Library Lootenanny

I feel all bloated and full of too much fiction -- you'll understand when you see my reading stats for May -- so I didn't even go into that section this week. I stayed in the nonfiction, but not for long. Unfortunately, I was wearing my Crocs and they were squeaking in stereo on the freshly waxed floors. It was a little embarrassing when everything and everyone else in the library seemed unnaturally quiet today, but it's not that easy to deter a bookworm from her shelves. This is what I picked up:

Love And Hate In Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas and the Heart of a New Nation - David A. Price. This book about the settling of Jamestown kicks off in 1606 and has a nice breezy style in which the author deftly separates legend from fact. There are also copious end notes and a admirably hefty bibliography, but no pictures! Wah. I like pictures, photos, maps in my nonfiction. This library copy I'm holding doesn't even have the dust jacket (pictured at left) featuring John Smith looking kind of hot. Wah again.

Fire & Roses: The Burning Of The Charlestown Convent, 1834 - Nancy Lusignan Schultz. This is a chapter in history that I'm unfamiliar with. From what I can gather by reading the prologue, an Ursuline convent in the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown burned down one night after some anti-Catholic riots. Also, it looks like Reverend Lyman Beecher (Harriet Beecher Stowe's father) may have been somewhat responsible since his Protestant self preached not one, not two, but three anti-Catholic sermons the day before the riot. Why is it all the guys named Lyman I've ever known or heard of have been Class A shits? Ooops. I probably should read the book before I start tossing out epithets. I'll get back to you about the Rev. Beecher. Anyway, Fire & Roses has the many pictures that I sorely require, and author Schultz thoughtfully included a list of "Principal Characters" at the front of the book with a brief description of how they figure into this incident.

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I claimed my loot and noisily made my way to the self-checkout machine. It was so quiet that I even hated switching her over to her "English" function. Her normally resonant and modulated Please place the book as shown came out sounding like a drunken slattern at a karaoke bar bellowing out the introduction to her last number before passing out. Everyone sitting behind the circulation desk stopped work and stared.

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Sometimes quiet is too quiet. I grabbed my receipt and squeaked the hell on out of there. Yikes. I bet they could hear me all the way down in Busan.