How Big is Your Late Fee?

Weekend Assignment #318: Library Books


Recently, it was discovered that George Washington had forgotten to return some books he had checked out of his local library. They were only 221 years late, mind you, but late all the same. How about you? Have you ever checked out a library book and forgot to return it? Tell us about your experiences with checking out, returning, or forgetting to return, books to the library.


Extra Credit: Tell us about the last book you checked out of the library.


Um..no. I have never flat-out forgotten to return library books. I have been late in the “I thought it was due next weekend” sense. Or in the “paper’s not done, so I’ll just pay the fee” sense. But I have never flat out forgotten. And oooooh, with the new online renewal feature…God as my witness, I shall never be late returning a book again.

Because I volunteer at the Library’s Used Book Store, and the clearance section of Half Price Books rocks, I don’t really check out library books for fun. Harlot’s Ghost did it to me – the Norman Mailer novel. I could only renew it once from the library and I still wasn’t finished with it, so I went out and bought a copy. It was all downhill from there. I thought about trying my library’s “Book Club in a Bag”, but half of my Book Club prefers the Kindle now, anyway.

I check out books from the library when I am researching something. The last batch was travel books, before a trip to Hawaii. Before that was a batch of books on Amazon.com, for a paper on online business models. Before that…I forget, but it was another research paper for school.

I really need to get offline and read more.