The joys of the library

I do like public libraries. We go to ours every couple of weeks or so. I can experiment with authors that I don't know if I'll like enough to buy, or borrow one-hour quick reads that I can't justify buying: the children can expand their horizons however it suits them to do so. And you never know what you're going to find. Two books I resisted today: "Making Beaded Amulet Pendants" and "The Folklore of Spaceships." And it's fascinating seeing which books are popular, too. There used to be a very camp gay assistant at our library, who showed no interest in the books he was checking out for me (why should he?) until one day I borrowed one of Robin Hobb's "Assassin" books - and he was an avid fan of the series, and we had a great time discussing what we thought of them. It was great to come across someone else who understood why I liked them, especially someone with whom I superficially (and fundamentally, I daresay) had little in common. When I was a child, there were books in our local library that were only ever borrowed by me - I could remember the dates I'd borrowed them, as you can with a child's uncluttered mind, and it seemed nobody else ever read them. But some books are never in stock; you can't get to read them unless you reserve them.
Who else is it, in the rather humdrum town I live in, who's reading werewolf porn? Why is there such a large biography section, when the books in it are always on the shelves? See how this contrasts with the New Age section, where the shelves are always nearly empty 'cos the books are so popular. And it's the most multi-aged, multi-racial place in the town, full of families, students, old people, young people, people reading newspapers in Urdu and books in Chinese.... It's a great place. And it's free, unless you forget to return the books in time. Which we do, too often.