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.

Went to my first book group meeting of the year tonight and what a good time it was. The group discussed A Thousand Bones by P.J. Parrish (click on title for my review) and the discussion was quite spirited as there were those who really liked the book and those (me included) who weren’t as wowed by it. Funny enough, we all agreed that it was one of our better discussions as opposed to when we all like the book.

A Thousand Bones is also my first choice in the First in a Series reading challenge so yay, one book down! I’ve got another book group meeting tomorrow night so I’ll let you know how that one goes.

In the meantime have you guys seen the Sorted Books Project? Very fun stuff to do with books and makes me want to re-arrange my shelves.

And, last but not least there’s a new issue of Estella’s Revenge. Go check it out!