wallpaper Library Loot: January 26 to February 2

wallpaper Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

wallpaper Marg has Mr Linky this week


I've currently got 32 items checked out on my card and another 15 on my husband's card. I'm going to show screenshots of our account pages instead of typing it all out or spending time selecting which get mentioned.

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My most recent trip to the library was Monday from which I lugged home another large bag. This after having just suffered the drawn out agonies of sending a couple dozen back over the last two weeks which I'd barely glanced at since a few days after their arrival in late fall.

From the moment NaNo started November 1st to New Years I was over committed without the huge bundles of books I kept sending for.

Yet I kept sending for them.

For several weeks now the final due dates of books renewed twice for a total of 63 days or nine weeks have been implacably arriving and I've been frantically perusing the pages of the batch due next. This might give me three days with twelve books or seven days with three books.

I did manage to advance my bookmarks in several of the NF books so I don't feel their stay with me was completely unproductive. I'd just hoped to get farther in more and possibly actually finish more. I make a habit of creeping my bookmarks through the NF but I truly hate when I've miscalculated and start a novel only to discover I haven't the time to finish. This has happened a dozen times or so in the last six months. I usually have to begin the novels again once I get them back.

I was stressed to the snapping point over the last two weeks as those due dates approached and passed and I tried to get as much as I could out of the batch going back next while maintain a good pace on the baby afghan and continuing to post daily and ... and ...

And yet I brought home another large batch Monday. There was another one on the 10th.

Here are some of the mostly first timers that have come home in the last month which I'm the most excited by:

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I'm in dire need of advice that works regarding stress, time-management, productivity, organization as my sister well knew when she practically jump out at me via facebook and shook me by the shoulders to tell me I had to read this. I immediately checked the library and got in queue.

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I am endlessly fascinated by the competing theories regarding the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Have had this out before but didn't get much further than scanning the chapter titles and dipping into a paragraph or page here and there. My typical pre-read for a NF.

Update: I was informed by a reader that the controversies discussed in this book have nothing to do with the authorship controversies. I guess my radar for the authorship controversy caused me to make a hugely unwarranted assumption based on the word 'controversy'. I blush.

Ah well. This doesn't lessen my interest in the book as its still about Shakespeare and his work.

I should clarify that my interest in the authorship theories is just that, interest. I'm not qualified myself to judge the validity of the arguments but I find it quite fascinating that they exist at all.

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This was one of the surprises I found on the large print shelves Monday. I saw on the cover the author was born in Jakarta to Chinese parents and then studied at Stanford. I love stories influenced by multiple cultures. Then spotting the word 'fable' on the inside flap sealed the deal for me.

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Actually I sent for this one several weeks ago after watching the movie on DVD. It will be a re-read for me if I get to it. This is one of the few books I've already read more than twice. Once in Junior High again in high school and yet again shortly after I was married.

And of course when this one came up during my search for Gone With the Wind I had to have it too. A re-examination of the Gone With the Wind story both book and film in light of the modern consensus of the role of women.

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Saw this on Sheila's Book Journey and was intrigued. A story in which story itself figures. My favorite kind of story.

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A re-telling of Bram Stoker's Dracula from the point of view of the woman who was pursued by the monster instead of the several men self-appointed as her protectors. Is it possible she resented their protection?

And then there is this which I sooooo wish I'd had last weekend for Bloggiesta:

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wallpaper Problem Solving for the Birds

I've got 12 hours to do what I can with 8 overdue or due library items, including at least 4 hours of video. There's no way I can finish with all of them.

I feel like the penguins in this vid, using up the available time going back and forth, back and forth between options.

What to choose, what to choose...

wallpaper Maybe You Find It With the Essence?

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Those elebenty huuard library stuffs r pressing my panic buttons. Teh string of due dates began today and for the rest of the month most weeks will have two of them. This week it is all three of the days the library is open--Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Oh dear. There just went another minute sneaking away on its velvet pawz. Quick kitteh snach it wit ur clutchy clawz and save it from the tick-tock's jaws.

wallpaper But I Always Do

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I have bunches of library items coming due in the next week. Three of them are TV series with 900-1300 minutes. That's each BTW. Then there are 4 Inspector Lewis episodes and a Sandra Bullock movie--Murder By Numbers. These weren't all supposed to come home on the same day. If Ed had been able to pick them up as they arrived they would have been spread over two weeks with 3 or 4 due dates. The series are: House season 1; Joan of Arcadia season 1; and Forsyte Saga complete.

Then there are several books coming due with either holds on them or zeroed out renewals. One of them is the novel The Passage by Justin Cronin which I was in queue for since late July. It will be months before I get my hands on it again.

There are 38 items on my card and 23 on Ed's of which all but three I sent for for myself but even the three Ed checked out for himself I am highly interested in.

Plus I'm probably going to get my turn for Franzen's Freedom, the Oprah book club selection, sometime in the next week. I've been in queue for it since the morning she announced it. I think that was early October?

Library items aren't the only place where I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew. I have too many projects in process: dozens of stories 5-50% written; daily blog posts; dozens of partially prepared book reviews, a number of them intended for the dozen or so reading challenges I joined over the last year; crocheting bookmarks; crocheting Xmas gifts; a website I've been working at creating for over a year; plans to start selling my crocheted bookmarks and/or patterns of those I created in electronic format; sorting junk boxes and drawers; two large cross stitch pictures; a dozen other partially done craft or mending projects; research projects related to one or more of the items above which contributes to the accumulation of library books.

That is still just a partial list.

So unless I can get some of those book reviews ready to post, I'll probably be continuing the practice of posting LOLcats with a minimum of commentary as I did throughout November while focused on NaNo. The primary focus for the next 17 or so days has to be getting the crocheted Christmas gifts finished. That is the shawl and coaster set for my sister-in-law; the coaster set for Ed's folks; an embroidered bookmark for my 8 year old grand nephew. And that is only a partial list and only for Ed's side of the family. There are a few on my side who celebrate Christmas (I was raised in a church that did not. And no it wasn't JW) for which I have intentions to crochet bookmarks or coaster sets. Tho for the bookmarks I just need to dress one of the 200 or so already crocheted. Then there is my Mom's birthday coming on January 3.....

Making that list is making me drowsy or driving me to put in a DVD and get lost in a story.

At least I can crochet while watching videos. That's how I've gotten one shawl, five coasters and a couple dozen bookmarks crocheted in the last six weeks. Plus tucking hundreds of tails on previously crocheted bookmarks. Which reminds me, it is time to take more pictures of the last month's work which will give me posting material that isn't off cheezburger.com or youtube. Sometime in the next week there will also be pictures of the 13 new crochet thread balls on their way to me from Joann.com care of FedEx.