The Possible Reading of Summer 2010, Part III: Library Books

I compulsively borrow books from the library. I'm not as bad about it as I was for many years—I rarely check out more books than I can possibly hope to read in a reasonable amount of time, and I swear my current stack of unread library materials is only a couple of dozen books high and hasn't collected much dust at all—but I can get greedy very quickly when I'm surrounded by books I can temporarily take home without money having to change hands. I get carried away, and then I take forever to read most of the books. This summer I'm systematically trying to whittle down the amount of neglected library books on my floor so I can have more floor space and enjoy some of these books I was so eager to check out. And, you know, so I can put them back into circulation like a responsible library user.

1. Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow (Checked out on the recommendation of Nick Hornby)

I love Stuff I've Been Reading, Hornby's off-and-on column for The Believer magazine about his relationship with his always-growing book collection. His recommendations have led me to some of my favorite books, like Louis Sachar's Holes and the unbelievably great Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris. Hornby's not really much in favor of fantasy, though, or poetry—and yet he completely loved this strange thing: a novel about rival werewolf gangs, written entirely in blank verse. Also, the blurbs inside the front cover come from people with names like Gregory Maguire and David Mamet (?!). But honestly, pretty much anyone could come up to me and say, “Urban werewolves: blank verse,” and I would be intrigued enough to pick up the book at the next opportunity.

2. I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President, Josh Lieb (Checked out after hearing an NPR interview with the author)

I am a reader of ridiculous dorkiness and I want to read any book described as “written by a writer and producer of The Daily Show who has also worked on The Simpsons and NewsRadio.” The fact that it's about a twelve-year-old mad scientist who listens to Captain Beefheart and names his bodyguards Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym? That's just extra gravy.

3. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie (Checked on the recommendation of my girlfriend)

Jamie and I are both Hercule Poirot fans from way back in our childhoods; the difference is, I like the character only because of the old BBC Mystery! TV show and the movie version of Murder on the Orient Express, whereas she has read and loved many of the novels about his peculiar detective skills. She suggested Ackroyd as a good starting point, so Ackroyd it is.

4. Miami Blues, Charles Willeford (Checked out on the recommendation of The A.V. Club)

In addition to cozy, old-style mystery stories like the above, I like crime novels of the hardboiled school popularized by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. This genre was pretty much all I read this year in April, May, and early June, after which I wisely took a break and read some lighter, funnier things, like P. G. Wodehouse and Patricia C. Wrede. But now I'm eager to return to a noirish kind of book, and I've been given to understand that Willeford's Hoke Moseley novels are fun that way.

5. The Lobster Coast, Colin Woodward (Checked out on an impulse because it looked interesting)

It hardly ever happens to me anymore, just picking up a book because it looks out at me quietly from the shelf. It should happen regularly, with all the time I spend in libraries and bookstores, but I'm so saturated with recommendations from friends, family, blogs, and blurbs that I always seem to be looking for something specific. It's been a long, long, too-long time since I last picked up something I really, honestly hadn't heard of at all and did more than flip through it. I'm proud to have even one book in my apartment that I found like this, and in a way it's more important to me to read this one than the other four on this list. Oh, what's it about? Maine lobstering communities: their origins, development, and possible future. Something I know nothing about, which makes it even more perfect.

Next and lastly, I have five books I've bought myself in the last five years that I should read without much further delay.

The Possible Reading of Summer 2010, Part II: Lent by Friends

People have a tendency to lend me books. To be fair, I look through my friends' bookshelves a lot, and I sometimes ask if I can borrow something, but quite often somebody just pushes a book on me without provocation. And I don't know how to just say no books. My track record for actually reading those books, however, is pretty dismal: in fact, Jamie and I have an entire (smallish) bookcase dedicated to the combined borrowed library we've accumulated over the years, and most of the books are awfully good. So the second part of my summer reading list is dedicated to the books I've borrowed and never read or returned. Hopefully, a few of these will make it back to their owners in the next few months (to be immediately replaced, of course, by several more books for the borrowed shelves).

1.The Areas of My Expertise, John Hodgman (Borrowed during an especially good New Year's gathering that involved chai-flavored waffles)

My friend Charlie is an inveterate book lender. There was a time when he simply wouldn't stop making me borrow his books: he'd regularly press them into my hands, throw them at my head, or stack them up outside my front door so that I'd have to dodge a lethal avalanche of paperbacks when I opened the door to go to work in the morning. I have trouble picking just one of his books to add to my list, but I've actually read a good hundred pages of this one before, a couple of summers ago, and it is hilarious. It resembles an almanac in form and style, but all the information Hodgman provides is false and even occasionally scurrilous, much of it having to do with things like failed palindromes (Slow speed: deep owls), the worst-ever men's haircuts, and tables illustrating the intersection of omens and portents. (Apparently Ragnarok will result if an owl screeches with the voice of a man on a broken gravestone. Or if a gravestone breaks within three months of the owl thing. Hmm.) You can never have too much made-up information.

2.The Book of the Dun Cow, Walter Wangerin, Jr. (Borrowed sometime in the middle of a crazy late summer in which too many people, including me, were moving)

Before Jamie and I moved in together, she lent me several books she particularly thought I should read, including this strange-looking fantasy that I hadn't heard of before, about farm animals and the good and evil they do. It's remained in my borrowed stack for about two years since then. I'm curious whether these beasts are as distinctive or as political as those in Animal Farm or Watership Down.

3.The Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove (Borrowed about the same time as Dun Cow)

My friend Zack said I should read this alternate history of the end of the Civil War (the guns of the title are AK-47s, given to the Confederate Army in 1864 by a time-traveling interloper with mysterious motives). This will probably be the first and last Turtledove book I read: I've heard from several people, including Zack, that most of his work is very dull and largely ghostwritten. Still, as I've said before, I'll try most things once, especially for the sake of such a fascinating concept.

4.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (Borrowed last summer or something)

You've heard of this one, I imagine. I know I've heard plentiful and favorable things about it: from my parents, from The A.V. Club, from my girlfriend, and finally from my friend Nick, who has generously supplied me with his copy. Flipping through it, I've noticed that the chapters are numbered not 1, 2, 3..., but 2, 3, 5, 7, 11... Prime numbers, in other words. I'm excited about this one.

5.The Silent Miaow, Paul Gallico (Borrowed last fall)

Jamie and I need cats. We have severe cravings for a pair of little purring mammals to be prowling around the apartment, jumping up where they don't belong, and rubbing up against our legs to demand feeding and petting. And we're probably going to get to fulfill our cat wishes later this summer by adopting a couple of cats from the Pixie Project, a local no-kill shelter. There's a lot of research and preparation to do before we have a cat-friendly place here; one thing I plan to do is read this book, which my friend Tessa (the same one who gave me Giving Good Weight, from my previous post) lent us last year. It's a sort of owner's manual for cats who have come into the possession of new humans, meant to instruct young felines in the best methods of taming people and teaching them their responsibilities as cat stewards. It's illustrated with beautiful black-and-white photos of cats demonstrating cat/human etiquette. After flipping through it, I cannot deny that I am quite charmed and enlightened. This one should be highly useful in welcoming new cats to our place.

So those are the personal books I've borrowed that I plan to read before long. Next up, another kind of borrowed property: library books.