A Book Binge

Maybe in anticipation of the spate of recent articles (here's one) on electonrica and what it does to your attention span, I've found myself in the grips of a book buying fever. Truthfully, it all started with this Op-Ed that concluded the greenest way to get a book is to go to the library. I read it and vowed to get all my books from the library, except for the ones I can get from the guys on Broadway selling them for a dollar or four a throw. From them, I've bought a book by Lee Child because I heard Child on the radio, or someone talking about Child, and I got curious. I got To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf because why haven't I read it? I bought The House of Fortune Street by Margot Livesy because I liked Eva Moves the Furniture so much. I could go on, but I won't.

Then there were the books that I didn't get on the street. There's Hungry, because it's just out in paperback and I've wanted to read it for a long while, and The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel, because I liked the Babel essay in The Possessed so much and a Babel story comes up in The Ask. I also bought The Death and Life of The Great American School System, which I've just finished and mean to blog about. It's the serious relative to Mother on Fire. Way more serious. Then there's a book of poems: Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker. I've read two of them, the poems. They're amazing.

I am now reading a book I actually got out of the library: The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich. So far so good, five pages in. I'm also reading the galleys of Melissa's new cookbook In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, which is the cookbook you dream about when you dream about reading a cookbook in bed. I recommend putting it on your wish list. It comes out in September. God I love a wish list of books.