Don't forget to visit the bookstore

If you're a library regular, you probably know about the bookstore run by Friends of the Library near the entrances of the Archibald and Biane libraries. You probably know that books are never more than $2 and magazines, some quite recent, are 25 cents. Every time I'm near there, I pick up a New Yorker with whatever change is in my purse. The cartoons alone are worth that much.

What you probably don't know is the pocket change adds up to $100,000 a year. Last week, the Friends wrote a $25,000 check to the library, the second of four checks expected this year.

Bookstore manager Linda Skjonsby recently showed me the back of the Archibald store, where donations from residents piled high. There was everything from Twilight books to cassette tapes. The magazines filled the racks; I stopped counting the different kinds after I hit 100. Skjonsby, who has been volunteering at the bookstore for more than a decade, explained the magazines are organized by gender -- women's magazines on one side and men's on the other. The New Yorker, like other news publications, was of course, in the men's section. Suddenly I felt so unfeminine.