Library Challenge Complete!
Back last May, I joined J. Kaye's Support Your Local Library Challenge. After several months of library looting, I began last weekend to tally up what I had checked out and read from my library so I could see how much of a push I needed to finish To my surprise, the total was at 24, and I had pledged to read 25 library books in 2009.
Today, I completed this challenge. I'm offering up my sweet success as a tribute to the library I waited and longed for during my first four years in Korea. Although I won't have any classes in the building next semester, my library is only a 3-5 minute walk uphill and I'll be making fond and frequent visits. My library. I'll never get tired of saying it.
Perhaps even more than the reading, I've had fun scanning the shelves and shelves of books in Korean and picking out what's available in English. Every visit has been a treasure hunt. Odd and enjoyable. Check out what I checked out:
1. The Hidden Flower - Pearl S. Buck
2. In Dubious Battle -John Steinbeck
3. Lost Names - Richard Kim
4. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
5. The Snows of Kilimanjaro - Ernest Hemingway
6. The Moon and Sixpence - W. Somerset Maugham
7. Howards End - E.M. Forester
8. Native Son - Richard Wright
9. The Just and the Unjust - James Gould Cozzens
10. Yang The Youngest and His Terrible Ear - Lensey Namioka
11. Fox Girl - Nora Okja Keller
12. A Step From Heaven - An Na
13. Little Women and the Feminist Imagination
14. The Classic Era of Crime Fiction
15. Carver Country
16. The Benchley Roundup - Robert Benchley
17. Jane Eyre's American Daughters
18. Shaking The Nickel Bush - Ralph Moody
19. The Underground Stream: The Life & Art of Caroline Gordon
20. A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
21. Make-Believe: The Story of Nancy & Ronald Reagan
22. Daydreams and Nightmares: Reflections On A Harlem Childhood
23. Huey Long: The Kingfish of Louisiana
24. Reading In The Dark: Using Film as a Tool in the English Classroom
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25. Discovering The Maltese Falcon And Sam Spade - Richard Layman (ed.)
5 comments:
At the library my wife works in Phoenix Arizona you can place a book or books on hold through your computer and get an e-mail when it is ready to be picked up. You just go up to the checkout counter, tell the attendant and you have it in seconds.
I don't know how common this is in other librarys in the U.S.A., but it's pretty cool.
Charles,
I think this service was available at my hometown library, but I never tried it. You're right; very cool.
Which was/ were your favorites of these? I think I especially loved your review of Little Women and the Feminist Imagination, and of the ones I've read (not many from this list!) my own favorite is The Moon and Sixpence.
How was the Ronald and Nancy Reagan book? I'm kind of liking their marriage, in a weird way -- while reading Peggy Noonan's book "When Character Was King" (which has me rolling my eyes a bit, even as I pine for it to all be true).
Jenny,
Lots of great reads from this library...I was particularly blown away by Native Son.
Unruly Reader,
The Reagan book was gossipy and tell-all with biographer Leamer annoyingly referring to Reagan as "Ronnie" throughout the book. Later on, though, he'd switch off that crap and do some fine, serious writing. The effect was a little jarring.
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