Libraries are the best

A couple of weeks ago I decided to read John Green’s book, Everything is Tuberculosis, in part as research for the novel I am writing about a tuberculosis outbreak. Initially I considered buying it, but remembered the weak state of my finances and checked the Toronto Public Library system. A library 150 metres away had it available immediately. Yesterday was the due day, so I swung by to drop of the unfinished book. The librarian asked if I was done with it, and I explained that my effort to renew it was rejected for a short-loan book. She offered to check it out again for me immediately and — when I showed her a place the book was tearing — she offered to fix it immediately and then check it out for me. While waiting I spotted Harriet Rix’s The Genius of Trees and leafed forward to the chapter on symbiosis with fungi. This is the passage that prompted me to take the second book home too: Later, more mycelium networks can be seen in Devonian trees, in the first ectomycorrhizal…