Books, Books, Books

I finished a book last night and was suddenly faced with a book shortage.  I had nothing on hold at the library and, worse, nothing waiting to be read at home.  Not to mention the fact that the library doesn't even open until noon and my morning walk with a friend got canceled.  (Don't fret, Ranger still got to go for a walk.  However, it was only an hour long rather than the three or so hours it takes to walk with our friend, once you factor in walking to the meeting point and back home.  And, yes, it was a walk this morning because I'm supposed to cross train on Wednesdays.  Happy now?  Can I go back to my story?)

So, here I was, at 10:00am, walk done, breakfast made, eaten and cleaned up, house totally clean (okay, not so much on that one, but it's not in bad shape and the laundry is all caught up, at least), and a new resolve not to have so much screen time.  What to do?  Sure, Davan and I could have played a game or something, but I was not in the mood.  I was wanting a good book.

We headed off to Powell's Bookstore with a pad of paper and a pen.  Or, at least, I had a pad of paper and a pen.  Davan bummed a pencil and a piece of paper off of me once we got there.  Anyway, we went to browse.  We spent an hour and a half roaming Powell's (this smaller one on Hawthorne, not City of Books one downtown), writing down titles that caught our respective eyes.  We've both found that we discover a great many more books we want to read when browsing book stores than when browsing the library, particularly here at our new library, which, while still nice and able to get any book from our nice big library system, is much smaller than what we had in Gresham.

We came home with nice long lists that we each then spent some time putting holds on.  And, it turned out, a couple of each of ours were in at our library, so we went and picked them up.  Soon, we'll be flooded with books to read.  Whew.  What a relief. 

So, what's on our lists?  Well, mine, at least, are quite an eclectic list and I have no real idea if they're good, but here are some of them:

The Man Who Cycled the World by Mark Beaumont
Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell
At Home by Bill Bryson
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister
The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card
Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler

And, ahem, it did turn out one book I'd previously put on hold was in.  Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs.  This is the one I've actually started (although I haven't gotten very far yet between making lunch, walking the dog again, gathering chestnuts with Davan and preparing them to roast, then figuring out they were actually horse chestnuts and, thus, not eatable, but then finding out about a real chestnut tree close by that we're going to try to harvest from another day because today she has a new friend from Do Jump over - she's an exchange student from Switzerland, cool, no? and writing this blog entry).  This is the third book in her Mercy Thompson series.  I'm enjoying them in a feeling kind of guilty way.  After all, they're about werewolves and vampires and such - so faddy these days.  Still, they're compelling reads for me so far.  We'll see how long that lasts, as I often find that I start to loose interest in series after a few.

On Davan's list?  Well, let me see if she's willing to share.  She is, but she didn't write down authors.  Here are some of her titles:

Time Riders
The Friendship Doll
Shadow Children (this one has lots of exclamation marks by it - now I'm going to have to look it up)
Awaken
The Happiness Project (I've read this and liked it - check it out, but didn't know it was on her list until now)
The Golden Compass (I've read this one, too, but, at the time didn't think Davan was ready for it)
Things Not Seen
Nowhere Girl

We used to read a lot of the same things.  Of course, when she was young, I read her everything.  But, then, when she was an independent reader, she started with books that didn't really interest me, so we didn't overlap on everything, but still read some together and the like.  Next, though, came a phase where we read almost all of the same things.  We read a lot of book group books because we were in three different book groups together.  And, for whatever reason, I seemed to read mostly young adult books during that time.  It was nice to pass books back and forth and to talk about them.

Now, though, we're back to mostly independent reading.  I say back to, but, really, it's new just how much separate we are in our reading.  If nothing else, we were always listening to something together in the car.  Now, though, we don't drive much and don't have an ongoing car book.  I've been, gasp, reading a lot of adult books.  Most of Davan's choices aren't interesting me again.  Most of what I'm reading she's not interested in or ready for.

One of the authors I've recently revisited that Davan isn't ready for yet, but is interested in from what I've told her, is Octavia Butler, who's one of my all time favorite authors.  Two of my particular favorites by her are Fledgling and The Parable of the Sower.  If your haven't read them, you should!  Well, unless you're 13 and sensitive to suffering, then you might want to wait a few years for The Parable of the Sower.  And, if you're 13 and sensitive to what originally seems like it might be inappropriate sex (although not too graphic), then you might want to wait a few years for Fledgling.  Yeah, okay, Octavia Butler writes for mature audiences.  If you're a mature reader, though, pick them up!

We're booked up and ready to roll.  I think I'll go read a bit before starting dinner.  Who-hoo!