Give Me Library or Give Me, Well, a Library

    Yesterday, I finally finished reading a book that took me almost two weeks to read.  It was Light Bringer by Pierce Brown.  The most recent book in the "Red Rising" sci-fi series was published last year, and the trade paperback edition came out in late April.  I somehow missed it when going over the monthly listing originally, but I picked it up as the earliest available tine after I found out.  Normally, it wouldn't take me so long to read a book, but I kept it at the store as it was a book for the store.  As such, it had to work around to find time to read it between all the other tasks I have.  Yes, I have read the books I intend to sell at my store.  I didn't want to damage the book by transporting it too much.  Furthermore, I was reading a second book part of that time at home, Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries. Note that it was not written by an 'Emily Wilde,' but by Heather Fawcett.  This book I checked out of the Floyd County library, as it was less likely to be sold from my store.  It originally came out in hardcover in 2022 and has not been released as a paperback, to the best of my knowledge.  If it had been, I would have ordered it through my store instead of waiting over a month for it to be returned to the library. The follow-up to that book was released last year.  Unfortunately, the library didn't get a physical copy of that book, and it is only available as a digital copy, which I won't read.  It is not because I am a book snob, although I am sort of one due to me owning a book store.  No, it is because I get eye strain problems from reading material online for long periods of time.  Visual clips and games don't strain me as much as reading.  I don't know why that happens, only that I have to limit my reading times to about twenty minutes.  Any longer than that and problems can happen.  One of these problems can be retinal migraines.  I've had such events for much of my life when looking at bright lights the wrong way, or if I look too deeply into a mirror for too long.  When this happens, colorful aurae can flicker in my vision for a few minutes.  Once, at Christmas a few years ago, I was staring at some blinking car lights in the rain, and the effects lasted almost twenty minutes, more so in my left eye than the right.  This was the longest time such an instance of this had happened. It was also when I finally contacted an eye doctor and found out what was happening to me.  Reading on screen acerbate such conditions, so I try to limit them.  It was only when I got my first computer for grad school that such incidents became more frequent.  For a few years now, I have been missing out on many books I have been wanting to read all because the libraries don't get the books in, or they only get such digital copies. I can't order everything through my store, only those books I feel I can sell or those that I really want and can't seem to get in any other way, like the paperback edition of Light Bringer.  Neither local library systems ordered physical copies of the book, although both got the other books in the series.  The Floyd County system is the worst in this regard, as it has shifted so much away from physical copies. I noticed this trend years ago when they only got the large print version of the last "Dexter" novel, which I still haven't checked out to read on a matter of principle.  There are so many books I've wanted, only to have the books never coming in, or they are always checked out.  How hard can it be just to have one copy of a very popular book in a series?  Instead, there is a large selection of large print romances and mysteries.  I had the final book in a young adult fantasy series that I have been waiting for a few years for come out last week, but neither system has gotten it yet.  In two weeks, I have another new book coming out, but this one might have a slightly better chance at being available.  I would order many of these through my store, but I wait too long and the books are not as available as they would have been if I had tried sooner.  It is also hard to justify getting a book that I feel only has a slight chance to be sold.  Still, my list of books to read is getting quite long, and something needs to be done about it.