Once again I am confronted with the age old daily problem of keeping with my reading plans. Oh well, it is definitely better to be deluged with good books(so that I can't properly decide which to pick up) rather than with nothing good to read at all! I have been trying to keep the library books down to a very small minimum--actually I tried to keep only a few needed to complete my library's winter reading program. But things went a bit awry when I decided The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits just wasn't what I wanted at the moment. I was then short on books, which of course required a stop at the library so I would have enough to complete my necessary five books (have finished two and am reading the third, Puccini's Ghosts by Morag Joss). I now have more than enough to choose from. Part of the problem was (of course) there were books waiting for me that had been in my queue (they always show up together you know), and I had grabbed a few new ones from the shelves as well.
So now here are the books I can choose from;You have already heard about Edna O'Brien's The Light of Evening and Christoph Peters' The Fabric of Night. Now I also have a copy of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, which everyone has been raving about. I have a feeling I will be starting that one very soon, as I have to see what all the commotion is about. To be honest all I even knew about the book is that "Death" narrates the story, which is set during WWII. Here is the description from the book jacket, if like me, you are also unfamiliar with it:
"Narrated by Death, Markus Zusak's groudbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl living outside of Munich in Nazi Germany. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist--books. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever they are to be found."
"With the help of her accordian-playing foster father, leisel learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement."
It sounds quite promising. The only downside is that the book I happen to have gotten was previously read by someone who apparently likes to eat while reading (the only thing I hate about library books...). I have been on quite a YA kick lately, and here are two more that I read about and picked up; Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt (a National Book Award finalist), where death again plays a role (not sure how I ended up with all these books starring "Death"), and The Minister's Daughter by Julie Hearn. The Zusak book is also a YA novel. Finally, one with a decidely classic slant to it that looked really interesting, Alessandro Baricco's An Iliad, which is a modern day retelling of Homer's The Iliad. Okay, I know I may be asking for trouble on that last title, purists of Homer's work will likely not go for this, but I thought it might possibly be a way of easing myself into reading Homer's work, which I have every intention of doing this year (I received nice editions of the Fagles' translation of The Iliad and The Odysssey in a boxed set for Christmas). It's a possibility anyway. In any case I surely now have enough good books to choose from, right.