The other day when I was talking about my July reading plans didn’t I say there would likely be a few surprises? Well those surprises arrived today at the library. Oh, you know, the usual routine: you place a hold request on a book a month, two months, three months ago. You are number 87 in line, number 50, number 48. And your turn comes up for every single one of them at the same time. The chickens came home to roost today.

I am already frantically reading two books I can’t renew, The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison and The Gardener of Versailles by Alain Baraton. Now add to that Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Attracting Native Pollinators by the Xerxes Society, 3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri, and In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen.

I am well into The Empathy Exams and liking it very much. I am also a good way into The Gardener of Versailles, a fun book about gardening and the history of Versailles from the current gardener-in-chief who has been employed there for over 30 years. But because I have to finish these two books first, I will be delayed in starting the other books.

The other books, Gathering Moss is about moss. Attracting Native Pollinators is about what its title says and is much longer and in-depth than the filled with photos and lists gardening book I expected. 3 Sections is the poetry book that most recently won the Pulitzer Prize. I read the first poem and I think I am really going to like it. And In Paradise is Peter Matthiessen’s final book, a novel that takes place in 1996 at a weeklong retreat at a concentration camp where the 100 participants meditate on the train platform and offer prayer and witness at the crematoria.

I have my reading cut out for me!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I had better go get started.