So I’ve lately been itching to read “The Da Vinci Code” but not so itching to fork over any of my hard-earned Di Nero for Da Pleasure. I also wasn’t really eager to do the crapshoot that comes with traipsing around to the various city library branches (such as the Cahuenga Branch, pictured, on Santa Monica a couple blocks east of the Vermonica installation Cybele profiles below) hoping a copy would be available. So first I paid a visit to the Los Angeles Public Library website a couple weeks ago to peruse its online catalog and minimize my traipsing options by finding out who had what and where. Turns out at that time the closest branch with a copy was in that distant and foreign place known as Canoga Park. But I didn’t care how good a story it might tell, CP was a mountain range too far to go.

But ho! Little did I know (and pardon me for surely being way behind the times on this; hopefully I’m not the last person in town to discover it) that our city’s glorious public library system allows you to reserve a book online so that once it becomes available at the branch of your choosing they dial your digits and tell you to come on down!

Somewhat skeptical, I personally inaugurated this feature and sure enough the call came yesterday alerting me that the Cahuenga Branch had my copy ready and waiting, which I picked up after work without a hitch. Looks like the beginning of a beautiful symbiosis.