This may be somewhat niche, but as enjoyers of a solitary hobby like reading, I’m willing to bet many of you will identify with this. Hear me out.
In the last year or two, I’ve really gotten back into reading books for fun for the first time since I was a bookworm child. That being said, video gaming has been a passion of mine for basically my whole life. Anybody else that has been gaming for a long while knows what it used to be like, especially as a child, to go to the game store to rent or buy a new video game, get soooooo excited in the car home, smack it into your Xbox or PlayStation or whatever, and immediately jump into the action! It was exhilarating! Yet, that experience nowadays has been very neutered. Now, many games, even on console require you to spend a couple of hours installing and updating the game onto your hard drive before you can play. Further, the switch to a digital market format, in which you can buy entire $70 half-terabyte games online, has threatened game store’s very existence in the last few years. I rarely find myself still feeling that thrill of picking up a physical game, building anticipation, and then going home to immediately jump right in.
…but not so with books! Since I’ve started going to my public library more and more, I’ve realized that that experience is still alive with books! I can still peruse the shelves, find something, get excited, check it out, and immediately get into it! I Can even start reading while I’m still at the library! Really, now that I think about it, it always WAS a similar experience, for book lovers.
As somebody who has been rediscovering their love for reading for pleasure, I just have to say that this realization makes me love my library even more!
by XCalibur672