Reading the Sunday Chicago Tribune

■ "Overdue state funds put libraries in bind"

The North Suburban Library System, which got only 42 percent of its funding and is waiting for about $900,000 from the state, has laid off 20 full- and part-time employees so it can use the remainder of the funds for delivery costs, according to its Web site. The system, which serves libraries in Cook, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties, currently doesn't even have an employee to answer the phones at its office in Wheeling.

Sloan said he is staying hopeful after state officials recently promised to release some money to them by the end of this year.

But Sloan and Calabrese-Berry warn they might have to make tough decisions regarding the delivery service for the immediate future if the money doesn't come.

Losing access to the interlibrary loan system would be... words fail me.

■ "Why need read many books at once?" *

"Which of these bookmarks are active?" a friend once asked me, surveying the sharp-edged towers with a dubious frown. I sensed his reproach: You couldn't possibly be reading so many books at the same time.

"All of them," was my smug reply.

It was true. I am never reading just one book. And to those who note that my job as a literary critic must require this splintering of focus, I can cheerfully report that I've always been this way. Even as a kid, I'd polish off a chapter of "Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster" (1954) and then move on to a paragraph of "A Wrinkle in Time" (1962), finally circling back around to renew my acquaintance with "My Side of the Mountain" (1959), which I'd temporarily abandoned in favor of "Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster" in the first place.

As someone with no fewer than eleven active bookmarks at this writing, I can happily report that I, too, "am never reading just one book."

■ "'A magical place'"

Balliett's three previous books — "Chasing Vermeer," "The Wright 3" and "The Calder Game" — have sold millions of copies and established her as one of the leading children's book authors in the world.

Three Oaks, a tiny Southwestern Michigan village of some 2,000 permanent residents, is the setting for Balliett's new book, a compelling story titled "The Danger Box," scheduled to be released this week. It is the story of a delightfully introspective and observant if visually impaired 12-year-old boy named Zoomy who lives with his grandparents and comes into possession of a mysterious diary.

So charmingly and evocatively does Balliett render the town — a place where "everybody always says hello" — that it is likely to compel many young readers to demand that their parents take them there for a visit. They, and their parents, will find a surprisingly lively cultural community.

Did you know that the wonderful Balliet had another book due out? (Related entry here.)

* Added later: This is more elegantly titled in the actual paper: "Book binge: As summer ends, a manifesto for reading many books at once."