I love my library hold queue. It's like NetFlix + Amazon, except free.

Generally books fall into three categories:

1. They'll send it immediately
2. A couple of people are waiting, it'll come in a week or two
3. A really popular new release, hundreds of people are waiting, add it to the list and forget about it for months

It can get a little tricky, keeping track of everything, and it's not setup like the NetFlix queue, where it knows you only want a book or two at once.

Anyway, recently I didn't pay attention for a few days, and ended up with three books. Then another notice came in, and when Divya picked it up for me, there were actually two waiting, so I was up to five, of which I had read like 30 pages of one.

I decided to go for the lightest book first and finished it in two sessions, and now I'm almost done with the second also. Meanwhile there was another book that I just had to read before my trip, and I just got notified that it's here too, so I'm really in trouble. If there's one thing I hate doing with the library, it's returning books, only to check them out again.

And I guess I should get to Narn i Chin Hurin: the tale of the children of Hurin before I depart, because it falls squarely in category 3 with 117 holds.

I used to use Library Elf with the Los Angeles Public Library, it'd be great if there was some service like it that tied into your library account and made it more NetFlix-y.

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