Books to Keep Me Busy

You may have noticed that I've been reading Michael Pollen's The Botany of Desire for more than a month. That's not a mistake -- I've been impossibly busy and haven't had much time to read before falling asleep each night.

But I just finished it, and like many other readers, I'm very impressed. I'll have some favorite quotes and thoughts soon. In the meantime, other books have been stacking up, waiting for my attention.

I have the habit of reading several fiction titles for each nonfiction one, and I have a feeling it might be more than several before I get back to nonfiction this time.

I went to a used book sale yesterday and came home with these beauties:


Including a copy of Pete Hautman's Godless for Daughter Number Three-Point-One's collection, China Mieville's Kraken (which I keep hearing is essential modern science fiction reading, even though I fear reading him), Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiography Infidel, my second Margaret Atwood novel, a nice first edition of Tony Earley's Jim the Boy, cute little illustrated versions of a Russian folk tale collection and Tolkien's Smith of Wootton Major, and David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, which somehow, I have not yet read.

Mixed in there is a 1962 ex-library book called Valiant Captive. It's part of the "white people taken captive by Indians" genre and may be horrible, but I thought it was worth a $.50 look just out of cultural curiosity, if nothing else.

And then there was this signed first edition of Sarah Vowell's Take the Cannolli to complete my S.V. collection.


Before the book sale, I had wandered into the Red Balloon book shop to buy Kristin Cashore's Bitterblue, a sequel to Graceling, and wound up raiding their YA shelves of:

• Every John Green book (after my recent encounter with The Fault in Our Stars)
• Nothing Special, the latest book by Geoff Herbach (author of Stupid Fast)
• Plus two science fiction YAs recommended by the staff, Victoria Roth's Insurgent and Ilsa Bick's Ashes.

Then Friday I found my way to Uncle Hugo's (the oldest science fiction bookstore in the country!) to pick up 2312, the latest from all-time favorite Kim Stanley Robinson, as well as John Scalzi's Red Shirts.

And finally, there was a quick trip to Micawber's, which netted a paperback printing of Rosemary Sutcliff's The Shining Company (a title of hers I've never heard of before) plus a beautiful picture book called One Times Square, a pictorial history of that famous address over the last hundred years.

It's going to be a YA and science fiction kind of summer, I think.