Do you know what happens when life gets a little bit hectic and you feel like you are barely keeping your head above water? I'll tell you what happens. You don't log into your Google Reader account for a few days and then when you do you discover there are more than 225 posts just waiting to be read. It's not a pretty sight. Actually all those bookish posts are a very pretty sight indeed, but knowing they are going to have to wait another day or so until the weekend makes you feel like you are really are ready to sink and you had better start swimming and stop treading water.
So on days like this sharing library books seems like a perfect solution. Let me amend that. A sampling of library books. Books make me feel warm and cozy and considering how frigid it has been outside this week, I need all the books I can get. Mindless posts do have their high points. And I like sharing new books that I am excited about and can't wait to read (or try to read anyway). I've picked the books that are higher up on my stack and will save the others for later.
From top to bottom. Alexis M. Smith is a new to me author, but I spotted her book Glaciers on my library's virtual new books list, click click, and voilá it's mine for the next three weeks. The story revolves around Isabel a twenty-something thrift store shopper. It's the story of one day in her life "in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska." Sounds good, yes?
Gillespie and I by Jane Harris has finally been published here in the US (and in paperback). I snapped it right up and have already started reading. "Infused with rich period detail, shot through with sly humor, and featuring a memorable cast of characters, Gillespie and I is an absorbing, atmospheric tale of one young woman's friendship with a volatile artist and her place in the controversy that consumes him--a tour de force from one of the emerging names of modern fiction." This totally appeals to me at the moment! I really liked her first book, The Observations. I wonder if this will make the Orange Prize longlist?
Women and Children First: The Fiction of Two World Wars by Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig. I just brought this one home yesterday, a new ILL arrival I had been looking forward to. It is a survey of the literature. Can't wait to dip into this one and will do so with pencil and notebook in hand. More about this one soon, I suspect.
Another impulse choice from the virtual list, Eli Gottlieb's The Face Thief. Lots of accolades for Gottlieb's earlier books. "Gottlieb introduces the mystery of the charismatic Margot, a promising journalist who morphs--with panache--from a high-achieving affluent twentysomething into a grifter making her living preying on the weaknesses of men." This promises to be a suspenseful, psychological tale.
Kathryn Miller Haines writes mysteries set in WWII America, but The Girl is Murder is a YA novel that I came across on the Edgar Award nominee list. I hope to read it when I finish The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson. Like her other books, it also has a NYC wartime setting.
And last but not least Leela's Book by Alice Albinia. This is a "multithreaded epic tale that encompasses divine saga and familial discord and introduces an unforgettable heroine." It's set mainly in Delhi, India. India seems like a good destination for a book at the moment, as it has been a while since I last visited there.
I've got a long weekend to look forward to as tomorrow is a vacation day for me. I hope to finally get caught up on emails and blog reading, and then spend a little time tucked under my electric blanket reading since we've got subzero temperatures forecast this weekend. Brr. Maybe I need a book with a hot, sultry setting to get my mind off the snow that isn't going to melt anytime soon it seems.