Sorry, no Lost in the Stacks post today, but I'll (hopefully) have one ready for you next Friday. Since we are going to get yet more snow and it is still cold here, I guess I shall find a quiet corner and a warm beverage and a book or two to keep my mind off the fact that even though spring is here, it isn't here really.
First up is William McPherson's Testing the Current. I'm in the home stretch, with just over fifty pages to go. I've spent lots of (contented) time with this book in the past week and I have gone beyond that point of no return with it--you know when you really can't put the book down until you see how it all finally plays out? I'm there.
I suspect I'll squeeze in a little short story reading as well. Added to the Persephone Book of Short Stories is 6 Shorts. The winner of The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award has been announced and Junot Diaz's "Miss Lora" is the winner. It's the first story in this collection, which includes all six from the shortlist. I am looking forward to reading them. My library loans out Kindles and will download patron requests, and of course I had to request the book (which is very inexpensive by the way). The other stories are by Mark Haddon, Sarah Hall, Cynan Jones, Toby Litt and Ali Smith. Yay for short stories.
The clock is ticking on these next two books. I will be spending a good chunk of my reading time next week with both of them (in hopes I can actually finish before discussion starts on each--but in any case will finish them even if I am a little tardy). Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day is for Caroline's Literature and War Readalong--discussion begins March 28.
I've been dipping into Richard Mabey's Nature Cure all week and am enjoying it immensely. I can sympathize so well with what he went through. He's such an astute and perceptive writer and I love the idea of nature as a cure. I'm reading this for Cornflower's Book Group, and discussion begins March 30.
And then for something a little different and totally unplanned (it's good to give in to whims sometimes...okay, so I do it all the time, what can I say). I have Litlove to thank for the reading tip. I went to my library's catalog (which is now Worldcat, so the world's libraries are literally at my fingertips) thinking I might be able to interlibrary loan the book (it hasn't yet been published in the US), only to discover that it is a book my library has available as an ebook. What luck! So now I am reading Beatrice Hitchman's Petite Mort as well (my Nook sits perfectly on the elliptical machine's little shelf at the gym, freeing up my hands...so convenient). Both it and the 6 Shorts are two week loans so they get bumped up the pile ahead of a few other books. Library books are always a little problematic in this way, but what can you do?
So, what are you reading this weekend? Are you, like me, looking for somewhere warm to read, or has spring arrived in your part of the world? If it has, please send a little good weather my way!