You know how sometimes you have a weekend when it seems like you didn’t do much but you still had a lovely time? When you put all goals toward efficiency to one side in favor of doing not much? Well, last weekend was one of those. It was great. 🙂
Both the SuperHero and I had had a busy week, so by mutual agreement, we had no social plans and not much else on the books. Despite this, it was still a fab weekend for a variety of reasons. Plus – it rained. A lot. (Not very common for this semi-desert area and very conducive to hanging around at home.)
One of those reasons was that we went to see a matinee of the new Downton Abbey film… (Fun plus Alamo had put together a funny recap of the previous six seasons prior to the film).
Another one of those reasons was that it was the weekend of the big annual book sale at the FoL which, although I have no absolute need for any more titles, I went to. I typically take Friday afternoon off from work and go at that time to avoid the crowds but this year, thought I would take the risk of a Saturday attendance.
(It wasn’t too bad in the end, but goodness gracious me: if there was one thing that I could change, I would make parents take better charge of their ill-behaved children: No, you can’t suddenly sit down on the floor in the middle of the aisle and read your book. No, you can’t run around screaming right now. Pro-point for bringing kids to the sale: the kids are being exposed to lots of books and the library itself. Anti-point for bringing kids to the sale: Think of the other people.)
I ended up with a good stack of books, although heaven knows when they will get read (!):
Non-Fiction titles:
- Home – Ellen Degeneres [2015] – (coffee table/interior decorating/design and I like this sort of thing)
- The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat – Oliver Sacks [1985] – (sounded interesting)
- In Search of London – H.V. Morton [1950] – (loved Morton’s In Search of England)
- Journeys to the Past – David Attenborough [1981] – (true recollections of his animal days)
- One Writer’s Beginning – Eudora Welty [1983] – (Actually thought this was another author entirely, so not sure about whether I’ll keep this one.)
Fiction titles:
- The Forgetting Room – Nick Bantock [1977] – (he who wrote the Griffin and Sabine books and I loved those)
- The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears – Dinaw Mengestu [2007] – (heard good things plus POC)
- Life after Life – Kate Atkinson [2013] (heard good things)
- Mama Day – Gloria Naylor [1988] – (love Bailey’s Café [1992] before plus POC)
- The Darling Buds of May – H.E. Bates [1958] – (classic and been on list awhile)
- A Death in the Family [1957] – James Agee (classic and been on list awhile)
- Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner [1971] – (been wanting to reread this and no copy at library)
- Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [1968] – (ditto above except not a reread)
- Lost Horizon – James Hilton [1933] – (thought might be interesting and classic – also potential read for scary October)
- Something Wicked This Way Comes [1962] – Ray Bradbury (for scary October reading)
Plus – I was completely sucked in to Jigsaw Puzzle world with this one (from a rug design by Frank Lloyd Wright):
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