Books much?

Awhile ago - a few months - I looked around and realized I had already read ALL the books in my home that really grabbed me. I have numerous books on European history, particularly in the sciences, several of which I've read partly but put down for whatever reason - I'll go back to those as they strike me. But fiction? Not a single book in the house had I not read.

I was in the midst of a clamp-down on my spending (house taxes coming up) so I started requesting books from the library (I normally do that anyway but I ramped it up). Since most of those were ones I read reviews of, some of them haven't even come out yet and others have long queues waiting. But, I got a few, maybe one a week.

In the meantime I made myself busy with other things, was preoccupied with a certain self-imposed deadline, and generally didn't think about books much (I read before going to sleep at night, but I like re-reading things for that - keeps me from getting so absorbed that I read straight through to morning).

Until last week, I turned around, and there was a stack of EIGHT library books on my coffee table! I'd just gone and got them as the email notices came in, put them on the pile and forgot about them. Literally, in some cases - I don't even remember where I got the titles. Anyway - clearly, I needed to apply myself to this pile! I didn't think of posting this until I'd already read and returned a few of them and I can't pull their titles out of my spongy memory banks right now, so there are only five listed.

Friday I finished Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin. It's a good mystery, and I recommend it. Lots more going on there than just a whodunit. It's the book for the next meeting of the library mystery book club.

Last night I finished The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters.  Cool, actually chilling, set-up (a big asteroid is going to hit Earth in 6 months and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Our protagonist, a young police detective, just keeps on investigating murders, while most everyone else does anything BUT their usual jobs.) There are two more in this trilogy and I will read them both. I want to earn reading the last page of the last book, heh.

Yet to read:


The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. This is the second book about The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and I see that there are now three of them. *sigh* I'm going to have to read this one, go back and read The Shadow of the Wind, then get the third one, The Prisoner of Heaven. So, yes, I love the first one and cannot WAIT to read this second one.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I don't remember where I saw this one reviewed. I started reading it and it looks good, but others are due earlier so I set it aside until I get those read.

London Falling by Paul Cornell.  I don't remember where I saw this one reviewed.  Some young cops become cursed with the ability to see through the human facades of certain monsters stalking the streets of London. Sounds *scrumptious!*

And, I bought a couple new ones. After I get the library books read and released back into their queues, I'll *finally* get to read William Kent Krueger's newest, Ordinary Grace. And then tackle Paris, by Edward Rutherfurd.

I've got books in every room in the house. I vacillate between thinking I should get them all organized by genre and topic, and just letting the hodgepodge keep propagating naturally. My inclination is the latter, and my native laziness will probably make it so. Besides, I *like* finding books I'd forgotten about tucked in amongst completely unrelated books.