nerd holiday

Yesterday, my brain cells jumped into gear and I realized Damn, it's a holiday. Why haven't I been reading anything good?

I've spent the first week of my break watching a lot of movies, dealing with holiday stuff, and fitfully looking through the crappy novels I picked up on my last trip to the public library. So I actually did a little prep beforehand, looking up some titles that had been mentioned on various blogs and so forth, and discovered that the only copy of Quicksilver available in the whole city system was, amazingly, at the branch closest to my house! So I dashed over there to pick it up before anyone else could get it. And then, after yoga, I went to the main library downtown, where I totally hit the jackpot. I had already put a hold on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, because the computer had shown that there were no copies available -- but when I walked in, there was one sitting on the Bestseller table in the front. Score!

So now I have two massively huge novels that I've been wanting to read for a long time. I also picked up Frances Itani's Deafening, which looks really interesting, and a couple of other things that I found by browsing. Hopefully I've shaken off the bad browsing spell that accursed my last library trip and can settle into a few days of pleasure reading.

Oh, yeah, I started JS & Mr N last night -- I'm only about 80 pages in, but I'm really enjoying it. It's got a nineteenth-century flavor to the narrative style, faux footnotes (which I always love) and smart fantasy. Sort of like Philip Pullman meets Anthony Trollope. But it's actually better than that. More sustained commentary to follow in the days ahead, I'm sure . . .