One of my favorite summer time memories from my early childhood was climbing the big wide steps on the front of the Carnegie Library and the going down the stairs to the children's department. I would load up on books to get me by until next Saturday.
When I was nine we moved away from my hometown to a bigger city. The bookmobile came to our neighborhood each Friday and I was always ready to swap out my books.
When I was 13 we moved back home and I was able to return to my beloved old library. With its cool marble floors and shelves full of books--even across many of the windows--it was my cool, dim refuge on many hot summer days. Now instead of heading down the stairs I could explore all of the nooks and crannies.
As an adult my favorite libraries have usually been the kid-friendly ones and those that haven't thrown out all of the old books. My reading time has often been more scarce than I would like. As the kids get older the reading time is becoming easier to find. This summer I am getting thoroughly reacquainted with the joys of haunting the library shelves, browsing for an interesting book. I also cheat and browse the books at Barnes and Noble, writing down interesting titles to request from my library. (Don't feel sorry for B&N. I spend enough on books in a year to keep them plenty happy.)
I have been immersing myself in books. I always have several going at any given time. Right now I'm in the middle of The Perfect Man. I'm reading Jihad Incorporated; A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style; the poetry of John Donne; and Cite Your Sources. Just before Deathly Hallows I read 'Tis. I didn't like it as well as Angela's Ashes. In one of those quirks of library hold lists, when I checked my account tonight I was first in the holds queue for eight books, three of them total fluffy chick lit. That always seems to happen. Guess I'll just have to read faster!
4 comments:
Speaking of fluffy chick-lit, did I ever tell you about Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Fields?
It's a great Pride & Prejudice knock-off set in modern England while a play based on P&P is being produced.
Light, quick, and thoroughly engrossing (and reasonably close to the original plot...).
The author (I want to say her last name is Naathan) wrote several chick-lit books that are updated versions of Austen, and they were all fun, unlike the dreadful Christian-lit adaptations, which made my skin crawl.
I'll have to look for that. My favorite P&P spin offs are still the books about Darcy (An Assembly Such as This, et al.)by Pamela Aidan.
Are those good, then? The only "sequel" I could bring myself to read was the one by Berdoll, and two chapters into that killed any further desire for P&P sequels.
The author missed the charm that was the *lack* of TMI...
Bethany, Patrick and I all three loved the Aidan books. They are completely in harmony with P&P. I enjoyed P&P more when I read it again after reading these.
(One of them---I think it's the second--bogs down a bit at one point, but not for long.)
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