Visiting the Library

This is the second floor of the library we visited.

Saturday night, wifey remarked how she wanted to read more books. Her comment reminded me that despite living in Markham for almost three years, we haven't once visited the library.

My in-laws, who don't speak English, have visited the library on many occasions. They even managed to get a library card and have used it a few times to borrow books.

I suggested we walk to the library on Sunday and she suggested we go after lunch.

With temperatures hovering around a tolerable -3, we walked to the library. It only took us 30 minutes to walk there. First thing we noticed were the bicycle racks. Excellent. If we rode our bikes, it would only take us 15 minutes or less to get there.

We entered the library and approached customer service to sign up for a couple of cards for wifey and myself. The process only took 5 minutes (government issued ID required) and after a quick tutorial on due dates and late charges, we were ready to explore the library.

This particular library had two floors. The first floor appears to be mainly for children and teenagers. Lots of children books and young fiction. Not to mention a lot of children running around or sitting down reading with their parents. The second floor is where we spent most of our time.

Up there, there were many shelves of books spanning multiple topics and categories. The books available were categorized as General Fiction, to Health, to Religion, and even Graphic Novels! Wifey picked out a couple of books in the General Fiction section. After browsing around and seeing nothing that interested me, I walked around and looked at the categories.

Eventually, I found the Business and Finance section. I spent some time scanning through some books before settling on a couple of Canadian personal finance books (indicated by a red maple leafs sticker on the spine). Wifey pressured me to hurry up as it was extremely warm inside and she didn't want to take off her winter coat.

Checkout was only a few seconds and we were out the door with a few new books to read.

On the way back, wifey was curious to know the retail cost of these books. The lowest was $9.99 (one of her novels) and the highest was $29.99 (one of my personal finance books). Yikes! Could you imagine a couple buying books every two weeks from Amazon or Indigo? Assuming free shipping and 13% HST that's $45.18 every two weeks. In a year, that's $1,174.61!

Okay, maybe most people don't spend that much on books, but still even half of that figure is a good chunk of change.

Free is even better. Yes, our property taxes help pay for the library system. However, where else can you go to take a book home... so you can read it for free... with the promise that you'll return it in 3 weeks?

Wifey was so energized by this trip, she wants to make the trek to the library a more frequent occurrence. This is fine by me.