At the library: I don't know what I want

Now that I'm back in the big city, I've been taking full advantage of having a decent library situation again. In the past couple of months I've got out dozens of books, and have a lot more still on hold. 

Most of them have been comic books, catching up on the latest superhero shenanigans and arthouse darlings, and I'll talk a lot more about those next week, because I have many dubious opinions on the relative merits of these books.

Those books are usually the ones I've ordered, after haunting the 'new releases' section on the website, and searching the general catalogue for the usual favourite comic authors. But I still love browsing the shelves, looking for the random goodness, because the best way to find that goodness is by looking through the stacks with my own eyes.

Now, when I go to other parts of the city, I do like to check out the local library branches. There is one big library system for the whole city, so I can borrow anything I like from any of them, and they've all got something slightly different.

It's all there on the internet, but that's no use if I don't know what I'm looking for, and no algorithm knows that I might want to check out a book on unmade James Bond films, or some idiosyncratic Marvel comic from a decade ago that I missed completely. 

Every suburb used to have its own flavour of second hand bookstores, but so many of them have vanished in recent years, so now I judge neighbourhoods by the randomness of their library stacks. I always look at the graphic novels section, and the non-fiction section devoted to cinema, but I also like just ti wander. You never know what you're going to get.