Leaving the library, I saw a school bus with the script MIL Transit on its side. What a great idea! Where do you suppose they send all those pesky mother-in-laws, and where do I sign mine up?
I finished a book while I was waiting at the doctor’s today. Poor planning on my part – but they wanted another doctor to check out this previously unfascinating mole on my back, and I had already finished the book I brought. Do you suppose many other people feel panic when they are faced with a, oh, I don’t know, ten minute wait without something to read? Or is it just me? Fortunately there were some intriguing posters of various skin diseases posted on the examining room wall, they kept me busy for the ten minutes.
I finished the third Kate Martinelli mystery. I say I am not in love, but I must be, because while I argue that they are formulaic and inconsistent, I plan to go buy the fourth as soon as I get my cash this week. Also, I am halfway through In Cold Blood. At a party on Sunday, one of the other guests said that Truman Capote knew how to wear a hat. It never occurred to me that you could NOT know how to wear a hat, but now I have to go Google the dude and see what he looked like. His writing style is oddly old-fashioned yet likeable. I find I don’t really care about any of the characters, they might just as well have come out of a Dick and Jane text for all their depth so far, but I think I’d really like to have sat down and had a few drinks with Mr. Capote.
Quick, what do these books have in common?
The Botany of Desire – Michael Pollan
The Falls – Joyce Carol Oates
A Return to Modesty – Wendy Shalit
One Day The Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead – Clare Dudman
Housekeeping – Marilynne Robinson
The Shark Chronicles – John Musick and Beverly McMillan
FBI Girl – Maura Conlon-McIvor
Gracefully Insane – Alex Beam
Under the Banner of Heaven – Jon Krakauer
Maggots, Murder, and Men – Dr Zakaria Erzinclioglu
Bitten – Pamela Nagami
Truth and Beauty – Ann Patchett
If you guessed that these are the books I staggered out of the library with, after fifteen minutes sans children, you would be correct. Quite the eclectic collection, it looks like I participated in one of those shopping sprees where you have a grocery cart and five minutes. Mostly in the medical section (you find the most interesting ones in the RA-RC section, for you librarian types out there…), but really a fair scattering of other topics, fiction and non. Unlike at a bookstore, I am almost completely indiscriminate in my take-home choices, since they are FREE. Well, except I never ever get them back on time, but in theory they are free. So if I don’t like a book, or don’t get to it, or get halfway thru and am fed up with it, there is no guilt. Isn’t this a wonderful country? God bless the USA and its free library system.
3 comments:
Screw Disneyworld--the library is the happiest place on earth. I think we should get the ALA to put that on posters, don't you?
I had a fit waiting for this evening because it was raining and I couldn't hold my bag, my drink, my umbrella and my book all at the same time. Stupid rain. So I stood there and thought about my book (The Death of an Ordinary Man). Not about the book itself, nestled in my bag next to the books and articles I should be reading for class, but about the main character, and whether I care enough about him to find out what happens. I decided to skip it--the book is well written, but it's all too obviously Baby Boomer-ish for me, like the movie American Beauty was. It turns me off.
I'm going to start Stephen Elliott's Happy Baby when I go to bed, which should have been hours ago, since I have to get up at 4:15 for tomorrow's early pledge shift. Sigh.
If I can drag myself to the library after work, I can pick up The Easy Hour: A Novel of Liesure, which I think Mimi recommended, Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602, a biography of Teddy Roosevelt for my Teddy to read for school, and the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban DVD.
There's an episode of the PBS series Arthur where he raps (rather ill-advisedly, I admit) "Having fun/isn't hard/when you've got a library card!" Arthur's so fly.
Careful you don't say that too loud. Arthur's fly, Buster promotes gay marriage...who knows what DW is up to, for all we know she's a gangbanger...obviously the world of children's television's going to hell in a handbasket. What's next, PBS reality shows?
In a complete non sequitur (is there anything other than a complete non sequitur? Can you have half-non-sequitur?), I can't find it online but my favorite cartoon of all time is a Mother Goose and Grimm. Some random person is floating, in a basket, down a river of fire towards a giant gate labelled Welcome to Hell. His thought balloon reads, "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
I've seen that--classic!
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