Thursday, June 11, 2009

Library Loot, an OMG Moment...and Books!


So...yesterday I got a call that a couple of my book requests had come in. I had already promised the girlies an afternoon at the library, so it all worked out great! Our library system has been doing a bunch of upgrades, and where I used to be able to log in from home, at the moment I can't. I can log in from one of the library terminals, and that's usually what I do. I look up the books I want and place the holds myself. I can renew online and check my account.


Well...with all the requests I had put in coming through and a few random stops at the library in the past couple weeks, I didn't realize how many books I actually had checked out until yesterday. 27 books, folks!! 27! Now, how in the world am I going to read 27 @&^%$ books in the next few weeks?? Impossible! I don't know what I was thinking. And they all look so good! So, today, I moved them all to one place and have them stacked in the order I'm going to read them. I really need to get a little more organized, I think! So...would you like to see what the library faeries brought to me through ILL (or that random pickup) this week??




Nymeth wrote the most excellent review for I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (of course, ALL her reviews are excellent!). I wrote about this on my Book Coveting post a week ago. Figured I should get it while I could!












With the Once Upon a Time Challenge drawing to a close, I decided I wanted to read as much fantasy as I could. Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia Wrede fits for Fairy Tale Fantasy and I've wanted to read it for ages!







Another fantasy/fairy tale fiction book for the Once Upon a Time Challenge. Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is another book that has been on my wish list for years!











The Vanishing Hitchhiker by Jan Harold Brunvand is a non-fiction book about Urban Legends of the scary kind!! I love this stuff, and I was trying to find something to fit into the Folklore category of the Once Upon a Time!









While searching for the Vanishing Hitchhiker, I stumbled across this little book by the same author: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid by Jan Harold Brunvand is another book on scary urban legends. I think these 2 books are going to be fun!









While in Non-ficiton mode, I also picked up a couple of others for the Non-Fiction Five Challenge. The first is Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff. It's a memoir and first-hand experience about drug addiction. I know Chris reviewed this book awhile back and it looks fantastic!









The other Non-fiction book I picked up was 21: Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich. There was just a movie about this and I think it looks excellent!











The Dead & the Gone is the second book by Susan Beth Pfeffer about the shifting of the moon and it's consequences. I read Life as We Knew It last year for the End of the World Challenge and I wanted to read the second one for this year's challenge.











The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler was a nominee for the Printz Award a few years ago. I'm trying to read my way through the list. And frankly, how can you pass up a shiny, pretty book like this with such an uber-cool title??








Finally, Black Juice by Margo Lanagan was another Printz honor book in 2006. I don't know much about it, but it was there and I snapped it up!!








The girlies were excited to go to the library. As tired as I was yesterday, the chance to foster my love of reading with my kids totally outweighed my need for sleep!! Over the weekend, the girls were playing "school". I think it's hilarious because I used to make my brother play school with me. He HATED school, and he really hated playing with me. We usually ended up fighting, and I'd play by myself. No wonder he thought I was a geek!! Oh well, I loved school. Anyway..totally off track with that. The girls wanted to read some "learning" books, so we hit up the computers and found a whole stack of books about volcanoes, the stars/sun/moon, dinosaurs and "snow" bears. They were amazed that I could find each book they wanted to read (I'm a Dewey Decimal whiz kid!) And it was fun. We had a great time, topped off by Blizzards from DQ. I guess if you count the books the girls have, we've probably got close to 50 books from Alpha Park! Man.....

Anything else today? I don't think so. I'm off to read!! Later!

17 comments:

Debi said...

If it helps at all, know you're not alone! A recurrent conversation:

Debi: Why the hell do you have 20 books checked out from the library?!!

Debi: Because they all look so damn good! Duh.

Debi: Yeah, and you're lucky when you can finish 3 books in a week. Really lucky. So how do you propose to finish 20 in three weeks?

Debi: Oh, why don't you just shut the hell up and let me enjoy my books here!

Yep, you're totally not alone.

sassymonkey said...

Hey! I've actually read a fair number of those books. I Capture the Castle is great. I just read Briar Rose a couple of months ago and thought it was really good. The Dead and Gone was ok but I don't think it was as good a LAWKI (I think maybe because she changed from first-person to third-person...). And I also like The Earth,My Butt and Other Big Round Things.

Excellent library haul!

Meghan said...

27 books is a bit much! I have 19 and that's already too many for me.

Also, I have I Capture the Castle on my TBR pile. I keep meaning to get to it but I haven't yet.

Anonymous said...

Once I had 18 books out from the library and forgot and kept reading other books and discovered the fact when I had one week left to finish all of them. I could never decide; I had too many awesome books at once! I took them all back and made a new two to three book limit for myself to prevent that again. CHOOSING ISN'T EASY. Watch me not envying you at all.

I agree with Sassymonkey on the dead & the gone not being as good, but I don't think it's completely because of the third person perspective. I await your thoughts on this one, so I hope you have time to read it. :)

Ana S. said...

It's hard to choose, isn't it? But at least you can always check out the others you don't get to some other time!

I hope you enjoy I Capture The Castle! Briar Rose was another one that I loved. And I want Black Juice! In fact, I want everything Margo Lanagan has written.

Amy said...

Sheesh, I kind of want to read those all, too. Saw the author of 21 at BEA he wrote about the facebook founders next. All very interesting. :)

Marg said...

Hah! 27 is lightweight! You have a lot of borrowing to do to catch up to me girlie! LOL!

I really enjoyed The Briar Rose when I read it a while ago. I really want to read The Dead and the Gone but it doesn't seem to be being released here just yet.

Janssen said...

I read the Dead and the Gone a few weeks ago and I still keep thinking about it - it was so sad.

Grad said...

I go to the library and do the same thing...leave with an armful that I know I'll never finish reading. But I know they are there, and that is a comforting feeling.

Staci said...

I don't know how you're going to get through them all especially because you have so many great ones checked out!!!!!

Stephanie said...

Debi - I knew you would feel my pain!! Funny, I have that same conversation with myself!

Sassmonkey - I'm still curious about The Dead and the Gone. I didn't have the same love for LAWKI as most bloggers did. I liked it. Didn't love it! I'm really stoked about I Capture the Castle though.

Meghan - Well...it's done to 26 now! I finished a short one today. And 2 are graphic novels that I will finish this weekend. So that's tiny bit better!

Renay - It's the choosing that sucks. Why oh why do I do this to myself...the stress!!

Nymeth - I have 2 Margo Lanagan books on the pile. Tender Morsels is definitely first, but Black Juice looks really good!!

Stephanie said...

Amy - My son loved the movie of 21, and I like to gamble. Vegas was so much fun. My brain can't handle counting cards, but I think it's an interesting subject! All the books look good...I have to decide what to read next!!

Marg - LOL! You crack me up!! I'm just taking a page from your book!!

Janssen - I read Life as We Know it last year. Didn't have the same blogger love for it that a lot of people did. But I'm looking forward to this one.

Grad - I just need to stay out of the library for a while. At least till I whittle my list down some!! I keep adding and no subtracting. BAD thing!

Staci - I'm about to put them all in a big box, close my eyes and just draw them out one at a time!

Eva said...

lol @ the 27!! I have too many books checked out too. :D I Capture the Castle is a wonderful book! I enjoyed the movie 21, although I haven't read the book. And your fairy tale books all look excellent! I just grabbed a different book by Lanagan (Tender Morsels) but I LOVE the cover of Black Juice!

samantha.1020 said...

You found some great reads as always Stephanie! I've got a bunch of these on my own TBR list. I just checked some books out as well but I took back more than I got...that was definitely a first for me :)

Kailana said...

Last I looked I had 43 books out from the library. I just accept that books are going to go back unread and move on from there! People point out that I could stay on top of my library books, but when I was doing that I wasn't reading my own books...

christina said...

OMG. I am so excited to see that you picked up Briar Rose. I haven't read that book since I was in college if a YA class, but completely fell in love with it. Can't wait to hear your review.

Joanne ♦ The Book Zombie said...

Those urban legend books are awesome looking, I love stuff like that!

And don't feel bad about having 27 books out - our library has a limit of 60 out at a time. So I figure I may as well take advantage of it. But at least most of the books are month long rentals. I can't say no to a good-looking book :P