Friday, May 8, 2009

Yesterday's Library Haul

Well, I hope everyone else enjoyed National Asshole Day yesterday. I didn't even know it was going on, but there were celebrants everywhere I looked. Not one, but TWO cell phone douchebags in the library. A cabbie parked in the middle of the road during rush hour. Many, many of them in World of Warcraft last night, even more so than non-players may suspect. Quite a few on the roads. Several in IHOP, despite the restaurant being virtually empty. Even in sleep, I didn't get away from them: my upstairs neighbor decided that 3:30 AM would be a fine time to rearrange the room above our bedroom. Even my cats joined in, providing an excellent wake-up call by jumping on my dresser and knocking everything off of it, one item at a time. Grrrr.

But, some good did come out of it. I mentioned the cell phone douchebags at the library. I got a decent haul despite the emotionally needy man alternating calls between business calls ("I offer musical entertainment and will be in your region next week. I'd love to get together with you and talk about the possibility of performing at your venue") and harassing some poor woman ("Me again. I just want to be assured that you're not mad at me. You promise? I thought I detected a tone towards the end of the last conversation there five minutes ago. OK, good. I'll probably call back in another five just to make triple-sure you're not mad.") I swear, I tried hard not to listen to that shit, but it was hard since he was right in the middle of the fiction section, talking loudly. (The other cell phone d-bag was describing in detail how they got the bullet out of him. Ah, the downtown branch!)

As per usual, every single book I'd intended to get was checked out. So I improvised and got a lot of stuff I didn't plan on. I succumbed to the second trend in a week (first was joining Facebook) and checked out The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. You might say this seems to be this year's Snow Falling on Cedars: read by every book group, sold even in places where they don't normally sell books. How this book is in and Slash's autobiography isn't, I just don't understand. But it's mine for the next six days.

Also got:

The Deal by Sabin Willett. I read another novel of his, Present Value, and surprisingly learned something about economics from a book that was actually fun to read. I bumped into it while trying to get away from the cell phone guy, who was up in the new books section near the A's.

East of the Mountains by David Guterson. I said I'd try something else by him. This one looked good.

The Bearded Lady: A Novel by Sharlee Dieguez. I'm a sucker for circus stuff.

Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald. I liked The Bookstore (Bookshop?) and always meant to try another one by her.

Since Sawtelle is the longest, and due back the soonest, I started there this morning. Pretty good so far.