Restraint Is Key

Many things came due this week, so I was very library oriented in my reading. I'm trying to read books before they are due the first time, instead of relying on a double-renew system, but this means I need to only check out one or two books at a time now. So far this is hard for me. I appear to believe that books for book clubs or challenges don't take time to read and only budget for books I pick up on impulse.

My hold shelf loot was one book:


Updraft, Fran. The next Sword and Laser book. It's a YA, I think, so I'm hoping for a fast read.

And since the hold shelf was so thin, I got one book from browsing:


And I got the next audio book for my Reading my Library Quest:


I'm often glad to pick a book that's already on my TBR list; it makes me feel like I'm getting double the reading in. Best when it's a book I actually want to read, but OK even when it's a book I want to have read. Kingsolver is usually one of the former, but I'll deal it this one ends up being one of the later.

That's a total of 35 things out, which is too many. I'll go look at the Library Loot which is at Silly Little Mischief this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button (that pile of books up at the top) - and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. 

Library Questing

Here I document any progress I make in my Quest to read a book from every shelf in my local library.

Left For Dead, J.A. Jance. I'm on disc 8 and enjoying it a lot; the different plot threads are starting to come together. I'm pretty sure I know who dunnit, although I'm not sure how some connections are going to be made. One more disc to go and then I'll move into the Kingsolver.

I finished Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. This is a biography of Jefferson that focusses on his political ambitions and dealings -- he had vibrant principals but an even stronger drive towards control which helped him be practical. This all leads into his performance as president, where he still believed in the importance of limiting presidential power but didn't let that stop him from doing what he thought needed to be done (buy Louisiana and nail down the deed before the French could retract). It also explains his ability to keep mental shields up between his thoughts and writings on slavery while not only relying on it for his income but having a long lasting, intimate relationship with an enslaved woman and refusing to admit that her children had anything to do with him. And that wraps up Large Print.

Moving into general fiction, I'll be starting Danial Abraham's The Spider War this week. This is an author I've been hearing good things about; of course I managed to pick up the fifth and final book in his latest series so if I like this one I will be highly motivated to seek out his other stuff. (Hey, I thought he wrote in quartets, so that this was the start of something new. I can't keep up with authors I haven't started keeping up with yet!)