When you love to read, buying books is a hard habit to break. Although I should put a moratorium on it, I can't seem to stop myself. Recently, I thought I might be able to scale back on purchases by getting a library card. After a few visits and online holdings searches, I am convinced there are no books in my local branch.
Last month, I received a few book shipments.
I really enjoyed The Wasp Factory
, our discussion selection for next month. Typing "Iain Banks" into Bookins produced only one title, Whit
, so I ordered it. Based on a recommendation from Zonker, who I still see as a connoisseur of SF because he knows way more about it than I do, I just added The Player of Games
to my wish list. It's out of print, so we'll see if I manage to get it.
Another Bookins acquisition was Happiness by Will Ferguson
, which is Brian's selection for June's discussion. I have read scattered passages, and it's pretty funny.
Originally published in France, I had stumbled across a review of Tom McCarthy's Remainder
somewhere on the Internet. I nearly finished it yesterday at the laundromat, but laundromat reading and me don't go very well together. Two trips ago, I had to suffer through the ravings of Crazy Couple. This time, I was extremely self-conscious due to unfriendly stares from a bible thumper, likely caused by the Darwin t-shirt I was wearing. In any case, I ordered Remainder from Amazon after LitKicks gushed over it, a debut paperback original, being reviewed The New York Times.
If you read litblogs, you couldn't miss the coverage of Fermin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage
. It was a Litblog Co-op title and a contender in The Morning News' Tournament of Books. Isabella of Magnificent Octopus enjoyed it, and I based my purchase on her good taste in reading.
When I posted about the trailer for Intoxicated by John Barlow, I had mentioned typos and grammatical errors in his email. The author contacted me again and rightly pointed out that what I thought was a slip of grammar actually wasn't. My quick and imperfect reading skills were at fault, so I stand humbly corrected.
Intoxicated
, a tale of addiction and madness in the Victorian countryside, hit the right target market with me. As I age, my bones increasingly creak and my muscles exponentially atrophy. I've learned valuable lessons in ensuring I can get out of bed in the morning, and now I mostly read about raucous behavior rather than engage in it. I began the book with much enthusiasm and appreciated its Charlotte Bronte references, but I have had to put it aside for required (and more lucrative) reading. I plan to return to it as soon as I get through the next two or three books.
