Read Books? Use the Library!

For many of you, this may not be such an earth-shattering tip. But there are a lot of people out there who go out and buy books from the bookstore, when right next door, there is a free alternative: your local library.
Our household reads a lot of books. I am on pace to read over 30 books this year, and I’m fairly sure that Lisa reads more than I do. Ellie would break us if we bought every book that she checked out of the library, because even though she’s only 3, she checks out 8-10 books at a time from the library (granted, they are easy-to-read board books, but still).
Here’s where I take the use of your local library to the next level. Jon Udell hacked together an awesome bookmarklet called LibraryLookup that will take the ISBN from an Amazon (or any other page with an ISBN listed) and check your local library system to see if it’s available there. I add things to my reading queue via Amazon all the time, but mainly I use Amazon as a place to keep track of the things I want to read, not as a purchasing tool. With LibraryLookup (and the other hacks he’s done to that tool), I can easily request a book from my library via their online catalog. And when you figure that I read 30 books a year, that’s a substantial savings.