New books, mooched books, library books. I like weeks like this. I finally received my package from the UK with four more books by Daphne Du Maurier. Just when I think surely I must now have them all, I discover I don't. This package brought me The King's General, Castle D'Or (a modern day retelling of the Tristan and Iseult tale), I'll Never Be Young Again, and Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer. I sometimes find it disconcerting when reading introductions to Du Maurier's books when the editor writes...I first read this when I was fourteen...I read Rebecca and Jamaica Inn in college or shortly thereafter. I guess I don't care if most people did read her as a young adult, I am happy to read her now. Besides I see people reading YA books all the time and writing about them. Needless to say I am looking forward to reading these.
While I shouldn't be buying books (and am going to try and be better...), I don't feel any guilt associated with mooching them. Fair game I figure. It is sort of like trading. I am happy to pass along books I have read and won't read again to a new reader. And the books I mooch I am getting practically free (only for the cost of mailing out a book from my inventory). Four books that I mooched recently came this week. I am happy to get a copy of Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette. I love reading about royalty (in terms of history, not the modern day sorts), and I find this period intriguing. Of course the movie opens next month (curious about how historically accurate it is). I thought the trailer was rather interesting, and it certainly looks quite opulent! I want to dive right into this biography now. I also mooched Antonia White's A Frost in May, which has long been something I have wanted to read. Patrick O'Brien came recommended by several people after I posted recently about Horatio Hornblower, and I lucked out by getting a copy of the first in the Aubrey/Maturin series, Master and Commander. Often I find myself picking up Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club at the bookstore, but then I inevitably put it back on the shelf. Mooching a copy is the best solution. I am always wary of reading books that have characters from real life in them, yet they are outside their normal environment (if that makes sense), but the story is fictional. Now I can give it a read at my leisure (no due dates), and if I find it isn't my thing, I will simply put it back up to be mooched. Can you tell I love this mooching idea?
And this is always the case. I went to the library expecting to pick up a book (that would be one and one only). So I thought I would browse, but didn't find anything that grabbed me (keeping in mind that I have plenty in my reading stack already...and unless it sounds absolutely sensational, it wasn't coming home with me), and ended up bringing home three books and a DVD (all were requests that had been waiting for me on the hold shelf). Psychiatry, psychiatry and a Victorian pastiche. I have heard various things about Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night. Has anyone read this one yet? The opening line reads, "After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper." Hmm. More atmosphere. Jed Rubenfeld's book, The Interpretation of Murder features Sigmund Freud on his one and only visit to America, and more murders. Yet more atmosphere. I have read all of Sebastian Faulks's novels, though his last one I found not as good as his previous work. I requested Human Traces on his name alone, without much knowledge to the content. Another tale of psychiatry. The inside flap reads in part, "From the squalor of Victorian lunatic asylums to the crowded lecture halls of academia, from the heights of the Sierra Madre in California to the plains of unexplored Africa, Human Traces--Sebastian Faulks's most ambitious work to date--is an absorbing novel that ventures to answer challenging questions of consciousness and science, and what it means to be human." It sounds very promising, but I guess I will see if it really follows through! Do you notice a trend to my reading? Someday I might actually choose a book to read that is set in contemporary times, but not yet...