I can't believe it took me a year to get around to making the most of
the Toronto Public Library. I grew up in a country without a good
public library system and thus had no idea just how cool one could be.
Fortunately, two of my friends are avid fans of the TPL. (Hi
Dan Howard! Hi Quinn Fung!)
Quinn's always telling me about some book or other that's available for pick-up, and Dan told me about the trick of reserving one gazillion books.

Today I gave the web-based library catalogue a spin, and promptly requested dozens and dozens of books. I knew they'd take some time to be delivered to the branch nearest me, but I headed to the College and Spadina branch anyway as it was just a few blocks away from my residence and I wanted to raid the stacks for interesting Wednesday night reading.

It was a good thing I took my wheeled grocery bag, as I ended up
checking out far too many books. I winnowed the list down from the
stack of books I'd pulled off the shelves for browsing, but was still
sorely tempted to push the library limit of 50 (50!) books checked out
at any given time.

I've already finished one: Beauty Fades, Dumb is Forever, by Judy Sheindlin (of Judge Judy fame). The main thing I took away from that book is that guys aren't built to be nurturing, and there's nothing wrong with nurturing myself. I knew that. =) Also, the book had interesting anecdotes from the life of a no-nonsense judge. Not a bad read.

I heart the Toronto Public Library. It's pretty up to date – lots of 2006 titles, yay! – and the web-based reservation system totally rocks. Sweet!

UPDATE: See also Bookmarklet for the Toronto Public Library