I recently broke out of a reading slump.

You’ll see - there will be a flurry of book-related posts coming soon (including this one).

And it got me thinking about what causes these slumps and, relatedly, what helps me get out of them.

Back when I was working from home, I would sometimes spend a morning or an afternoon working at the library.

While I was there I would sometimes walk the stacks and take something home if it looked interesting to me.

(I would actually do this while I was at home too - take a break, go to the library, walk the aisles, and grab a book.)

Lately I just haven’t had the time to do that.

Sometimes a book title comes to me easily and I go get it and that’s what I read next.

But that doesn’t happen all that much and if it doesn’t happen I don’t do anything and then I’m stuck at home with nothing to read.

What I’ve gotten in the habit of doing when I do think of something I might like to read is go on the library network’s website and place a hold on the book so that it’s ready to be picked up at the library nearby.

And what I will now do, as of last weekend, is use the app Libby.

I’ve known about Libby for practically a decade, it feels like. The girls were in grade school and learned about it and I’m pretty sure have been using it for years.

I honestly thought for a while that it was just for school-age children.

But Kathy has used it, friends have used it…and I just never thought about changing my system.

I did finally download it last week, though, and I see the appeal - instead of going into the library network’s website, I can just do the same stuff - and more, really - right on the app.

I know Kathy will use it often for ebook downloads. That’s not something I like doing - I like books in my hand.

It’s kind of funny to me you still have a certain time limit with a book - part of me feels like the app should just allow you to access it forever, but I get it, they only have a certain number of copies in the library and that’s all they’re allowed to have out in circulation at any given time.

And it turns out, after I had written all of this and talked to the family members who use Libby, what I thought was reserving copies of a book at the library is actually just downloading ebooks to your device to read.

So I guess maybe I can continue to use Libby to search for books if I think of one I want to read and then weigh my options - do I want to give an ebook a try? Audio? Or go to the library network website and get the book in its physical form?

I did have a successful first usage with the app, even before I got the new information from the family - I’ll be telling you more about it next week, probably.