As I do every new year, I always say I’m going to try and limit my book purchases in the coming year and usually that little resolution gets broken pretty quickly. I’m quite impressed at myself for having made it through the first week but I couldn’t hold back on that “Add to shopping cart” button on Amazon any longer and I bought my first book of the year on Monday.

Today I got Zeno’s Conscience by Italo Svevo which is one of my challenge reads and a read for a book group as well. I am going to try and keep track of my book purchases this year because I’m really curious how many books I buy a year. I’m assuming a lot.

So has everyone already made their first book purchase of the year?

Today was also my first day back to the bookbinding studio after a three week break. I was so out of it that I even forgot to take my apron and now my jeans are covered in glue. Oh well, the exciting part is that I finished my rounded spine book and it’s just now under a weight for the next 24 hours so it will be all nice and set. I loved how it turned out and I promise I’ll post pictures soon.

I got a couple of belated Christmas presents this weekend and wouldn’t you know it, I’ve already read these books. I just hope this doesn’t scare my family and friends into never giving me any more books you know.

One book I received was Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman. I’ve already returned it but didn’t have time to look for a new book so now I have a little gift card burning a hole in my purse. I can’t wait to go back to the bookstore to choose something else.

The other book was Ines of My Soul but the Spanish edition. I just read this (book review to come) and didn’t like it enough that I’d re-read it but I really wish I’d read the Spanish version instead. It’s really a lovely edition so I’ll keep this one on my bookshelf.

Anyway, pulling out Ex Libris from my bookshelves I started to look through some of the “confessions” and really enjoyed re-reading the essay on Marrying Libraries. In my case, my husband and I have a lot of books but we don’t typically read the same books so when we got married we didn’t have to go through our books to see if we had duplicates. Even if we did, chances are he’d have the book in German, but the other day I noticed something that made me laugh. We have three copies of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse – in Spanish, English and German. Now we just need to read the book. Ha,ha.