My poor TBR stacks are going to be in trouble soon. It seems that this year I just can’t stop visiting the library. Ah well, that’s a problem I don’t mind having, you know.
So want to hear what I found on my latest visit?
- There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. What a title right? This is a collection of short stories which “blend the miraculous with the macabre”. Sounds creepy good.
- The House of Bilqis by Azhar Abidi. A haunting novel about mother and son and the emotional consequences of leaving home. Ooh, after reading Brookner’s Leaving Home where it was a daughter leaving her mother this should be a good way to see the flip side.
- Borges and the Eternal Orangutans by Luis Fernando Verissimo. Vogelstein is a loner who has always lived among books. Suddenly, fate grabs hold of his insignificant life and carries him off to Buenos Aires, to a conference on Edgar Allan Poe. How could I resist this premise.
- The Ballad of West Tenth Street by Marjorie Kernan. Full of lower Manhattan’s eccentricities, this captivating debut peeks in on the family of a late rock icon, Ree Hollander, in its West 10th Street townhouse.
- The Best American Poetry 2009. I hope I’ll find some new poets/poems to call favorites.
I also still have a bunch of other books I’d checked out last week or so. Oh my, I need to read faster so I won’t have to return all of this unread! That happens to you too right?
Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I’m going to Dallas for a quick visit but stay tuned for my next post because I’ve got a little giveaway to announce.
12 Comments
Happy reading and hope you have a great weekend ahead, Iliana! 🙂
My local library has a free outdoor bookshelf open 24/7. I’ve had many good finds there. Hope you have a good time in Dallas. Aloha from Rob
Soem great titles in there, ‘There once was a woman…’ seems to be becoming a blogging sensation, but I’m very interested in the orangutans book.
I just love the library too. You cannot go in without coming out with some books. Enjoy.
Don’t you wish you could read five or six books a week? I do. The great thing about the library is that it is like a free shopping spree. You can go crazy in there, and if you don’t get through all your books, you can just renew or come back and get them again later!
I have the Ludmilla Petrushevskaya book sitting at home unread. Hopefully I get to it soon.
As for returning library books unread, yes, I do it! I hate to not read them, but sometimes it just isn’t possible.
Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, I love it! I hope the book is as good as the title. Have a great weekend!
Our local branch was closed for more than two years for renovations (which has turned out very nicely but meant a 45 minute walk to the next closest branch in the meantime) so since it reopened last summer I have been an incorrigible borrower. I try to think stats-y when I’m standing there in front of the New Books section (doing the mental math about how many books I’m currently reading, how many I managed to read last month in total, how many I could actually read in the 7-day period in which these particular books are due) but figuring isn’t my strength: my reader’s heart gets in the way and I bring them home and serve them cocoa and toast.
I always seem to check out more books than I have the time to read. I guess I am always hoping that somehow my busy schedule will allow me to have more reading time! Plus, I can’t stand to narrow my choices to just a few! Hope you enjoy your selections.
Wow, you got my attention with the title of that short story collection!
Enjoy your library books, Iliana.
My TBR shelves are seriously in trouble too! The Petrushevskaya sounds really interesting; I think I might try to get a copy.
I currently have 36 library books out (which I can justify because we have been pounded with the blizzard slamming the East Coast and can look forward to another foot or so of snow). Still, it is a little ridiculous. I love the comment about the shopping spree nature of the library. I look at it as people like us help to booth circulation stats, which hopefully betters the library in the long run.