I’m still “scriggling” through Make Way for Lucia, which though vastly entertaining is simply too vast altogether to make much headway on anything else. However, that shan’t prevent an update.
Personally, I enjoy acquiring a book nearly as much as reading it. That begins to explain the shelves and stacks and piles of books about the place, though maybe not totally. In the past I will admit to buying books just because they were there and I was there it seemed the right thing to do, though I never really expected to read them . . . However, these days I mostly try to just get books I plan to read, so apparently I plan at some point to read these ones:
The complete set of Facts On File Day By Day 1920s through 1990s–these are absolutely marvelous reference books, which means I never really need to read all of them, just dip into them when desired. They’ve got charts of categories on everything from sports to politics and what happened where on every day of each decade. Most decades are in two, quite large volumes, but for some odd reason the 1940s and 1950s ended up fitting into a single volume each. I got these from the library where I work after they were discarded. While I completely understand why they were not kept around (they’re pretty big and any really specific information required could probably be found on the internet), they are just so fun I felt kind of bad for snatching them up as soon as they appeared on the book sale shelves. But only kind of . . .
A quantity of Penguin Classics, mostly by Graham Greene—all the books were 25% off prices ranging from 22 to 88 cents, so I couldn’t really help it. I did feel rather good for not buying all of them, just the ones that sounded possibly good. I’ve thus far read one of them (Bennett’s Grand Babylon Hotel), and I expect to pick up another one pretty soon.
A variety of theological reads—pushing the bounds of theology a bit, I can include in this Madeleine L’Engle’s Genesis Trilogy, which I’m nearly finished with, plus a book of her poetry and Ladder of Angels, her children’s storybook of Bible stories. Also with Wheaton Special Collection connections: Webber’s Ancient-Future Faith, Siegal’s Whalesong (ok, it’s a novel, but still), and Calvin Miller’s Table of Inwardness. L’Engle blurbed Understanding the Human Jesus, which would pair nicely with Borg & Wright’s The Meaning of Jesus. And to go along with my current Genesis emphasis, I picked up Enns’s Genesis for Normal People and a Lenten devotional entited Genesis of Grace. Foster’s Streams of Living Water is a bit less obviously linked to the rest, but it sounded interesting and possibly helpful.
A few random non-fiction works—Kolata’s Flu on the 1918 flu epidemic and Eagleton’s Literary Theory both piqued my interest. Probably less likely to be read straight through are the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes and Moers’s Literary Women, but the latter may be a good backdrop for Woolf’s Three Shillings, an extended essay I’d never heard of. Purchasing an early 1940s copy of Der Fuehrer will probably prove to be a mistake, but the idea intrigued me a lot; apparently the author was trying to convince Americans to enter the war before Pearl Harbor. Another Fine Math You’ve Gotten Me Into may also prove to be a little outside my scope as well, but it seemed fun at the time.
Two or three or four ARCs—I’ll admit it. I probably request more ARCs than I’ll ever review, so it’s good I don’t receive them all. In the past six or seven weeks alone I’ve gotten four and haven’t started any, though I keep planning to. If it weren’t for extenuating circumstances, I’d start The Winner’s Curse: the cover’s pretty grandiose, but the synopsis sounds interesting. But I am a little wary of dystopias at the moment and so am putting it off. I was probably overzealous in requesting The Weight of Blood, as it seems perhaps a little serial killer-esque, but perhaps not. I honestly don’t remember asking for The Divorce Papers, but it may be funny, at least in a satiric vein. Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy sounds pretty good, but having recently read Liesl & Po, I’d rather put it off to avoid unnecessary comparisons.
And some more novels and story collections—in reverse chronological order, I’ve added Joan Aiken’s The Serial Garden stories, Collected Stories by Carson McCullers (whose works I’ve never read but think I was once told I’d like . . . ), Lost & Found by Alan Dean Foster (a weird premise and a mostly unknown author, but hey, it was 25 cents!), Defending Jacob (I made the mistake of reading the last sentence, so now I’m not sure I want to read it), Simon de Beauvoir’s The Blood of Others (for next time I feel like being depressed, apparently), Dunnett’s Queens’ Play (I guess I want to get the whole series before starting it, or something), and Byatt’s Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (because I really did like The Children’s Book, even though I’ve not tried anything else of hers since).
In case anyone’s counting (like me, for instance), that makes more books than days this year. Um, hurrah? I’m not sure that’s promising for my dwindling shelf space . . . I’d like to just “blame” the larger sets, but they don’t really count for as much as the fun, impulsive “but it’s less than a dollar and I may never find a copy again!!1!” purchases. On the other hand, think of all the hours of fun I’ll have this year and into the future with these! Even if I end up only reading half or fewer, it’ll likely be worth the comparatively small monetary output. And just rereading the titles is pretty darn bliss-inspiring. So, hurrah, anyway!