I was on several stalled trains today. I was also in several libraries that denied me my copies of Austenland. I feel that fate has determined what was going to happen to me today--the voice of the gods was speaking, and I sat on the green line, and then on the orange line, obedient to their whims.
I did, almost accidentally, check out a few library books today. I got A Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver (who is, for the record, a woman). She wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin, which was an amazing, disturbing, perfectly constructed novel, one of the most thoughtful and enjoyable books I've ever read that had almost zero truly sympathetic or likable characters, including the narrator. This new one, Post-Birthday has, I believe, a sort of Sliding Doors thing going on, with a pivotal moment and then two different possible futures stemming from that.
The other book I picked up was The Last Witchfinder, which appears to be an historical novel about a woman whose father executes women as witches in England in the 1600s, and who is determined to stop him. The only problem here is that I have it on a strict 14-day loan, no renewals, and, though it appears from the outside to be a normal size and shape, it weighs nine thousand pounds and is over 500 pages long. This is officially something I have "gotten myself into." It's my first check out from my new College Library, though, so I'm now officially engaging in the community.
Anyway, at the rate I'm going, I'll be reading almost nothing but The Evaluation and Measurement of Library Services for at least three days. I don't know how some of these people are doing this with a full time job on the side. Power to them, and luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment