Tuesday Book Talk

I’ve discovered the library.

It’s not an original find by any means, but after a year of living in my current city, I’ve finally renewed my library card. I spent my first trip getting the lay of the land, so to speak, and gave the SFF section a close examination, coming away not altogether displeased.

Since my last library trip, I’ve also perused the library collection online, crossing my Powell’s wishlist with the library catalog. It turns out that the library has quite a lot of books I’ve been wanting to read for a while.

Here’s what I got on my first trip:

• The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco. I read fifty pages and stopped: there is no Eco novel quite like The Name of the Rose.
• The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall. See Monday Book Review.
• The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing by Tarquin Hall. The sequel, which I decided not to read.
• Prospero Lost by L. Jagi Lamplighter. I read fifty pages and stopped: this urban fantasy with Shakespeare’s The Tempest characters was fun but wasn’t working for me.
• The Demi-Monde: Winter by Rod Rees. I’m currently reading this one and liking it a lot. The Demi-Monde is (I think) a virtual-reality-gone-real. I’m tempted to call the novel an “urban alternate-future dystopia,” but the premise quite rightly defies description.

And on hold for me, among other books on the shelf, is Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a French pilot best known for The Little Prince but whose memoir of flying for the post, Wind, Sand, and Stars, I quite loved.

Anyway, yes, the library: a bookstore where all the books are free.