion? Curiosity as lifestyle.

Some books inevitably get their hooks in. Those I finish. The rest become part of the scenery, physical reminders of what I’m interested in, and who I am trying to become. I love seeing them around. Little containers full of someone’s best-constructed thoughts.

Books are people-ish. They’re what a person becomes when they’ve swum with a subject for years and then, finally, surface for air: a book. Here. This is what I think. In a sense, the book is a piece of them, their life. So a room full of books is a room full of people waiting to jump into your head. Some kind of idea party.

I’ve slowed my reading this past year and committed to taking more notes as I read. This is a difficult discipline to master. My mind wants to stay in the flow. But it all blurs together and becomes hard to recall if I don’t pause, reflect, take notes.

I’m sometimes saddened by the basic math of it. I won’t get to all the books. I won’t even get to most of them. The best I can do is bring them into my life and see what sticks. Let them near me. Let them tug my attention this way and that.

I’m not a super social person, but reading is like being social in a way that doesn’t exhaust me. When I read a book, I get into the head of someone who really cared about something for a while. They’re offering me their best attempt. Their best structure. Their best meaning. That’s exciting. And important. For our society. For our civilization.

Such a gift.

Freedom is just another word for library card.

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