The return of a good old habit

One of my old habits (one of the few good ones anyway) was going to the library with the kids every other saturday morning and spending an hour or so letting them hang out in the stacks, while I went off and browsed.   Then we'd all bring home arms full of books - I like to borrow the limit - to keep us in good reading till the next visit.

When I was in college I used to get lost in the University Library just bopping from stack to stack and pulling books on topics that interested me.    I found great stuff that had no relation to my formal education, but some of those books played a big part in my ongoing education.   Anyway, I wanted my kids to grow up and hopefully love the library as much as I do.  I always told them that the place was ours, and we could take any book home we wanted anytime.    

When they finally got to the teenage years, this stopped, and unfortunatly I stopped too.   Habits are easy to form, and some easy to break.   Seems like its been 10 years or more since my regular Saturday visits, though I did occasionaly stop by and pick up a few books now and then.    I still read a lot, but it had shifted from books to magazines - Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, Time, Wine Spectator, Kiplingers - and my reading became more directed not by my choice, but by the stuff that showed up in the mailbox.  

I started back a few months  ago, and have had several stacks of books visit the house.   Since I'm inclined musically,  since I started back I've read a Woody Guthrie Autobiography, a new book on the Beatles finacial situation "You Never Give me Your Money",   Townes Van Vandt's biography (what could have been),  a bio of AP Carter and Family,  a really great Louis Armstrong bio, and a whole lot of stuff that I looked at and didn't finish.   Currently, I'm plowing through a biography of Jerry Garcia "Garcia" that is interesting in that it is focused more on his musical life and not on the mess he made of himself and his friends.

One of lifes pleasures is a good book - forgot how much I missed it.   Can't wait to finish this one and see what is up there in the stacks waiting to come home next week.