Great Escape: Check Out the Library

For Christmas last year, I received a Kindle, and my world changed.  I’ve always loved to read, but in recent years I have only been able to read a book or two per year. In the eight months since I got the Kindle, I have read 12 books due to the portability and ease of reading. 

I would probably be on book 25 by now but I have a 2-year-old. While the Kindle is helpful, it can’t babysit my kid while I read.

Yes, true to its name, the Kindle has reignited my love of books. But at the same time, I can understand why some people look down on e-readers. 

For hundreds of years, people have been reading real books with words printed on paper. The e-reader has made books of paper and ink nearly obsolete for some people, and the purists or the old-school book lovers want to keep actual books from becoming extinct.

So perhaps it is time to take a step away from the Kindle and set foot in one of our local libraries.

For the past two years, my usage of the library has been limited to storytime and borrowing children's DVDs and books. The only times I crossed into the adult section is when my son wandered over and I was afraid he was going to disturb someone.

Next time I’m at the library, I think I will try to slow my Kindle addiction and check out some adult books. But the library’s offerings don’t end with its book collection. The Patch events calendars often list events at the library, so I turned to the calendar to see what else I could take advantage of.

Here are the events for adults at the Alexandria libraries for the next few weeks:

Burke Branch Library — Aug. 25 at 7 p.m. — World Short Story Discussion Group — discussing “Short Shorts: An Anthology of the World’s Shortest Stories”

— Aug. 31 at 7:30 p.m. — — local author Maria Lima will discuss “Blood Sacrifice,” the latest book in her series,  “Blood Lines.”

– Sept. 7 at 7 p.m. — Duncan Library Film Series — Showing of the film “Welcome.”

— Sept. 8 at 7 p.m. — Latin American Book Discussion Group

Any of these events would make for an interesting evening out of the house. They're free, they stimulate your brain and they help keep our libraries from going the way of the dinosaur.