No, there’s no cool story here. I don’t even know if “Eclipse Bay” is a real place (if it is, and you live there, I’m sorry…not necessarily that I’ve offended you but that you live in a place that sounds like a cliche for the entire decade of the ’80s). What this is, however, is rant about the most exciting thing I can think of: my local library.

My reading habits are sporadic and transitionally linked in no way to tangible events in real life. For months I’ll plow through books only one day to stop and no have the desire to pick up another for many more. Mostly I read non-fiction. I tend to go for pieces of social-commentary, psychological or philosophically-based books. Since graduating from college I think I’ve read less than a dozen selections of fiction. I guess it’s because there’s so much crap out there I don’t know where to start. And my local library isn’t helping.

The Wife™ is a library junkie. She pillages our local branch several times each month and has no problems waltzing in and snatching up a dozen or so books before she checks out. What. The. Hell!? I can’t even find ONE book over 12 pages that doesn’t register on the Suck-O-Meter.

I’ve tried the “look online before you go” route to perhaps ease my selection process. This is no help, because since we moved, our new branch has perhaps 50 entire books that do not contain mentions of such topics as “guns,” “uses for pig lard” or ” big ol’ monster truck parts.” Did I mention we live in Kentucky? It’s “where education pays.” So not kidding…

So with such a limited selection, I am forced to fall back on the old stack-surfing method. I methodically peruse each aisle, skimming titles in search of something, anything that won’t offend my Northern sensibilities. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Each and every single shelf is filled with countless books on one of the following topics:

• Murder, which might also consist of cover-ups, revenge, old murder cases, DNA as evidence, foiled murder plots, murders that have inspired Lifetime Movies and/or accidental murders. These typically have blood-red, shiny embossed letters on the cover and are what you hear talking heads refer to as a “must-read psychological thriller!”
• International espionagey/non-intriguing intrigue, which also include things about the CIA, FBI, NSA (and other various governmental agencies), planes, bombs, mistaken identities, trench coats, “computer hackers” and likely DNA. Give me a bag of Doritos and three hours of a TNT Law & Order marathon and I could write one myself.
• Romance, which also includes the topics of lust, lost love, betrayed love, destined love, beach houses and likely DNA. Trust me on that. These books come in sets of 225 at a time, each with names like Esteban, Braden and Victoria as the protagonists. If you see a horse, sunset or man with no shirt on the cover, you’ve found the 80% of the library collection containing “romance.” Hide these from your wives.
• Old crap, no, not “classics.” These are the books that your eyes pass over because they have no fancy dust jacket. The can range in topics, but usually have titles that elicit nothing but complete and total indifference to them, such as Any Old Iron or The Brethren. I consider these shelf filler, as no one has actually ever checked them out. Likely their pages are glued together.

Ultimately this leaves me to dig through an eerily populated Crockpot Recipes section or else the Folk Art collection. Apparently, “crap that might be interesting to read” section doesn’t exist at this branch. I should have been tipped off by the lack of the Dewey Decimal system. Our branch labels their aisles “books right here,” “big ‘uns books,” “books to jack your truck up with,” “books with purty covers,” and “books that ain’t required to graduate middle skool.” Again, I live in Kentucky.

So back to the library I’ll go tonight, to stare blankly at the 50 or so books available, hoping that perhaps one will shoot out of the stack and hit me in square in the nose, letting me know that it is indeed going to be a worthwhile read. Otherwise, I’ll continue my trend of blinking confusedly at the librarian as I leave empty handed only to return home to read Crockpot recipe books. At least these don’t talk about DNA, from what I can tell.