Finding a book in library within 15 mins

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

Usually i don’t buy books if they could be found in the community libraries. Unless the book is worth my time to re-read plenty of times, or i have a queue of friends who wants to read too, i might consider buying.

I always set aside 15 minutes to find a suitable book closer to my taste from the huge book collections. If i exceeded that amount of time, i will usually get bored and decided to go without a book for the whole of that week.

Not because I hate going libraries. I used to love libraries during my student days. I found it a conducive place to memorize arts subjects without distraction. I will just find a lonely wall and regurgitate all my memorized materials in front of it. The wall doesn’t seem to get bored listening to it plenty of times, whereas at home, my siblings will call me a mad woman. *perspire*

The library in the present days is far from the past. There are children running and laughing around, adults on phones and talking loudly - not setting good examples to the kids. The librarians are too ‘kind’ to scold the library users; unlike those authoritative librarians in the past. So.. i rather not spend so much time in the library.

So how do i actually got my book in 15 mins?

Gut feel. Yes, my mood for the week. I usually go to the library with a different mood.
Go straight to the category i want. For example, i am quite keen to read up on medical books this week. I will go to the medical section, be it fiction or non-fiction. Around 3 to 5 mins depending on the familiarity of the library layout.
Scan for my favorite authors. This will usually take around 5 minutes. If my favourite author doesn’t have any new books, i will search for other authors under the same category. This will take about 5 minutes.
Read the book summary (inside the cover or at the end of the book). Around 1 minute if you do speed reading.
If the summary caught my attention, I will Read the first few pages of the book. Usually if i couldn’t stand the author’s writing style, i will place the book back onto the shelves. The author of the same book will be on my blacklisted list. This will take around 5 minutes per book.
Look for another author under the same category and the cycle repeats itself until around 15 mins.