One way to know you're a bibliophile:
You own Nicholas A. Basbanes' A Gentle Madness.
(look it up, all you curious people)

Good books read recently (ones "good enough to recommend to others", not just "good enough to satisfy a book craving"):

A Clockwork Orange
The Robber Bride
A Wolf at the Door (gotta love retold fairy tales)

*whew* my book-aholicism has finally been satiated. one open library and five books later, I feel much better. Apparently, libraries can't run without the internet anymore. I find myself feeling nostalgic for the days of card catalogues . . .

Summer Reading!
oh, wait . . .
Summer Reading?

So, I've been making a list all year of books I'd like to read "when I have time". This has become my "summer reading list" and it is one of the reasons I so looked forward to the end of the school year. Now, summer has officially arrived and I am kinda depressed. *sigh* I had thought that I could work with the small Pleasant Grove City Library, though I'd prefer to have a greater choice of books at a library more likely to have items on my list, but now . . . I went to the library this morning to find a note on the door "The Library is Closed due to Council Internet Decision". What's that supposed to mean? The library, however pathetic, still offered a haven of hours upon hours of reading material to satisfy my inner book worm. There I stood, just outside my small literary sanctum and I was puzzled, depressed, and angry. I won't go on a huge rant--I know how people feel about those things--but I will say this: Why do I have to live in a county without a county based library system? Why oh why oh why oh why? I thought of all the libraries within a half hour of where I stood--some with a greater reading selection. Orem, Provo, American Fork, even Lehi . . . they couldn't all be closed. Yet, they might as well be closed to me. Permanently. Unless I have nearly $100 to spare each year, I can't go to any one of those libraries. Memberships at all of the libraries in Utah County would probably cost around $350 a year. Compared to the $0 cost of other counties (say, Salt Lake or Davis, for example), that's a fortune. So, I feel a bit sad and lost and frustrated. Whatever will I do without my summer reading? What good is the list without the books? Now I have vivid visions of returning to the U of U in August as the worst-read English major there. Sure, there are a few books here at home I have yet to read . . . but I can only handle so much Dean Koontz and assorted other suspense/mystery/&c. authors and I've already hit my limit for the month. And the other books I haven't read tend to be either a) not really of interest to me, or b) short, mindless YA fiction/fantasy reads that would serve better as reading appetizers than as the main course. So, forgive me my *sigh* and do try to understand why I might be stir crazy in a few days. I'm just not the sort of person who can make it without books!