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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
Toronto has an excellent public library system that offers a wide range of paper, audio, and electronic books.
We also have some politicians who have been trying to justify additional cuts to the library’s budget for years despite how popular it is here and how many services it offers to underprivileged groups like new immigrants and people who don’t have homes.
One of the tools our librarians use to fight back against these cuts is showing statistics like having the highest circulation of library materials per capita in the entire world in 2008 or setting the world record for number of digital downloads in 2021.
This is one of the reasons why I use my local library as much as I possibly can. My tax dollars are already paying for it, so why not do my small part to help the librarians prove that this money is well spent and that their budgets should not be slashed?
My other reasons for using the library include saving money, protecting the environment by using shared resources as much as possible, and being an avid reader who doesn’t have a lot of physical space to store books in my home.
With all of that being said, I pass zero judgement on other people’s choices. Surprisingly, some countries don’t have libraries at all according to some bookish folks I’ve met over the last few years. Not every library system is as large or comprehensive as the one I have access to, and not everyone can patiently wait a few weeks or even months for a popular title to become available for them like I do on occasion. There is also the matter of Internet access and how patchy it can be in some rural areas. I’d probably own more physical books myself if I knew to expect a few long power outages a year or if I had very slow and unreliable Internet access like some rural communities do.
So much depends on where you live, how patient you are, and what resources you have access to!
Dusting and sweeping are my least favourite chores. There is no carpet in my apartment, so these two chores sort of meld together.
Let’s see if I can answer this question without writing a whole book on the topic. Ha!
My all-time favourite plot line is rebirth. That is to say, the audience is introduced to a morally ambiguous character (or even a downright jerk) who learns the error of his or her ways and eventually make a genuine and permanent change in their behaviour for the better.
Of course, I still draw boundaries about what I’m willing to read and watch. I do not consume stories that make excuses for violence, hatred, or any form of abuse.
The vast majority of the books I read are ebooks, so my place is always marked in them automatically unless there’s a technological glitch. That doesn’t make for a very fun answer to this week’s prompt, so I’ll keep talking.
Anyone who has participated in the Wednesday Weekly Blog Challenge or who has followed this blog for a few years will probably not be surprised by this answer at all.
When I was a teenager, I wrote a little bit of fan fiction for a couple of my favourite worlds (Narnia and the prehistoric world set in Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series that I’ve talked about here so often, if you’re curious). I never finished any of it and it doesn’t exist anymore so far as I know, but I had a wonderful time playing around with characters and settings I knew so well.
I’m bending the rules this week and giving two answers to the prompt because I know we’ve had at least one vegetarian participate in the past. I don’t want to make them read about something that might bother them.
Many bookcases out there are quite tall. I’m a little shorter than average, so it always makes me a tad nervous to stand on my tiptoes and try to grab a book on the top shelf. This is even more true if the book is oddly shaped or heavier than usual as I have scary thoughts of one of them falling onto my face and scratching my cornea or cracking my glasses. (Yes, my fears are quite specific sometimes. Ha!)