I had to go to the library this afternoon to pick up a book for my mystery book group meeting in September but I managed to walk away with a few others. I shouldn’t have picked those up as I have so many new books to read but I couldn’t help it. They sounded interesting and why not?

Anyway, I got The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke. This is for my new mystery book group that I’ve joined in Austin. You know me, I don’t like to read series in the middle and this is the 16th in the series. Yikes. I think I’m going to have to get over my “must-start-at-the-beginning-of-a-series” mode.

I also checked out B As in Beirut by Iman Humaydan Younes. This book is about the lives of four women who live in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. I also noticed that this is published by an imprint I’m not familiar with, Interlink Books. I had a quick look at their web site and I already like what I see.

Because I always like a good Victorian setting, I couldn’t walk away without A Tissue of Lies by Tessa Barclay. I also picked up Skim by Mariko Tamaki, which means I may actually finish my Graphic Novels Challenge soon.

Of course I also picked up the free copy of BookPage but I think I’ve already heard of all the books mentioned from you guys. Gotta love that.

Anyway, I’m still behind on my emails and blog reading so I apologize. I had planned to make a dent into that today but I found my energies going into dealing with car insurance stuff. You see, on the weekend a big car decided to park close to my small car and then they couldn’t get out very easily. When they tried, my poor car got some small scratches. It’s a pain to deal with this but at least the girls waited for me to get to my car to give me their insurance info. More book talk tomorrow.

I hope everyone had a great weekend. I did… Just a bit tired from all the running around and hanging out with my cousin but it was a lot of fun. So, I am very behind on my blog reading, emails and such but I promise to catch up soon.

For now, I’ll leave you with a picture of my latest bookbinding creation. This is a book made with the secret Belgian binding technique.

You can’t really see the binding because I added navy leather to cover it but since the leather is pressed on the effect is one of a raised look on the spine from the individual threads, making it quite nice and decorative. I am working on a new book and will leave the binding exposed so you can see it. The book measures 4 1/4 by 3 1/4 so it’s perfect to stash away in a pocket.

Aside from learning this binding, the good thing about working on this book was that I got to use a drill to make the holes in the wood I used for the panels. That is something I never thought I would ever do (I’m such a girl!). I also had to work with a paring machine again to thin out my leather. Finally, I used marbled paper for the end papers.

I need to take better pictures of this and add it to my finished book projects page but I’ll save that for another day. For now, it’s time I relaxed with some good books.