What efficiency!* You want a book? You get a book. You return a book, someone else gets the book. When the book is no longer popular, excess copies are sold to nerds like me for a fraction of the original price. Those copies eventually make it to the end of line:
fascinating discount bins where thrifty and adventurous readers decide they need to get "Completely Piste", or that "Straight Jobs, Gay Lives" might make interesting bedtime fare.
Indeed, books have been the least of my worries this year, what with my card-carrying membership to the SFPL and my addiction to buying and selling at places like Dog-Eared:
(I'm still enjoying a whopping $125 credit from purging my duplicate copies of "Stretching and Relaxation", "Television in Modern Society" and "Econ 101 for Dummies" when we moved last year. Ridding oneself of the literary nonessentials can be very freeing. And surprisingly lucrative. And good for you sex life, if your boyfriend has anything to do with schlepping your personal library to a new apartment.)
I have, however, encountered my first obstacle. I am completely obsessed with Philippa Gregory's rollicking Tudor fiction (the drama! the Feminism! the sables!), and have successfully gotten my ink-stained mitts on all of them BUT The Other Boleyn Girl. I can't seem to find it used, and the library can't keep it on the shelves.
I'm dying over here! I already know what happened to Katherine of Aragon, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr. Okay, we all already know what HAPPENED to all of them, but I need to know what they were WEARING!
Anybody have a copy they can loan me?
*Go ahead eco nerds. Hit me with the obscure sustainability study exposing the wanton wastefulness of the public library system. I would do it to you.
