Not that my holiday break has begun, no, that's still two weeks away. And when it comes it will only last 10 days. There's no rational explanation for my annual panicky rush to amass piles of books at home before the break starts. Like clockwork the craziness has begun.
I just came back from the university library, where I picked up:
Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong
Daughters of the Stone by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa
The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
My Hollywood by Mona Simpson
The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst
Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange & Ilfa Bayeza
I'd checked online before heading to the library, and so had also planned to get these two books which supposedly were on the shelf: Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu. However, they were not in fact on the shelf. Most likely they were still in the back room where new titles rest; I started to go there to find them but then realized I could barely carry the pile I had, so I let it go for today. I shall return, though, in hopes of snagging these two before the break.
No doubt I'll find myself at several other libraries too, before these two weeks are through. Probably won't do any buying. The faculty committee that had set me up with a hefty bookstore gift certificate for these last several years has deliberated itself out of existence and with it vanishes, lamentably, my main source of book-buying funds. Ah well, our employee benefits continue to shrink--among other takebacks, the portion of health-insurance premiums I have to pay is rising again as of the new year--so I guess hanging on to this sweet books perk would have been too good to be true.
