Back In The Stacks

I finished the beautiful The Classic Era Of Crime Fiction last week and very, very, very reluctantly returned it to the library today. That book is a feast for the eyes. I must find my own copy! (Review coming soon.)

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So, anyway. I had to have something to assuage the pain of giving back the book, right? Hasn't it been said that a book makes an excellent palliative? Two work even better. Here's what I found:

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Carver Country: The World Of Raymond Carver - Raymond Carver (text), Bob Adelman (photographs), Tess Gallagher (introduction). It's been over 20 years, and I still miss Raymond Carver. I first discovered his work a few months before he died, in a short story anthology of 20th century fiction, edited by Clifton Fadiman (Anne Fadiman's father). The story was "A Small, Good Thing". I read it over and over, mesmerized. Then I went out and hunted down every single book I could find by Carver. All that summer I was immersed in Raymond Carver. When I read in the newspaper in early August that he'd died, I was as stunned and uncomprehending as if I had unexpectedly lost someone I'd known. This anthology includes letters, poems and short stories accompanied by black-and-white photographs depicting scenes from Carver's hometown of Yakima, Washington, other places he lived during his 50 years as well as people he knew and loved.

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Jane Eyre's American Daughters: From The Wide, Wide World To Anne Of Green Gables -- A Study Of Marginalized Maidens And What They Mean - John Seelye. That's a clunker of a subtitle, but it's also what reeled me in. Part I seems to be about Bronte's novel and Part II discusses the heroines of novels by Susan Warner, Martha Finley, Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Lucy Maud Montgomery and Jean Webster. It'll be interesting to see if he truly can tie them to Jane Eyre.

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I do love my library. When I'm there, I feel like a plant that's getting a thorough watering after a long dry spell.