Happy Loot Year

I hadn't visited my library since the end of December and I missed it so much. I made a point of visiting on the first day back to work. Good move -- it was a sane little island in the frenzy, chaos and cluster...stuff that is all part of a new semester.


Such a long break from my beloved doh-suh-gwan was actually a bad idea because I'm slated to read 50 library books this year in J. Kaye's challenge. I should have sense enough to be worried but it's the new year and I'm all shiny-new optimistic that I can get it back to good by December 31. (I'm also keeping it real. I'm keeping in mind that if I fall short in the waning hours, there's a nice assortment of picture books nestled on those shelves.)


No picture books yet, though. Here's what I kicked off the year with:


1. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James. My Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm frogmarched me past the 19th century guys. Hiya, Melville. Hiya, Dickens. Guess what I did on my winter vacation?


2. Fitzgerald and the Influence of Film: The Language of Cinema in the Novels - Gautam Kundu. I never connected F. Scott with cinema before, although apparently many others have. Should be interesting.


3. Dodsworth - Sinclair Lewis. This was an DNF from 2009. I'm not gonna mistreat old Red any more. Gonna get 'er done.


4. Virginia Woolf - Hermione Lee. All the talk about Woolf on the other blogs has made me ravenous to read this biography. I passed it up for a whole year but no more.


The self-checkout machine has gotten chattier. She used to say Please swipe your ID card and Please place the book as shown but *now* she also says Please press 'continue' or 'end' after I scan each book. I was all smiling and obliging and saying "Okay, here you go!" It's almost like we're getting to be friends. If I only knew her name.