I have a confession to make: I stalk the Toronto Public Library.

The library publishes a list of new acquisitions online every 15th of the month. And every 15th of the month, I check out the new releases for business and other topics I’m interested, pick the ones I’m interested in, and hand my list off to an assistant who then performs my place-hold-on-book task for each and every book on that list. This takes more time than just reserving the books myself, but it saves me lots of clicking back and forth through the list.

Then the books slowly filter in. Some books already have a backlog of holds, fortunately, so I don’t (usually) have 50 books descending on the Annette branch all at once. We’ve set aside a shelf for library books, although they usually spill over to chairs and tables as well.

I snack on the books, browsing through them to find the nuggets of insight that distinguish books from the numerous others written on the same topic.

When my three-week window is up, the popular books go back, and the less-popular ones might either be returned or renewed. Then it’s almost the 15th again, with a fresh new batch of books waiting to be picked over…

Mmm!