20081120books
I know I shouldn't preach the merits of
books --- if you're a believer, you know in your bones that an armful
of good books has immeasurable worth, while if you're a disbeliever
there's no way I'll change your mind. So I'll just assume you're
a believer.
Being a bibliophile on a budget takes a bit of getting used to. I
went through a book-buying phase, but now I've returned to the (cheap)
joys of the library. I challenge you to try out some of my
tips before buying your next book (but if you must buy a book, buy
it from Amazon by clicking here and give us a little kickback to
keep our "doors" open.)
The only books I even consider buying any more are books which I will
use over and over and over. This is pretty much limited to
cookbooks and field guides (and I've found that I actually do a lot of
my recipe searches online now.)
Even if you live in an area with a puny library system like mine, there
are some tricks worth having up your sleeve. First of all, find
out if your library is part of a larger system --- ours is, so I can
browse online and choose books from nearby towns to pick up at my local
library. I can even choose books from my local library to be
placed on hold so that Mark can pick them up for me when he goes to
town!
Once you check out your books, mark down
when they are due and how many are due on your planner. Everyone
complains about late fees, but there's no reason to pay a dime with a
little planning! If you know you won't be able to return your
book on time, renew your book online or over the phone and save
gas. And if you pick up another book while in town, ask the
librarian to renew all of the rest of your books so they're due on the
same day --- it makes it much simpler to remember only one due date.
But what if you want to get a book that's not available within your
library system? That's where interlibrary loan comes into
play. This is more difficult, but can be done. Our library
makes me come in and sign a sheet of paper before they'll get a book
from outside their system, but they can nearly always find the titles I
ask for. If not, ask them to buy a copy and they often will!
As I said above, I often like to choose my books over the internet and
then have Mark pick them up when he goes into town to buy
groceries. It's harder to browse over the internet, but I've
found two useful ways to discover new authors you've never heard
of. One way is to search for books you like on Amazon,
then scroll down to see which books were bought by others in the same
order with that book. An even more fun technique is to use the Literature-Map. Type
in your favorite author and watch a web of similar authors
appear. (Warning, extremely addictive!)
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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