Thursday, February 11, 2010

Bag o' Books

Anything is cute and snappy with the o' in it, right?


Exhibit A

I go to my tiny local library twice a week and write while my little guy is in preschool, so I'm not tempted to do the dishes. Haha! Like that would EVER happen.

This has been fantastic because now I tend to get my books back on time and thus pay less fines ( I try to look at fines as a charitable donation to support the book-reading public, but somehow fines still feel punitive).

I've gotten a bit out of control. I have a whopping 50 books out right now. I know. Before you tell me I'm a book hoarder, I will say that probably 30-35 of them are books for my kids (we made a pilgramage to the downtown library recently). I will be sad to see some of them go back- especially the picture book 'Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs' by Giles Andreae. And some are for my hubby. I find it easier to have one account where all of the books I have sworn to protect and return are listed in one place.

Our library has a limit of sixty books and I have finally met that number! Fifty out plus ten waiting on the requested shelf. (I was reading up on agents a few days ago and pulled up my library account and requested a bunch of the agents' favorite books. These books tend to be high quality, but not all of them are according to my taste. So I won't read all of them, but it's informative, nonetheless.) If I was one day late per book that would cost $12.00. That's very charitable.

I'm still slogging through 'Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrel' by Susanna Clark, studying the dialogue. I love the humorous footnotes, but, man, it's long. I could have finished ten other books in the time I've been sipping away at this one.

I've been reading "Making the Perfect Pitch" by Katharine Sands (good, but not necessary if you read agent blogs) and am excited about starting 'Soulless' by Gail Carriger (never read steampunk before, unless you count 20,000 leagues) and 'The Godfather of Kathmandu' by John Burdett (which I picked out for my hubby but it looks really interesting and I didn't see any f-bombs when I thumbed through it, so we'll see). Hubby is slogging through HP7 and I'll have plenty of time to read it before he starts if I cheat on 'JS and MR. N'.

Update- Godfather of Kathmandu, really interesting, engaging narrator who is a detective/consigliere for a Thai mob boss and a devout (really) Buddhist. He spends a fair amount of time in the seedy parts of town investigating a murder of someone with a fondness for working girls. Too bad for me. I'd suggest passing if you're squeamish about mentions of sexual practices (no in the room sex scenes) and what sounds like a very honest rendering of what that life is like. What I read was so very funny and informative (about Buddhism and Thai culture, etc.). Over the line for my tastes, though. 

I used to never read more than one book at a time, but I don't stay up until three am to finish something if I'm dabbling in multiple books, so it's kind of freeing. I guess I have no choice but to return some picture books. The kids'll never know why!

Anybody else excited about the third "Hunger Games" book? The cover is very blue. I was surprised that there was no splash of yellow on it, but what do I know? You can check out the Scholastic blog for more details and to see all the covers side by side. I highly recommend; I stayed up really late to read these books, and so did hubby.

Okay, more on my mind, but I'll save it for later. Bye for now!

5 comments:

  1. Very excited about MOCKINGJAY (although I didn't realize it had a title or cover already), and I loved, loved, loved SOULLESS - for about the first hundred pages. Turns out, there are some pretty lengthy sex scenes in it. I had to take it back to the library unfinished:( (But that may have just been me and my uber-sensitivity.)

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  2. Nice to know about soulless, Krista. I'm uber-sensitive also, so I'll spare myself the grief. Too bad! It looked really cute and I liked the first chapter. Sigh. I love some light romance, though.

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  3. 60 books? *thud* You're killing library workers everywhere! Tell me you're returning them all at the same time! ;-)

    My husband thinks it's strange that I read as many as five books at once. He doesn't understand how I can keep track, but for me, it's a lot like watching TV. He watches different episodes every night and can keep up from week to week!

    Sometimes I'm in the mood for fiction, sometimes, it's non-fiction.

    You have a blast.

    And yes, late fees are punitive. We in the library chuckle evilly over our calculators at the end of every day as we tabulate the fines [insert evil laugh of your choice here].

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  5. Teresa- Sometimes I check them out and don't even take them to my car. I just dump them in the return bin outside. (Insert my own evil laugh)

    I updated on 'The Godfather of Kathmandu' above.

    And no, I don't return them all at once. I can never find them all at once, but I've only lost one item in the past two years, a DVD which I found one day after declaring it lost and paying for it. Bummer.

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