Hobbies ≠ Reading [As I Feel, Aimlessly (4)]

I like books.
However, when asked about my hobbies, I have never answered "reading." This is because I have always felt a sense of discomfort in saying or writing "hobbies = reading."

There are four municipal libraries in the city where I live.
Except for the new library that opened in 2021, the other three are quite old, and many of the books in their collections were published a long time ago.
On the other hand, the new library has many books published in the last few years, making it the perfect place to borrow books that have been introduced on social media and the like. It was a place I had wanted to visit someday.

However, the new library is located in the center of the city, and for me, living in the countryside on the outskirts of the city, it was becoming like a distant, unreachable land.

Two and a half years since I first longed to go, the chance to visit that library suddenly arrived.

I needed something that I couldn't buy in the countryside. Something I couldn't just order online, but wanted to see for myself before purchasing. And just like that, I had a reason to head into the city.

First, I finished my shopping, and then I headed to the library. When the automatic doors at the main entrance opened, a bright space, completely different from the library in my memory, spread out before me.

As I wandered through the library, looking around, for some reason I smelled coffee and toast. It was a cafe that was integrated with the library without any walls. It seems you can enjoy drinks in the library as long as they are in a container with a lid. What a wonderful space; if there weren't other people around, I would want to live there.

Relying on the shelf numbers I had searched for in advance, I wandered around the library looking for the books I was curious about. Other people seemed used to the library, and they looked very calm and at home. Even though no one was probably looking at me, I felt as if I were being watched like an outsider. Being in a new place makes me nervous, and I feel that way, my body temperature rising. I was so flustered that I could hear the line "It's wheezing, it's hot, it's hot" in the voice of Hiroko Moriguchi, not Riho Makise.

Having only had information from the covers, I was taken aback by the unexpected thickness of the books I found. Still, I picked them up and flipped through the pages... (It looks harder to read than I thought). And then, I quietly returned them to the shelf...

Since I had come all the way to this place I had longed for, I felt it would be a waste to go home without borrowing anything, so I wandered around the library again, stopped, picked up books that caught my eye, flipped through them, and returned them to the shelves, over and over again.

Before long, I realized that I was finding comfort in this repetitive act.

The books I picked up ranged from books on writing techniques to novels, essays, and photography-related books. My areas of interest were being laid bare. Also, my criteria for picking them up were the title, the cover design, and intuition (I'm a bit of a teenager for saying that, but I think it's kind of cool). It's also fun to think about what drew me to them.

From the ones I picked up and flipped through, I decided to choose three to borrow. Two of the three were books I was encountering for the first time.

This might be the reason why, even when I find a book I'm interested in, I don't immediately order it online, but instead go to a library or bookstore. It's to prevent mismatches and to encounter unknown books. I realized that I like to quietly get excited during the time I'm exposed to stimulation that far exceeds the information I can get at home.

If I were to say I like going to libraries and bookstores, it might sound better than saying I like reading. It sounds more intellectual, too. But while I do like reading books, I realized once again that I like looking at them even more. I like picking out books that catch my eye from the shelves and flipping through them. Now, for this habit-like hobby, what should I write in the hobby section of a resume instead of reading?