SFPL "Lucky Day" Book x2
I have no idea what the odds were on getting THE SAME "Lucky Day" book — on a San Francisco Public Library book that currently has a hold/waitlist of 80+ people on it, but if this doesn't count as a genuinely lucky moment for me, I'll eat my cap. ::chuckle::
That is the self-satisfied smile of someone who knows he has been most fortunate indeed.
A little over a month ago, I'd serendipitously grabbed a book that was on the Lucky Day shelf at the Marina branch of the SFPL. As any regular library patron knows, one has just a few weeks to read any such LD book before having to return it (it can't be renewed, as those titles already have waitlists and holds on them).
But as is my wont, I read multiple books concurrently, Books I'm Reading at the Moment In no particular order (even if this list is numbered ::chuckle::) ... 1 Gravity and Grace | Simone Weil 2 Living on Earth | Peter Godfrey-Smith 3 Memories, Dreams, Reflections | C. G. Jung 4 Wanderlust: A History of Walking | Rebecca Solnit 5 The Genetic Book of the Dead | Richard Dawkins 6 Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain | John Darwin 7 The News from Dublin | Colm Toibin 8 Flutes of Fire | Leanne Hinton 9 A World Appears | Michael Pollan 10 The High Sierra | Kim Stanley Robinson 11 Figuring | Maria Popova 12 Last Light | Richard Lacayo 13 San Francisco's Forgotten Cemeteries | Beth Winegarner and so if I don't focus on any LD book straight through, chances are I'll need to return it before finishing it. Which is exactly what happened with this one, Michael Pollan's luminous A World Appears. I hadn't even gotten through the first chapter when the email notification arrived in my Inbox precisely 3 weeks after borrowing it (a couple weeks ago or so now), instructing me to return it promptly for the next reader to enjoy. Which I did, of course.
Then came yesterday afternoon on my daily constitutional and, as I was walking along Green past the Golden Gate Valley branch of the SFPL, I ducked in and checked their “Lucky Day” shelf right by the entrance and lo and behold, the Pollan was there!
I had been thinking about the book I'd recently returned as I went into the library, idly musing about perhaps doing some serendipitous reading or book-finding there. As I glanced at the spines of the books on the LD shelf and saw that a Pollan was there, well... I pounced. ::chuckle::
I also got a fresh copy of the SFPL Explorer Map (mentioning to Jenn, the circulation librarian on duty how I’d completed it years ago, during the pandemic) as, also on a whim, I decided to do a new explorer round of the peninsular library's branch system, for perhaps through the rest of 2026, maybe even bleeding into next year.
When I did that round of visiting all the 29 libraries in the SFPL (including the Main Library and the Treasure Island mobile truck library, which doesn't quite count as a branch per se since it goes to T.I. only once a week on Wednesdays, but I'll do so anyway), I discovered that it was also a great way to learn about and explore the various, multifarious neighborhoods in The City.
So, why not do so again, to discover new things about each of the branches, as well as the neighborhoods in which they are ensconced. I might even call this a kind of 'embodied reading' in which the environment and physical ecosystem of books' homes play an equally important role in perceiving and integrating them into the life of the mind.
After all, the mind is nothing without a body, right? Or so one might assume. ::chuckle::