Library Boy

This week, Francine suggested that I start taking Alexander to the library Saturday mornings as part of our "boys day out" -- we usually did errands like heading to Home Depot or Canadian Tire or something. But this seemed much more appealing. After all, it would be great to try a regular change of books to read him at bedtime (without having to buy the whole store every month), and I did need to get a few JavaScript books to prepare for an advanced scripting course I'll be attending in Pittsburgh in a couple of months.

But, oh man, did I ever forget how wonderful, how marvellous, how spectacular, how beautiful, how magical, a trip to the library is. We visited Hamilton Public Library's Terryberry Branch. (The very same one that Francine enjoyed going to when she was a girl). It opened at 10:00 AM and we arrived by about quarter after. And the parking lot was already full.

We ended up spending two hours in the library, picking out a few books that I could read to Alexander this week, picking up a few books for me, and also, of course, playing with the other kids with the fun train station and other wonderful activities they have set up in the kids section.
But the coolest part about it, of course, was the fact that when there I found something I'd lost a long time ago. And perhaps it might explain why I've had the book "Throwing 7's" in the right-nav pane of my blog for about 6 months now.

I'd started to mention this months ago and then dropped the subject, but I'd been pursuing a series of books by Denis Hamill for a long time. I bought his first book 3 Quarters in the early 90's when I was living in Ottawa and working at Prospero Books in Carlingwood Shopping Centre. But I never read it, and the book remained lost in a box in our basement (or closet, etc) as we moved around, and when I was setting up our basement "library" that I found it again. I read it, and loved it. Shortly after, I looked for the sequel Throwing 7's but couldn't find it in stores and so ordered it online. I was enjoying it, was halfway through it, and ended up leaving it by accident on the GO Train one day. Since then, I bought the third book in the series, Ten Spot but didn't want to read it until I'd finished the 2nd in the series.

But I came home with a copy of Throwing 7's from the library today. Woo hoo! Just evidence that for the Terryberry Library and I, this could be the start of some kind of wonderful.

The other exciting thing about the library visit was finding that the Hamilton Library currently has three copies of my book One Hand Screaming. Since they're all in stock at the central location, I thought I should at least donate a copy to my local branch.