My library card has saved me $1,330 — and I want more
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My library card has saved me $1,330 — and I want more
Chicago Public Library tells patrons exactly what they’ve saved. I’ve become obsessed with running up the amount
Published September 6, 2026 9:00AM (EDT)
In June, I became briefly preoccupied with the question of what kind of reader I intended to be that summer. This happens to me periodically, usually when the weather changes and I begin imagining that a new season might also produce a new personality. Perhaps I would read slim English novels in the park. Perhaps I would develop a sudden expertise in close-up magic. Perhaps, for reasons unclear even to me, I would become very interested in rural schools.
The Chicago Public Library was happy to indulge all three possibilities.
I began gently optimizing my library use the way someone might optimize a coffee-shop punch card. Except the library had devised a vastly superior arrangement: There was nothing I had to purchase in order to qualify.
One afternoon I came home with “Magic Is Dead: My Journey Into the World’s Most Secretive Society of Magicians,” “Village........
