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Books

Wednesday night after the Rebirth Brass Band I stopped by the library. The Friends of the Public Library was signing up members in anticipation of their members-only book sale preview to take place that night. It was tempting--probably I should join someday anyway--but I passed it up.

The library book sale brought a lot of books into our home last year. I'm not sure whether to be excited or frightened at the prospect of its restarting soon. I dropped off a few donations to the library this morning partly as a reminder that we should make space.

I've been rereading a few things recently:

  • Bill Crow's "Jazz Anecdotes" is exactly that--a collection of anecdotes arranged into chapters by themes or famous musicians. Most of the stories, apocryphal though they may be, are wonderful. Sara has probably also read this through one or two times despite not having a particular interest in jazz. It's addictive.
  • Alan Garner's "The Stone Book Quartet" consists of four short stories spanning several generations of a family of craftsmen. They're told from the point of view of children, and probably written for children, but though I didn't first read "The Stone Book Quartet" as a child, it's my favorite book.

I also finished "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" the other day. It'll be interesting to see what's done with the characters of Snape and Malfoy; at the end of the book everyone but the reader is finally convinced of their allegiances.

Tuesday night we discussed "The Plot Against America" with the book group. I only skimmed most of it, unfortunately. It seems well done but I just couldn't find anything to get sufficiently excited by.

I'm also still working on Jacques Roubaud's "Mathématique" and "L'Exil d'Hortense", and a lot of other stuff.