The Joy of Visiting The Library

-

I've had a crazy busy last few weeks which led me into a pretty horrible reading slump that I just couldn't break out of. On top of not having enough time, I couldn't find a book that would make me want to take stolen moments to power through it. I needed to figure out how to get out of my reading rut, so I turned to the one place where I could be completely surrounded with hundreds of book possibilities: the library.
I've been twice now in the last two weeks enjoying all the new books that have been brought up and the complete freedom to walk out with as many books as I want. Even though I work at a bookstore, there's a certain magic about the books in the library. It feels so much more limitless.
Going in, I decided I'd walk over to the YA section and grab any book that sounded remotely interesting. I filled my giant canvas bag with books I'd been meaning to read, ones that had been mentioned on podcasts, ones that had gotten a lot of buzz on Twitter, and even ones with pretty covers. If it sounded remotely interesting, it went in the bag.
The beauty of my small town library is that even though our population isn't huge, our library is very well maintained. It's the heart and soul of our town. Despite YA not being the most popular category, we always get a good mix of the new releases, and they're wonderful about ordering anything I remember to request. We also have no limit on the number of books you can check out at once.
The freedom to grab any book that looks interesting, no strings attached, definitely increased my excitement about getting back into reading. I grabbed my favorites, contemporary and rom coms, but the idea that there was no consequence if I didn't like it led me to add tons of fantasy books to my bag too. I'm always hesitant to pick up fantasy because the genre is so hit or miss for me, but knowing that if I didn't click with the book for any reason, I could take it back let me step out of my comfort zone.
While I've started with the genres I'm more familiar with from my library TBR, I'm super excited to get to try something new. It's fun to get to act like a little kid in a candy store every once in a while.
So, I guess to give another piece of advice to add to my post on reading slumps, head to your local library and grab anything and everything that looks good. Use thee library and circulate some books to show that you appriiciatee what an amazing resource it is. By not carefully considering each and every book, I felt far less pressure to make the "right" choice,  and I stumbled into a lot of great reads I wouldn't have found if I'd been too serious about my choices. Sometimes stepping away from your mountainous TBR and catching up on some books that slipped through the cracks is the perfect way to remember why you love reading in the first place.
My giant stack of library books gave me the feeling of reading for me again- not for the blog or for work- and that was the cure I needed to get back to it in full force.

Links of Interest:
Tell Me How You Really Feel: Review Here
Fear of Missing Out: Review Here
Mid Year Freakout: Here
Into YA with Chris Tebbetts: Here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You'd Be Home By Now by Kathleen Glasgow: YA Book Review

-
Image
  You'd Be Home By Now  by Kathleen Glasgow  I'm very thankful to the publisher for providing me with this ARC to share my honest thoughts on this book with all of you. Overview: Emory has always been the good one. The nice one. The easy one. The invisible one. Her older sister, Maddie, is gorgeous and talented. Her older brother, Joey, is struggling with addiction issues, and her parents saddle Emory with the responsibility of being his forever babysitter. No one thinks about Emory- ever. Which leads her to pick up a habit of stealing and collecting small things and hooking up with the high school baseball star next door to feel seen and important. While Joey is stuck on the rollercoaster of his addiction, his family is right there behind him, and as Emory struggles to keep Joey stable, she's also left to contend with her own precariously okay life. Overall: 5+ Characters: 5 Emory is maybe the most universally relatable teen character in YA. She feels unheard and unseen by
Read more

Hole In The Middle

-
Image
Hole In The Middle  by Kendra Fortmeyer (September 4) Overview: Morgan is like everyone else starting senior year. She's easing into adulting and thinking about her future. She's living in an apartment with her best friend Caro and trying to figure out how to break it to her super driven, successful, fitness guru mom that she doesn't really want to go to college. Morgan also spends a fair amount of time at the doctor's office because she has a peach sized hole straight through her abdomen. There's been one rule her entire life. Don't let anyone know about the hole, and, besides Caro and Caro's boyfriend Todd, she's succeeded. One night, though, she cuts herself a crop top and goes out to a club called Mansion where she shows off her true self, in all her glory. Photos spread like a wildfire on the internet, and she's approached by a new doctor who thinks she might have a cure. Though it  comes with press crews, a boy who has a lump that won'
Read more

Happy Place by Emily Henry: romance review

-
Image
Happy Place  by Emily Henry Overview: Harriet found her friend group for life in college. They might as well be her family. They've grown together through graduation and law school and medical school and one member leaving to go to South America to learn organic farming because they always come back together to spend a week in Maine every year at one friend's family summer house. Now, as they confront true adulthood and the changes that come with it, they have one more summer together before the house is sold to set the course of the future of their bonds. Overall: 4 Do I think this is an incredible romance? Maybe not. But it is a great book.  Characters: 4 There's a lot of characters in this book. The core friend group is six people, plus we get a closer look at both Harriet and her ex-fiancé Wyn's families. They're all well developed and have good dimension despite there being so many characters involved.  Harriet is at a crisis point in her life. She's in the
Read more