Today my library's Winter Reading Program ended. I got my mug! Such little things make me happy. The back of the mug has a quote from To Kill a Mockingbird, "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience" (Atticus Finch). I think it is a pretty cool mug, and I am glad that I finally read To Kill a Mockingbird as this ties things together quite nicely. My other reading choices were all library books. Along with Harper Lee's novel I read: The Little Balloonist by Linda Donn (nice little story set in Napoleon's France about the first lady hot air balloonist!), Silk by Alessandro Baricco (short, but only so-so--I liked the twist at the end though), Catherwood by Marly Youmans (another so-so read--I liked the descriptions of 17th c. America--I can't imagine being lost and not seeing another human being for weeks and weeks--inconceivable these days), and lastly Madeleine is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (I am fudging a bit as I am not quite finished with this one--I am trying to like it, but it is an odd book!--I hope to force myself to finish it tonight...). I returned a stack of library books (as I hope to concentrate on my own for a while), and I only came home with one new one. I was looking for Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason as I read such good review of it at Reading Matters (the US edition has a different title), but the library's copy was lost (so I have to wait and get it from a different branch). Instead I found Before the Frost by Henning Mankell. This one is set in Sweden. Now I better get back to Madeleine and her bizarre dreams...