A few decades ago, when I was wondering how to support my writing habit, I thought about becoming a librarian. It seemed a perfect solution, certainly better than being a waitress.

If I was a librarian, when I wasn't writing I would be in a quiet place with books, helping readers and researchers find the right ones. Being a librarian would leave me at the end of a day relishing the importance of books and the reasons to write them.

Although I never mailed my application to librarian school, I continued to love libraries. It began early when, oddly enough, both libraries I went to in elementary and high school were once churches, maybe making me believe there was something reverent about reading.

As I look for books in Manhattan these days, I gravitate between the main branch of the New York Public Library, a grand temple of a library on Fifth Avenue, and the New York Society Library, a little uptown private library, which offers open stacks to roam around in, leading another user, Phyllis Rose, to write about reading an entire fiction shelf in The Shelf: From LEQ to LES.

So as a writer who has researched all her books in libraries large and small, my recommendation to writers and readers is to get to libraries to revive your love of written words.