Libraries! One of the Best Deals Around

If you want to save money on books, videos, CDs, magazines, internet access, newspapers, entertainment for your kids,.....

...oh, heck, just get yourself down to your local library!

I live right between two small towns, Azle and Springtown. Both have excellent libraries. Thanks to them, I have been able to, in the last few months

• Read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat for free.


• Read David McCullough's The Path Between the Seas for free.


• Read the entire Dean Koontz Odd Thomas series for free.


• Read the entire Shopaholic series for free. (Yes, I do enjoy Bex's adventures, though in the real world, someone with her attitude would soon be both broke and divorced. Seriously.)


• Watch the entire Masterpiece Theatre series, I, Claudius, for free. Also Bleak House. Also the extended version of The Return of The King.


• Read Newsweek, Time, National Geographic, Consumer Report and half-a-dozen other magazines for free. (Okay, so I don't read all of them every visit.)


• When I was wrestling with both a new computer operating system and a cranky dialup connection (now replaced with broadband, thank God) I was able to use my library's internet-connected computers, broadband fast, to find information I needed...for free.

And those are only a few examples of what a good library can provide.

If I had kids I could also have taken them to the library's Saturday afternoon puppet show, or checked out and let them watch The Land Before Time I, II, III, IV (how many of these sequels are there?) the requisite twenty times straight without buying or renting tape after tape. They could have browsed through a dozen shelves of children's books, or gone to the library's Childrens Reading Hour. Or they could have used the library's "kids only" computers, hooked to highly filtered connections, to explore the internet or play games.

If I was a job seeker, I could have searched through a list of companies, then gone on the internet to browse job listings or even apply for jobs. If I was a student, I could have used those internet-connected computers to do research.

Or I could have checked for everything from recipes to home repair information, in the book stacks, in the magazine room or on the internet.

A library is a terrific grab bag of free information and entertainment, and all you need to gain access is a library card. And a library card is almost always free to anyone who lives in that town.

Stop by your local library. It's a treasure chest just waiting to be opened.