On Hold

I sometimes wonder how I fed my reading habit all those years before the Harris County Library System allowed holds (book requests) to be placed online.  One thing for sure: it was a whole lot harder to get the books I wanted back then and I ended up missing out on most of them.

Nowadays, though, I work the system like a champ, seldom missing the books I want to read.  There are so many on my wish list that I can't possibly afford them or find the space to store them, so my public library system is a real gift, one I appreciate more than ever.

For instance, these are some the books I have on hold right now.  It is likely that one or more of them will end up in my permanent collection at some point anyway.  For instance, I just removed James Lee Burke's next Dave Robicheaux book from my hold list because I was lucky enough to receive an electronic ARC from the publisher.  I'm 400 pages into the 500+ page book already, and I am eagerly waiting to add it to my complete first edition run of the Robicheaux novels when it is published in mid-July.  

These are some of my current holds (hopefully, they won't all arrive in the same week):

A biography of Robert Ripley (Of Believe It Or Not fame)

Hosseini has become one of my "go-to" authors.

A novel about a woman whose brother shows up at her house with a huge weight problem

I love mysteries based on classic books, authors, and book collectors.

Memoir: After her mother dies, a young British Woman goes to South Africa to learn the rest of her family history.

The author...the cover...set in a carnival?  How can I resist this one?

I will warn you that, if your system is like mine, you will not be able to renew the books because lots of people will be stacked up behind you waiting for their own turns.  And, they do sometimes arrive in bunches, forcing hard choices on you.  But, even so, if you're not taking advantage of the service, you are doing things the hard way.