OK, first a confession.

I love to read. Books, magazines, newspapers, brochures, ad inserts, billboards, cereal boxes, well you get the idea. I love to read. Anything.

On our recent road trip to California we had three drivers and took two-hour turns driving. Whenever one of us was not the driver, the other two read books. That meant four hours of virtually uninterrupted reading until the next time we had to drive. I was in heaven. I finished five novels on the trip.

Give me a good book and I am a happy camper. Oh yeah, I love to read while camping, too. Or anywhere else. And every night before I go to sleep.

Hello, I am Chuck, and I am addicted to reading.

I have had this problem since I was a young kid. On vacations with my family across the country, I had a stash of Hardy Boys mysteries to read along the way. While some parents had to beg their children to read, mine had to beg me to stop having my head down and into a book and look out the car window at the beautiful countryside.

Which I did. For a minute or two. Before returning to the adventures of Frank and Joe.

But, I digress.

You are probably a reader as well. I mean, after all, you are reading this column, aren’t you?

As an avid reader it would follow that I love libraries. And I do. I mean, that is where they have all the books. And the cool part is, they let you read them for free.

Here in beautiful Faribault County we are blessed with many things. One of those is having a lot of great libraries. Even our very small towns have some pretty impressive libraries.

I think that means I might not be the only avid reader living here.

Not only do the libraries have current books, they have computers to use, books on tapes, movies, and of course, my favorite, newspapers to read.

And while we would prefer that you purchase your copy of the Faribault County Register to read, I am happy that you read it no matter how you get your hands on one.

And that includes making a trip to the library to peruse the Register and the other newspapers they have on hand.

As if having all that free stuff like books and newspapers is not enough, the libraries all host events, put on summer reading programs for kids, even have some fun classes for folks from time to time.

One good example of this would be the BEA Reads program some of the libraries in the Blue Earth area have gone together to do for the last four years. The librarians choose a book and try to have as many people read it as possible. They then develop a series of programs dealing with the book.

This year the book is “Wonder.” You can read all about the book and the BEA Reads events in Register reporter Katie Mullaly’s story on page 2 of this week’s Faribault County Register. Which of course, you are holding in your hands reading at this very moment.

The libraries will host book discussion nights, showings of the movie based on the book, and have a special guest speaker at each of the libraries and at the school. The speaker is Steve Bensen, who is married to a Blue Earth woman, Casey Barnes. I know I am interested to hear his story.

Bensen was born with the same Treacher Collins Syndrome as the protagonist in the book “Wonder,” Auggie. He will talk about his dealing with this all of his life.

I urge you to take advantage of this program, which the librarians are calling “Wonder Days.” Read the book, there are more than 30 copies circulating the Blue Earth, Winnebago, Elmore area. When you finish the book, you are asked to pass it on to someone else a friend, co-worker, relative, etc. You can also return it to the library and they will send it out again to someone else.

Then make it to one of the discussion, movie or speaker nights. If you stop at the library, you can learn more and get a copy of the book.

In fact, I would urge you to take advantage of visiting your local library whenever you can, and check out all the things they have going on.

Including all those free books to take home and read.

It is the best deal in town.