How I Survived the Closure of My Library

Late past summer, the authoritative email notifying maine of my library’s impermanent closure for renovations recovered maine capital-D Devastated. Around this clip past year, I sat successful the meal nook pondering the magic of libraries and, much specifically, my heavy appreciation for my section subdivision with the pinkish camellias outside. There, I browsed and borrowed The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, Luster by Raven Leilani, and Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones.

I didn’t carnivore the quality well…at first. While vacationing, I bought 9 books from an autarkic bookstore (we were determination for six nights).

Retracing our tyre tracks on the Gulf Coast, my dearest and I drove my literate souvenirs, including Alejandra Pizarnik’s Extracting the Stone of Madness, translated by Yvette Siegert, and Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now home. We lugged the haul into our house, wherever we unrecorded among built-in and assembled shelves and surfaces crammed with TBR titles. In 1 corner, a level lamp with 3 bookshelves looms. Side tables with clandestine recesses flank our loveseat. I support books successful those concealed places and different inconspicuous locations. Tote bags draped connected chairs. A sliding-top java array with hidden storage. The unread audiobooks and ebooks successful the clouds of my devices.

According to my 2020 speechmaking stats, I borrowed astir 25% of my books from the room down the road. If I maintained that momentum successful 2021 and borrowed a 4th of my completed books, astatine $20 each (somewhere betwixt the terms of a paperback and hardcover), my room perchance saved maine $860 successful a azygous year. Please applaud my mathematics and nationalist libraries, and you tin spot wherefore I consciousness capital-D Devastated and a smidge disquieted astir my ballooning publication budget.

Working done my emotions, I hunt for the metallic lining. I regard astatine my room cart, Goldie, wherever I show the fiction, nonfiction, and poesy I aspire to gulp soon successful a spot premier for plopping down and pleasance reading. I glimpse Blue, a array wherever caller purchases collect, and nether Blue, wherever book-shaped packages hold to beryllium opened.

Could the beingness beryllium nudging maine to walk clip with the books I already own? While publication buying envelops maine successful joy, I sporadically acquisition a tiny, uncharacteristic pang oregon 2 of guilt erstwhile I glimpse astatine the unread parts of my collection. So, to offset that 25%, I browse my idiosyncratic library, knowing however fortunate I am. Some patrons trust connected the room not lone for books but for machine and printer entree and further services, too.

The time earlier my subdivision closed, I traveled done swarms of dragonflies to instrumentality my final-for-now borrows. People told maine repeatedly that I tin thrust 4 miles to the nearest library, but it sometimes takes maine a week to hole myself for a market store visit. Plus, I daydream up late-in-the-year speechmaking challenges. I would work what I had. And I would work much books than I bought myself.

True to my Virgo nature, I statesman organizing. Concerned astir the value capacities of my literate nooks and crannies, ​​I cull my TBR books: ARCs, giveaways, presents, titles I talented myself, in-person and snail-mail exchanges with friends, and partially finished communicative and effort collections from postgraduate school. I gaffe selections of books I outgrew the impulse to work into Little Free Libraries crossed town. While sifting done my shelves, I reacquaint myself with covers and blurbs and synopses, from Angie Cruz’s Let It Rain Coffee to The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith.

To guarantee I work much than I purchase, I way the books I bargain connected a rainbow of sticky notes successful my trusty planner. Meanwhile, I’m locked retired of the Libby app, possibly a gleaming awesome that I’m moseying the close path. When Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts becomes available, I prime up the telephone to hole things due to the fact that does a connection adjacent beryllium for the magnitude of anticipation coursing done my body. This is how, months in, I commencement reconnecting with the library. I besides cheque retired Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth.

Reflecting connected my archetypal 2 libraryless months, I enactment dependable progress. I work much than I bought: 5 successful September and six successful October. Craving larger results, I resoluteness to decorativeness 100% much books than I bargain successful November. On paper, I succeed. I consumed 18 and bought 7 for a full of 11 books. When I look person astatine the numbers, which dwell of 2 borrows and 8 rereads, I recognize I lone work 1 much rubric than I bought.

With this rereading-doesn’t-make-the-TBR-stack-smaller epiphany, I reappraisal those archetypal results and larn I made zero dent successful September and subtracted 5 books successful October. In 3 months, I shaved a humble six books disconnected that intimidating apical number. At this ambling rate, astir 8 years would walk earlier moving done my existent list.

Recently, my emotion and I called a car astatine the room earlier a deluge. I missed lingering determination and wanted to accidental hullo to the flowers. Unfurled paper pages lined the wrong of the doors. Posted supra the boarded-up and duct-taped driblet box, a motion informed maine that “several” months had morphed into eight. But, arsenic a metallic lining, much clip with my TBR books awaits me, and I prickle with renewed determination.

If you’re a room person surviving among towers of books, peruse the library archives and Buying Books Like I’m Immortal.