Readings

The other day, I stopped at the Abbey library to see if I could find a book or two to keep me happily occupied between grading. Usually at this point in a semester, I'm buried in grading, but with such small classes this semester, I'm pretty much caught up. (I sort of want to pinch myself or something when I say that, just to make sure.)

The librarian is an enabler. You know how they are. You walk in and say, "Hmm, I'm looking for a fun book." And they chat with you for a minute or two, and then they're showing you a table full of delicious looking books, and the next thing you know, you've stayed up half the night reading a book and crying. (I cry all too easily at books.)

I just finished Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie, and it's quite late, much later than I intended to be up, but I don't know that I'll sleep well after finishing the book. It starts out as a bit of a romp, and then it isn't a romp at all, but intense in an unexpected way, almost too intense. It's worth a read, but do it when you don't have to get up early the next morning.

And before that I read Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending, which was good in a sort of disconnected way, and not nearly as intense as Jamrach's Menagerie.

That librarian has a lot to answer for if I can't sleep tonight! (Maybe I should read a bit of one of the Pratchett books I picked up at a charity shop the other day? That would be much more sleep inducing, right?)