Library Explosion

Wow, is the King County Library System efficient. Remember how I put a bunch of book on hold last week to jump start my Best of the Best reading? I expected books to come dribbling in over the next few weeks, but instead I got a huge jump this week. Oops. I'd better start reading.

I went on my own to get the enormous pile, hoping to come back with the kids, but life interfered. Actually, they are old enough to get used to a more normal library pattern, going every few weeks during school. Or something.

On the hold shelf I found a stack of Best books, as well as the next Dragonbreath, all the missing Hamster Detective books, another pick from my to-read list, and a book/CD combo that looked intriguing:

• Dragonbreath 6: Revenge of the Horned Bunnies, Ursula Vernon. I proudly showed this to my sons, also fans, and they smugly said they had read it in New York, with their dad. Humph.
• And Then There Were Gnomes
• The Ferret's a Foot
• Fish You Were Here, all by Colleen AF Venable, showing the further adventures of Sasspants, Pet Shop Private Eye. 
• The Worst Band in the Universe, Graeme Base, a picture book/audio CD combo.
• Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, James Hirsh. Biography from my TBR list.
• Thor: The Mighty Avenger 2.  Here starts the Best Books avalanche.
• How They Croaked (Audio). This is also a Cybils book, which I read last year and didn't review, so bonus!
• Wandering Son, Shimura Takako. Manga, so I hope it reads fast. I need help here.
• The Scorpio Races, Maggie Stiefvater. I've been wanting to read this for ages.
• Sugar Changed the World, another Best Book from my to-read list.
• Zahra's Paradise. I took the advice for slow readers and got a lot of graphic books.
• Jane, April Lindner. Retelling of Jane Eyre, without zombies.
• Beauty Queens, Libby Bray. Unfortunately, this doesn't count -- it was the audio book that won.
• Young Fredle, Cynthia Voigt. Ditto. This is why I made my own list. Although I'll read them and try to get the audios; I rarely enjoy an audio if I haven't read the book first. Something about being a control freak, I think.

And the Seattle Library stepped up with a book my by to-read list that King County didn't have:

• Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, Dorothy Roberts. You may notice that my to-read books are rather intellectual. That is because the cheesy ones get read first and don't have time to float to the bottom of the list, where I explicitly summon them from the library. You won't find me picking up a Charlaine Harris book because it was on my TBR list, for example.

This brings me to a total of 56, wait, 57 items out on my card, plus a lot of ebooks that I'm in denial about. That's actually even more than the age the 5K organizers a few weeks ago thought I was, so I need to take action. I have made a bargain with myself that if my library exposure is less than my age, I can buy a book that week. And there's a book I want to get next week, so I have to return a dozen or so things. A baker's dozen. Plus one. Clearly it's time to review everything and also read a lot of the graphic novels, comic books, and picture books.  I'll go share my Library Loot at the event co-hosted by Claire from the Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, where all the library addicts compare their treasures.