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| 22 of the 24: Two library books (Ship Breaker and The Goat) are back on the shelves of Seattle Public Library |
My final book was one I'd bought at the author's reading at University Book Store nearly two years ago: The City Is More Than Human, by Frederick L. Brown. The subtitle, "An Animal History of Seattle" sums up the book nicely. It was an informative read, and quicker than I anticipated.
In addition to my goal of reading as many books as possible without getting a bingo (I think that number was nineteen), I wanted to make as many as I could books we'd bought on this year's bookstore day. It looks like eleven met that requirement, coming from Queen Anne Book Company, Magnolia's Bookstore, Secret Garden Bookshop, Open Books, Phinney Books, the Ravenna Third Place, Ada's Technical Books, and probably University Book Store and Elliott Bay Book Company. I also made a visit to EBBC a few weeks ago to fill several remaining squares, while six squares were (mercifully) filled by books I already owned. And there were the two books checked out from Seattle Public Library. I feel I've done my bit--and then some--to support the local book providers (while also going as far afield as London for one of the Persephone Books' titles). You'd think, wouldn't you, that I'd win one of the prizes? I am not so much holding my breath for that, and instead toast the successful end of the summer reading challenge with cocktails, pistachios, and a new book:
*The subject line is the first line of the poem "Grace" from No Matter the Wreckage: Poems by Sarah Kay
Phew! That's something like 6,000 pages of reading this summer. Even longer than Mr Proust's novel, I think.
ReplyDeleteDid you google all the page counts? I suppose they *do* take up more room on the shelf. I don't think any hats were beaten up in my summer reading.
DeleteCongratulations! I do hope you win a prize. There ought to be a special prize category for Most Books Read That Were Also Lugged On a Bicycle During Bookstore Day.
ReplyDeleteIs Jasper Fforde ever going to write a sequel to Shades of Grey? He seems to have gone off that. Sigh.
I'm sure there's the argument that a summer of good reading is a prize in itself . . . but still. I asked Mr Fforde about "Shades of Grey" (which I also loved) when he did a reading here several years ago; he implied that it hadn't sold well enough for his publishers to want to publish a sequel.
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