From the stacks...January jackpot edition

Captive Reader and Intrepid Reader host a weekly Library Loot event where bloggers share their library finds. Since I like to break rules, I participate not once a week.


I was on my way up to Evanston Saturday...but I had to stop at the library. Especially after they didn't mark my technically late book as overdue. Props.

2011 has kind of rocked so far (minus my illness, but that gave me time to read, so maybe that was cool too), and my first library trip kept my luck going.

First, I picked up some young adult lit...


Neil Gaiman is awesome. We know this. I have already finished Neverwhere since Saturday. I highly recommend. Swim the Fly is the next book for the Teachers Who Don't Teach book club. Sometimes it is nice to read about summer when it is cold and nasty out.

Next, I found two of my favorite books on the shelf...


At one point I will own both Book Lusts (plus the YA version), but right now I just have to take notes from the wise recommendations the pages hold. If you ever don't know what to read, please consult either of these volumes.

Last I picked up some books from my to-read list...


J. V. Jones somehow published the fourth offering from her Sword of Shadows series without my knowing it. I'm just starting it now and I'm sooo happy to be back ensconced in a tale that I don't want to end.

The Little Stranger keeps popping up on blogs that I like and trust, so I must read it. Sea of Poppies is one of those books that I choose because I like the cover. We'll see if I like the book as much.

My new-found treasures were heavy, but worth ever ounce.

"A library book, I imagine, is a happy book."
Cornelia Funke

From the stacks...November edition

Captive Reader and Intrepid Reader host a weekly Library Loot event where bloggers share their library finds. Since I like to break rules, I participate not once a week and with my own button.

That being said, I always love seeing what they've taken out from the library since we all know what you get when you are in the midst of library euphoria is not always congruent with what you actually read once you get it all home.


After buying out Nordstrom at their semi-annual sale, and before meeting up with the ladies for teachers who don't teach book club, I made a pit stop at the library. I forked over Maria Edgeworth and picked up slightly lighter fair (although - to be fair - I think Edgeworth was the fluff of her day).

1. I Don't Care About Your Band - Julie Klausner
This is the one I decided to start this morning. Tales of hilarious love woe? Sounds great. She goes after men like men are supposed to go after women? Sounds like me. Sign me up.

2. Everything is Going to be Great - Rachel Shukert
I've been craving funny lately (as seen by choice #1). Funny + embarrassing + travel = fingers crossed chuckles.

3. The Funeral Makers - Cathie Pelletier
A dark comedy that takes place in rural Maine? Crazy family antics? This choice comes from a madre recommendation. I can only hope to one day read as many books as she has.

Two out of three books are nonfiction? Who am I becoming...

"But more than anything, as a little girl, I wanted to be exactly like Miss Piggy."
Julie Klausner

From the stacks...September edition

I'm beginning to think my new neighborhood neighbor, Carls, and I are clones.

The other day, post hair appointment date with Ams, I ran into Carls randomly on the street.

Last night, I went to forage at the library and who did I find filling out a card application...but Carls.

This means she witnessed me at the library. Which means she saw me filling my arms with books on CD for nighttime listening, on hold books, and our state-certified-people-who-aren't-doing-what-they're-certified-in-not-by-choice book club selection (The House of the Scorpion...ooo), and then attempting to cram them all in my purse...

Since we are clones it means she won't judge, right?

Anyways, remember how I was all excited to read The Passage (vampire sci-fi, not sea voyage)? Well, the madre read it (first, like usual) and while she was pumped at the beginning, with 200 pages left it became underwhelming.

I feel her pain because that is how I'm feeling about The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. At first I was on the fence because I didn't like any of the characters and some of them gave me misogynistic Rabbit, Run flashbacks. But then the realness (if dislike) of the characters kept me reading. But now, with 100 pages left, I find myself skimming and only really reading what interests me every so often. And I find that I'm not missing much. This might mean that I won't read Freedom.

However, I have different criteria for books on CD (mainly that the voice lulls me to sleep), so I picked up The Passage on CD...29 CD's to be precise.

No worries on the massive book front as I still picked up a gigantic book: a collection of one of Doris Lessing's science fiction series. I am usually anti giant collection tomes that will take me months to get through when I could simply get the separate books, but the dangerous pull of having everything in one place was so tempting...so we will see how it goes.

"We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth."
John Lubbock

From the stacks, August edition

This isn't turning out how I wanted. From the stacks is supposed to show people how awesome the library is. Except awful/hilarious things keep happening every time I go there. It is like when you bring home a new boyfriend and your family is total shenanigans. The libs is my family and all the new patrons flocking to the libs thanks to the recession are my boy/girlfriend(s). I keep wanting to say, "Libs, get it together, people are WATCHING."

Only first I have to say it to myself.

Episode I - my fault
Having finished Mockingjay, I wanted another quick summer read. The madre has been reading both The Passage and Just Kids and let me know that The Passage has a sci-fi element. What? I didn't know that!

I'd had it on hold for ages and ages and it was finally in at the library. Excited, I made a special trip.

Only, grabbing my book from the shelf I came eye to eye with a giant ship. Are the vampires going to be making a sea voyage? That doesn't make sense. And why does this book look well-read, it is a new book. Only it wasn't. Because it wasn't the book I wanted.

But I was already at the library, the book was in my hands, and I felt ashamed that I put the COMPLETELY WRONG book on hold. So I checked it out and skulked home.


Episode II - not my fault
I've been a little distracted lately thanks to a very sickly Rocious. This means my after work time is taken up with either cleaning up vomit, cradling a Roc, or traumatically taking her to the vet. On my way to pick her up from an overnight observation, I stopped at the library to return overdue books and pay my small fine.

Please note: I don't mind paying fines. I consider them a donation to the libs; however, I do mind rudeness when I am overwhelmed with nervousness about Rocious while also trying to do right by the libs.

There was a long line when I got there. I waited patiently (although nervously because every minute that ticked by was another minute Rocious was in kitten jail) as people checked out, a woman payed a $14 (wow) fine, blah blah blah and finally it was almost my turn. The woman in front of me was checking out one book. The lib employee (not to be confused with my favorite lib man who is awesome and very speedy and I always try to brighten his day with jokes because I know people get angst-y at the libs) said to her, "I could move the line quicker if more were like you and they didn't have fines."

Then I approached 100% ready with everything to return and pay my fine. I tell him this is what I want to do and he says to the woman next to me, "See? Like this."

WHAT?

This transaction can be incredibly fast. But not when I hand over my books to return and they are slowly entered into the computer, slowly sorted, and one by one taken to three different sections behind the desk. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I am waiting with my card ready because I know it is needed to look up my fine. Then I am waiting with my money out while slowly the clipboard is brought out to mark down my transaction.

And yet it is me, the person who wants to give the library money who is in the wrong. I didn't realize I am only allowed to go to the library to check out one book.

Thanks library. After smiling and being polite to your mean employee I'm now going to go pick up my cat who hates the vet so much that she doesn't eat there, pees on herself when they try to put her in her carrier, and then is so despondent that she doesn't even cry on the way home (which I know she hates). I'll then hover around her wiping down her fur and imploring her to do anything besides morosely stare at me. Then I won't sleep because I'm constantly vigilant in case Roc decides to start eating. Because I somehow believe something I have done is killing my cat.

I got home only to realize there were two other books due that day which would be overdue the next, but I was too busy wrenching my cat's mouth open to force-feed her appetite stimulant to care that I would redo this entire experience again.

Maybe next time the libs employee will get me to cry.

"Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of the library."
Barbara Tuchman

From the stacks...June II

I've told Jabba that I would read Possession with her. Alas, I have been thwarted thus far (don't worry Jabba, I'm starting the reading online and I'll have the book on Tuesday). First I put it on hold, to HOLD it until I could get to my neighborhood library. Except when I got to my library it wasn't on the shelf and it wasn't on the hold shelf and the library employee hated life and so was not helpful. FINE.

And so I made a specific trip down to Harold Washington Library, obviously checking online first.

I love the library - and I want you to love it too - but sometimes it hates me. Like every time I go to the HW. I've been kicked out. I've been shushed. I've been prodded by security.

Regardless of past experience, I went to the HW...and IT WASN'T THERE.

It is not possible that that many patrons want to read A. S. Byatt.

In a book/library depression I began a literary binge. It was like supermarket sweep except it was me and the fiction section. My choices, like my frantic perusing, went in alphabetical order.

1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I love the dark way Russians, and specifically D write. This book fit my mood perfectly.

2. Middlemarch by George Eliot. Picking this up actually lightened my mood as I remembered that I confuse MiddleMARCH and MiddleSEX. People kept talking about reading MiddleSEX and I kept thinking why on earth haven't I heard about Victorian author Eliot writing about transgenders?

3. Dubliners by James Joyce. I don't know why I got this. Perhaps it is because Joyce is so polarizing that I wanted to read him for myself and decide which side I'm on.

4. The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing. This week I reread How I Finally Lost My Heart and fell in love with Lessing all over again. Also, my choices were starting to weigh me down and this was the lightest of the Lessings I still need to read.

5. Death of a Valentine by M. C. Beaton. At the end of the stacks is a row of new fiction. I browsed but nothing caught my eye. But then, I saw Beaton. You can read my friend Beaton in probably two hours and once again be in the Highlands with village constable Hamish Macbeth. The perfect comfort read.


Oh, and P.S. since security always gives me issues I literally hid my current library book in my purse by creating a false bottom so I wouldn't have to explain why I was bringing a library book I had already checked out into the library and then getting more books but not returning the first.

Who knew a love of reading could turn so duplicitous.

"Come, and take choice of all my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow."
Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

From the stacks...June

While I love owning books as much as the next bibliophile, I am also a huge supporter of libraries since if we don't use our libraries, we will lose them. And I can't have that.

Eva, at A Striped Armchair, posts her Library Loot every week. While I've posted about libs shenanigans and lib selections, I never thought of making a button for it!

So now I've made my own Chicago specific button, and when I go to the libs I will post what I snag. Maybe it will make you want to stop by your own libs. Perhaps my library selections will even tell us something about me...like that I'm drawn to pretty book jackets...kind of like how I'm drawn to jazz hands...


Sometimes I choose library books by what Amazon tells me I would like (judging from my prior purchases). This is how I came to go find the following at my libs.

1. The Photographer - Emmanuel Guibert. This graphic novel chronicles a photographer's experience of heading into 1986 Afghanistan with doctors without borders. The format is half photographs, half illustrations, and 100 percent interesting.

2. Fallen Angels - Walter Dean Myers. This novel tells the tale of one man's experience in Vietnam. I don't know if I will be able to handle the violence and death, but it is one of 100 most frequently challenged library books...which means I must try it.

"Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them!"
Arnold Lobel