BiblioAddict The First Step on the Road to Recovery

On crappy internet service and a late library loot:

Yes, I know I’m a day late (as per usual), but my internet wasn’t working last night, and rather than give myself gray hairs cursing Time Warner’s crappy service, I decided to shrug my shoulders and curl up with one of my very good books.  Today’s Library Loot is very small compared with last week’s, but then – *cough, cough* – I still have at least half the books from last week’s Library Loot still checked out, so my library pile is still pretty towering.

But, I digress!  This week’s Library Loot:

Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Mailey Meloy.  First lines: “Chet Moran grew up in Logan, Montana, at a time when kids weren’t supposed to get polio anymore.  In Logan, they still did, and he had it before he was two.  He recovered, but his right hip never fit in the socket, and his mother always thought he would die young.  When he was fourteen, he started riding spoiled and unbroke horses, to prove to her that he was invincible.  They bucked and kicked and piled up on him, again and again.  He developed a theory that horses didn’t kick or shy because they were wild; they kicked and shied because for millions of years they’d had the instinct to move fast or be lion meat.”

War Dances by Sherman Alexie.  Excerpt: “Back in college, when I was first learning how to edit film—how to construct a scene—my professor, Mr. Baron, said to me, ‘You don’t have to show people using a door to walk into a room. If people are already in the room, the audience will understand that they didn’t crawl through a window or drop from the ceiling or just materialize. The audience understands that a door has been used—the eyes and mind will make the connection—so you can just skip the door.’”

Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr.  Excerpt:  “For the first time in front of me, he drew a pint bottle from under his seat. He put the upended lid in the ashtray, and before he handed the bottle over, he drew out a corner of his shirttail to wipe the top with, saying, Want a swig?  As a kid sitting on the bar, I’d sipped beer through the salted tri- angle of his aluminum can, but Daddy had so long and adamantly denied drinking every day that Mother had long since stopped asking. And he’d sure as hell never handed me any hard liquor.”

I’ve been dying to read Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It ever since I heard about it some time last year.  I knew that I wanted to read it even before I knew what it was it about simply because its title spoke to me.  Sometimes you just know from a book’s title that it’s something that’s going to speak to you as a reader.  Meloy’s collection of short stories is one of those books.  I read the first story on the subway on my way home from the library and it was everything I expected it would be – absolutely wonderful.  The story of a cowboy falling in love for the first time was simply told, but packed a punch.  No wonder this book was on a number of award shortlists.

War Dances will be my first Sherman Alexie book.  Umm, do I need to tell you how excited I am?  I am truly hoping that this will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.  Of course, I’m almost sure it will be given how many of you have raved about Alexie’s other books.  And finally, I was extremely surprised to see Mary Karr’s Lit just sitting on the shelf yesterday.  Earlier in the year, when I thought about placing this book on hold, I believe there were something like 400 people who were waiting on 12 copies to be returned.  I figured I’d be waiting for ages to get a copy so I didn’t even bother adding my name to the list.  But there it was yesterday, just sitting there all unassuming-like. Needless to say, I scooped it up.

Finally, I’d like to say a few parting words for Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey, which I returned to the library unfinished.  I wish I could say I returned it because it was due, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.  Honestly, I just couldn’t get into it.  I tried.  I did.  I love Fforde after all, and I know a couple of you told me that the book picks up, but I just didn’t find the story very compelling nor did I really care for the characters all that much.  If I didn’t have a ton of other more compelling stuff to read, I may have stuck with it, but as it is, that just isn’t the case.  It looks like this is going to be a series, so maybe I’ll come back to it later.  Anything’s possible.

So, tell me folks, have you read any of these?  Thoughts?  Comments?

* Library Loot is a weekly meme co-hosted by Eva at A Striped Armchair and Marg at the Adventures of an Intrepid Reader.

Happy reading, all.

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