Books 9/12/05
I love the library. Love it. There are few things in life I enjoy more than walking through the library, with no time limit and no particular book in mind. I love the quiet, the solitude, the sheer number of books. There are books about every concievable subject, millions of words, just waiting for someone to pick them up. I love the feeling of freedom, of anticipation, as I scan the shelves and wait for a title, a name, a cover design to jump out at me.
Call me crazy if you wish, but a shelf with a book on it that I’m going to end up taking home has a little bit of a glow to it. It’s brighter than shelves with no books I’m interested in, which all seem a little dull. I also have a tendency to find a couple of shelves that hold a bunch of books that I want- today it was the M-N shelves. After walking through the shelves for an hour empty handed (actually, that’s a lie, I already had a book by Shirley Jackson), I picked up 5 books from those shelves, 2 by Kim Newman, and one each by Patrick McGrath, W. Somerset Maugham, and Steve Martin.
Then I wandered over to the W shelf and picked up a book by Jack Womack, who I love, and one by Fay Weldon, which I thought I’d read before, but now as I’m reading it, realize that I haven’t. It’s The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, and I guess I thought I’d read it since I’ve seen the movie so many times. It’s one of my guilty pleasure movies- I feel like I shouldn’t like it as much as I do, but I watch it everytime I see it’s on TV. There’s just something appealing about it. I went through a Fay Weldon phase a while back, and I guess I just assumed I read it then. But I didn’t, and I’m enjoying it very much now. Ruth in the book is different than Ruth in the movie, and I can’t wait to see how she develops over the course of the book.
Yay library. And yay my sweet husband for driving me over there on his lunch break so I didn’t have to take the bus, which would have taken even longer than usual as I was going to take a different route and discovered on the way back that I was totally off as to where the bus stop was.
Oh, and I finished Castle in the Air. It was awesome. It takes a while to show how it’s a sequel to Howl’s, but it’s super good. I enjoyed it very much.
Current total: 67
Just finished: Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones
Currently reading: The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon