Here we are approaching the end of July already. I thought time just went fast when I was in school because I was always working on something. But no, time, it seems, goes just as fast, maybe even faster, now that I am not in school. Oh for when I was a kid and had three months of summer vacation and those three months seemed to last forever and my sister and I would complain in that whiny kid voice at that annoying pitch only kids can make, “Mom, I’m bored!” And my mom would usually say something like, “Go be bored outside.” In other words, “get out of my way, I’m busy doing laundry/cooking/cleaning/paying bills/etc., and I am sick and tired of hearing you whine.” My sister and I would usually go mope in the backyard until one of us decided we should roller skate or ride our bikes or our skateboards or play ping pong or some other game and when we’d get called in to dinner, or boredom long forgotten, we’d get mad about being interrupted. Those were the days.

There were books too. There were always books. My sister and I each had our own room and we both had our own bookshelf in our rooms with our own books and sometimes when we were bored we would play “library” and visit the other’s room and “check out” a book which usually was lent with great fanfare, rules more strict than any public library, and the threat of physical pain in lieu of a monetary fine should the book be lost, damaged or returned late. We were always careful with each other’s books but it was less from the threat of violence to our persons and more from the concern of what the other might do with the borrowed books in her possession as revenge. It was kind of like our own personal Cold War with its mutually assured destruction.

That was a nice trip down memory lane.

My current reading seems to be going very slowly, but that is only because I haven’t finished a book lately because I am reading big books. I am about 63% through Bleak House on my Kindle. Esther has discovered her parentage and while I get the feeling that it was supposed to be a huge shock and surprise, I had it figured out by a third of the way through the book. One of the plusses of being over halfway now is that some of the seemingly unconnected storylines are starting to merge into the main story. The book is typical Dickens and quite enjoyable, funny touching, sweet and gently satirical.

Game of Thrones is getting on well. I could so easily devour it but I am forcing myself to read it slowly. I love the direwolves in the story and in my reading last night one of them became collateral damage. I feared for the wolves from the start and now they and the children they belong to are being dragged into the adult world of power politics and intrigue.

Ulysses is also coming along. But more on that tomorrow.

I picked up two books from the library Friday that I had been waiting in line for. The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai seemed like it would be a perfect book. The main character is a children’s librarian and she is in cahoots with a ten-year-old boy who loves to read but whose parents are super religious and would be very unhappy to know the contents of most of the books their child reads. How can this not be a good book? I read the first 25 pages and will be returning it to the library. It is not for me, though I am certain others will find it very good. I can’t get over the fact that the main character does not have a library degree. And the head librarian at this small town library is more concerned about appearances and not ruffling any parent’s or patron’s feathers that if one of them said that The Very Hungry Caterpillar should be banned because it promotes overeating she’d immediately pull it from the shelves. Four years ago in pre-library school days I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about these characters but now they annoy me too much to be able to keep reading.

The other book from the library is The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick. It is nonfiction and the title pretty much says it all. It is a fat book. I was not expecting it to be so fat. I only get it for three weeks because there are others waiting for it so it is going to have to go to the top of the in-progress pile. I’ve begun reading the introduction and I think it will be interesting. I have already learned that when the little conductors we know as transistors were invented, their name was created by a committee. That was at Bell Laboratory in 1948 if I am remembering the year correctly (the book is in the other room and I am too lazy to get up and go get it).

New books that have made it into the house: Fantastic Women: 18 Tales of the Surreal and the Sublime, Digital Barbarism by Mark Helprin, and Howard’s End is on the Landing by Susan Hill. Fantastic Women is an ARC and I plan on starting it tonight. I am very much looking forward to it. I got Digital Barbarism for free from work. The law school had a clean up your office day last week and all the professors dumped loads of books they had squirreled away. While most of them were law books, some of them were not, obviously. I snagged this one because I am under the impression that it an anti-technology rant calling for even stronger copyright laws because technology is hurting writers. That is the impression I have of it. I will let you know, when I manage to get to it, what it is really about.

The Susan Hill book is the only one I bought. Bookman and I had a Barnes and Noble gift card way back in February. I let Bookman place the order. I got this book and he pre-ordered book 5 of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. Bookman checked, send the order all together so I had to wait five months for my book even though it was available in February. I gave Bookman a hard time about it, but it was no big deal since I was still in school then anyway so would not have had time to read it. Now it is here and I think I will save it for late fall or early winter. It seems like a book that will be good comfort reading beneath a quilt and with a cup of hot chocolate to hand.

I’m sure there are other books floating around here I could tell you about but my hands are getting tired. They pulled a lot of weeds in the garden this morning and wrote a long letter to a friend so they are starting to complain of being overused.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel, for the weekly Ulysses update.