God knows why I didn’t do this before with the amount of books that I read, but this weekend I finally re-joined the library! I’d been a member since I was about 3 years old; so young that my library card had my mum’s signature on instead of mine! But when I was about 16, Leeds City Council introduced a Breeze card for young people and my library card was merged in with that. And since that expired when I was 19 years old, I haven’t set foot back in any of the Leeds Libraries.

But what an amazing place. Walk in, pick some books, walk out. And no cost! I expected to have to pay for a new card but the lovely lady at the desk at Pudsey library signed me back up in a jiffy. It was really hard not to walk out with an armful of books, but I managed to restrain myself to just 3. Until I journeyed to Leeds Central Library yesterday and picked another four! I don’t think I’ll ever stop reading now!

The best thing is how easy it is now to take out a book (or three). No queuing up at the desk, just set all your books on a machine, scan the barcode on your library card and the machine detects the RFID tags in each book to know what you’ve taken out and prints you a nice little receipt with the return dates on. How fabulously easy!

Plus, as confirmed on Twitter, you don’t even have to take books back to the same library you checked them out from, as long as you take them back somewhere in Leeds. So I don’t need to worry about taking books out on my lunch break in Guiseley/Yeadon or at the weekend at home in Pudsey, just take them back wherever is convenient!