Fresh Beginnings (No Endings!)

I forgot to take a picture of my new home libary, but I did go there today, and I got some books.

This back-up library (my main library is being renovated) is small and intimate. I'm forcing my kids to do the library Teen Challenge this summer, so I dragged them over to introduce themselves to a librarian (one of the "badges"). We also determined that the library floor will not open to hide mortally embarrassed teens, no matter how hard they wish. Win win!

I picked up a few things from the hold shelf, and lucked into a copy of Charlaine Harris's new book:



I just finished the audio to the Pollifax book on the road home, but I'd like to skim the pages since I missed some stuff dealing with the passengers while listening. Both boys were delighted to see the Zita, and I think have finished it already.

I also pulled some digital books from the library this week:



The Princess Bride is really for my younger son, since I've lent out our copy, and after a false start on the fifty pages of introduction, he seems to enjoy it.

So this week I had some books planned out. Again, sadly, these have nothing to do with my new books. Instead I'm concentrating on my recs from my book club and anything the library wants back soon:

Friday: Mrs Pollifax and the Second Thief  (finished)
Saturday: Escape From Mr Lemoncello's Library (library wants this back)
Sunday: Skin Dive (library wants this back)
Monday: Gregor the Overlander (school book club rec)
Tuesday: Indigo Springs (library wants this back)
Wednesday: Love, Stargirl (School book club rec)
Thursday: Divergent (library wants this back, school rec, and my son is reading it so I have to catch up)




 I'll go sign in to 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-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. 

Making a Plan and Checking It Twice

I need to replace my library picture as it is now a giant construction site as our town pulls it into conformity with 21st Century ideas of fashion, safety, and library configuration. The back-up library doesn't actually have any books, just a place for your holds to rest, and healthy as that might be for my normal over-indulgence, it just doesn't work for me.

So I've shifted to my primary back-up library, but the picture our county has for it is the dreamy mock-up they hope will replace THAT sometime next year. I may have to trundle about with a camera to document my library love. Renton Highlands still has books, although I stuck to my hold shelf. Well, I did search through all the tempting QuickPicks for anything set in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado or Connecticut, but came up empty.

Now that I have the idea of starting one book a day for the rest of the summer (as opposed to last year, where the goal was to FINISH a book each day) I have to figure out what I'm reading. And since I'm also doing the library-due-date dance, I have to make sure I finish some books on time. Of course, I'm unlikely to actually complete a book a day, especially with the stuff I have planned for next week, so it's a good thing I've replaced my dainty book bag with a sturdy, voluminous tote.

So this week I had some books planned out:

Monday: Derik's Bane
Tuesday: Mrs Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish
Wednesday: Prisoner B-3087
Thursday: Ouran High School Host Club 1

And I mostly kept to that, so that I could go the library and turn in all of those (well, not Derik's Bane, because that was an e-book and will just quietly go poof from my NOOK).  And then I went into the library and picked up a few books, which I will ignore and instead read:

Friday: Death's Daughter, Amber Benson. Vaginal Fantasy online book club pick. NOOK.
Saturday: Crown of Renewal, Elizabeth Moon. Because I like her stuff.
Sunday: Archangel's Storm, Nalini Singh. I skipped this and read the latest.
Monday: A Rising Thunder, David Weber. Because Weber is fun.
Tuesday: Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Haden Elgin. This is from my TBR bookcase.
Wednesday: Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh, R.L. LaFevers. Finishing off this series.
Thursday: Skin Dive, Ava Gray. Another NOOK pick.

If somehow I don't need to start Skin Dive (I'm trying to limit myself to only a few open NOOK books at a time), I have The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay as a back-up.

What did I bring home? And wouldn't it be different if I caught up enough on my library pile that the books I was planning to read had some relation to the books I brought home with such eager anticipation? I should really try that sometime...


The Marrige Bureau for Rich People, Farahad Zama. This is our August book pick, so I don't want to read it for a few weeks.

Reading in the Wild, Donalyn Miller. How a teacher inspires kids to love reading. I'm not a teacher, but I like kids to love reading, and I also like book recommendations, so I'll probably enjoy this book. In my dream job I'd wander around schools and match kids to books.

A Web of Air, Philip Reeve. I liked the first book in this series, so I got the second. X has already read it and says it's good. I'll get to it in August sometime.

Divergent, Veronica Roth. Well, this was a surprise. I thought my spot on the holds list was about three weeks away. It's already been stolen by X anyway, but I'd better schedule it for next week sometime.

I also got two digital books sometime this week. I'll go sign in to Library Loot which is at Captive Reader this week to see what everyone else is getting.

Lovely Day at the Library

All the kids declined to accompany me but I managed to have a pleasant yet restrained time at the library anyway. I ogled books all over but only brought homes the ones on my hold shelf.

See, I clearly have far more books out right now than I can possibly read before the library calls them home, and I hate letting go a book before I'm ready. Luckily the 48 Hour Book Challenge is next weekend; maybe that will help me plow through a pile of must-reads.

I picked up:

• The Fire Lord's Lover, Kathryne Kennedy. June Vaginal Fantasy pick.
• Joshua's Song, Joan Harlow. This is for my kid, who was interested in the Boston Molasses Disaster.
• Follow Follow, Marilyn Singer. Another book of reverso poems. I'm looking forward to this.
• The Four Corners of the Sky, Michael Malone. This is on my TBR list, although from three years ago and I have no memory of why I put it there. I just have to trust myself.

I have a total of 57 things out on my library cards, which is a bit excessive. This is actually down from last week, because I had forgotten about the books out from the city library. Oops. But at least three are CD's, and I'm hoping the graphic novels will go quickly. But I'm definitely over my age, so no book buying for me this week.

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. And I think I'll sign up at Tynga's Stacking the Shelves, which asks for all the books acquired, which this week is just the library stuff.

Library Troubles and I'm Here Again!

I hesitate to say "I'm back" because who knows when I'll post next, but I'm here to celebrate my library visit.  I had a fun and restrained time at the library, which is good because a few weeks ago I had to kill time waiting for kids at two different places, and I slaughtered the minutes both times at libraries with alluring shelves that left me with many tempting pages at hand.

Today I only picked up one extra book to go with the four books on my hold shelf, and two holds are really for my kids, not me. So I shouldn't really count them. And it was time to refresh my Reading My Library options, so that was another six books. Hmm. Well, it could been worse -- it could have been raining!

From my hold shelf and the new arrivals I picked up:

• Clementine and the Spring Trip, Sara Pennypacker. I just saw this on the book store and put it on my TBR list, and there it was in New Arrivals! My library rocks.
• Endgame, Ann Aguirre. The last in the Sarantha Jax series, which for some reason my library does not have in its e-book collection, so I'm switching formats here.
• Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, Maria Semple. Our next book club book (not this one, but the next one.)
• One Dead Spy, Nathan Hale. My eighth grader just read a Nathan Hale book from the Cybils list and he requested any others, so I got this for him.
• The Dark Tide, Stephen Puleo. My sixth grader is doing a disaster report so we got this, although it came one day too late as he is now at his dad's place writing the report.

In my Reading My Library Quest I have entered the last block of Juvenile shelves. I tend to try to fill in holes in my 50-states challenge with these books so I'm swimming against my natural preference for fantasy and picking more realistic fiction, especially if the description tells me the country or state. From the six shelves housing authors from Ru - Sh I selected:

• Ordinary Magic, Caitlen Rubino-Bradley. I've seen this talked about a few times.
• The Dreamer, Pam Munoz Ryan. I think this is on my TBR list, so bonus. Also, South America.
• The White Giraffe, Lauren St. John. I need more Africa books.
• Night of the Howling Dogs, Graham Salisbury. I like this author, and his books are set in Hawaii.
• Smells Like Dog, Suzanne Selfors. Cute dog picture, and it's a farm boy so I'm hoping Midwest.
• Blue Jasmine, Kashmira Sheth. Iowa City is Iowa, right?

I have a total of 56 things out on my library cards, which is a bit excessive, especially since only a few are CDs (4)  or short books (about 6) or things I got for my kids (about 3). So I forbade myself from buying any books, and I was really strict too. Sometimes I really hate me because I'm so mean.

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. And I think I'll sign up at Tynga's Stacking the Shelves, which asks for all the books acquired, which this week is just the library stuff.

Library Confessions

Again this week I returned two books unread, and now I have about five to finish before next week. Also, one is due but I'm only 100 pages from the end, so I'll sneak it in tomorrow. Whew!

I talked my sons into accompanying me to the library, but then they said they only meant into the parking lot, so I went on my own. I had two books on hold (both titles from Perrin's A Child's Delight, a collection of essays about overlooked children's books), but since I was on my own I paused to see if any of the Quick Pick books were from states missing from my read-across-America challenge.

Eight books later they sent a search party in for me.

I came home with ten books, although one was bought from the library sale table:

• The Rat-Catcher's Daughter, Laurence Housman. Perrin recommends the other brother.
• The Vision of Stephen, Lolah Burford. Another rec.
• Hiss of Death, by Rita Mae Brown. Takes place in Virginia.
• Hot Water, Erin Brockovich. South Carolina.
• Hell Is Empty, Craig Johnson. Wyoming
• Chihuahua of the Baskervilles, Esri Allbritten. Colorado.
• Wild Wild Death, Casey Daniels. New Mexico.
• Rock Bottom, Erin Brockovich. West Virginia.
• The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh. Not southern after all, but maybe a literary fiction?
• All Seeing Eye, Rob Thurman. Looked like fun, although I'm not sure where it's set. Hey, I could get lucky!

I also got three CDs, chosen in haste without looking at the covers. In the car I discovered that we'll be listening to Bruce Springsteen, the soundtrack to Rio, and something called The Healing Harp. One of these will not be popular.

This left me with 37 items out on my card, under my age but still not very good. I'd really like to bring that number down to the 20's. I'm avoiding the hot picks table for a while, even if they have a rare state. Unless it's Rhode Island, which is really hard.

Library trip!

This week I had to return several books unread, mainly because I spent too much time having fun on vacation and not enough time reading the stuff that was absolutely positively due!  So I'm trying not to check out more until I'm all caught up, but the library thought one of my holds was ready (it wasn't) and then they dangled some stuff in front of me.

I came home with three books, although one was bought from the library sale table:

• Casket of Souls, Lynn Flewelling. On my TBR list, and on the tempt-me shelves.
• On the Island, Tracey Garvis Graves. I think this one takes place in South America. Wait, no, the Maldives -- is that Africa (frantic map checking). Can I count it for Oceanea?
• Steal the Dragon, Patricia Briggs. A lot of her books are comfort reads for me.

I also got three CDs, but I forget what they are since I left them in the car.

This left me with 33 items out on my card, WAY under my age, so I can go buy a book if I want. I think I'll hoard this prize until I see something I really really want.

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.