Back to Browsing

Returns still go in the chute, and holds can still be delivered to an outside table in a plastic bag. But for the bold and restless, you can also now enter the Fairfax County Public Library branches in person. I took the plunge ... and I'm so glad I did.

Though it was almost eerily quiet, it wasn't like being in an empty restaurant, a place you expect to be lively and people-filled. The communion we have with the printed page is silent anyway.

I'd forgotten how much I enjoy finding the books I read in tangible form — not clicking to retrieve them on a screen or downloading them in an audio file. But browsing, tilting my head to read the titles, scanning up and down the shelves. Seeking and finding.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of picking Susan Orlean's The Library Book because there it was in the "New Nonfiction" section and Anne Tyler's Clock Dance because I was over in the "S"s anyway, looking for Stegner's Crossing to Safety and her book was in the "T"s. It was the great pleasure of serendipity, of finding a book I wasn't looking for but that was waiting for me all the same.