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It’s February and do you know what that means? An extra day for reading! It’s Leap Year y’all! Twenty-nine days this month instead of twenty-eight. I almost said I wish every year were Leap Year but then it would just come to be a regular year and the joy of an extra day of reading would get washed away. Any plans for cramming in some extra reading? It is unfortunate that the extra day falls on a Monday but we’ll just have to make the best of it.

The piles on my reading table are shrinking and it’s not because I am reading the books on there that I own. Nope, it is shrinking because I am working my way through the library books that got added to the table. It feels good to have my library reading under control. At the moment I have only four books checked out, two of which came today, The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli and All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Anders. Also out from the library is a book of poetry by Joseph Massey called To Keep Time. It is most excellent. And then there is Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho with which I am just about finished. It too is good.

I have six outstanding hold requests at the library, for two I am up next, for the rest I am in the nebulous who knows when my turn will come, probably all at once realm. Only six outstanding requests is pretty darn good though given my profligate ways of late. I can even see several of the non-library books on my reading table and I am eyeing them and thinking , oh, I forgot you were there! Looking forward to reading you! I am quite proud of myself and if I am not careful I will cause harm to my shoulder and arm from patting myself on the back so much. That or my inflated sense of self-worth will be too large for me to fit through my door.

Other books on the go at the moment include Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. This is my slow, meditative read of the moment. Very much enjoying it. Then I am still working my way through The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo. She writes in short chapters and it is the perfect book for the spare ten minutes here and there. While it is quite good, I don’t want to try reading it in bigger chunks, it would lose its umph and quickly become boring.

And finally, I just began reading a review copy of a new biography of Charlotte Bronte that will be out in March. Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart by Claire Harman is pretty good. It is advertised as being groundbreaking but since I haven’t read any other Bronte biography I can’t say whether it is or not. At the moment Charlotte is still a young girl and the family has just moved to Haworth. There are a good many more siblings than I knew about which means bad events ahead.

There are a couple other books I am in the midst of that have been moved to the back burner and not worth mentioning at the moment since I haven’t picked them up in a few weeks. I will get back to them, just probably not this month! Or perhaps the extra day will grant me the chance to get them in front of my eyes again. Ha! The odds in Vegas don’t seem to be leaning in my favor. Imagine that!

It was just back on the 13th that I mentioned how deluded I am regarding, in particular, a book that I was next up for at the library and that I was sure I’d have at least a week’s wait before I had to worry about it. Nope. Two days later, I got an email from the library telling me that Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho was ready to pick up. I ignored it for a few days, until the middle of the following week, when a couple books had to be returned. Then, looking at my library holds list I thought, phew! I really will get a break for a little while now!

Yes, that is exactly how deluded I am!

Because you know, right, that three days later I got an email from the library to tell me that Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates was waiting. And then the next day I got another email from the library to let me know The Explorer’s Guild, Volume One had been added to the shelf. I ignored them until today when a book had to be returned.

This all happened last week when I was beginning to feel as though my reading was getting under control. I’ve been really zipping through Fates and Furies and have reached close to the two-thirds mark. Really liking it! I am plugging away diligently at Sorcerer to the Crown on my lunch breaks at work. Haven’t made it far yet but I’ve only had it for three lunch breaks and it reads fairly quickly. I’ve felt so good I have been eyeing my reading table, certain I will be able to begin digging into those books very soon.

After I got the email about the Ta-Nehisi Coates book, however, and looked at my library holds requests, I had a moment of fretting. I am moving way too fast up the list for the new China Mieville book, The Census-Taker. I did something I have never done before. I suspended my hold request until March 1st. That has left three books that might come rushing at me faster than I expect: The Cabaret Of Plants (currently I am 6 on the list), Strong Female Protagonist, Book One (I am also 6th on this one), and The Story of My Teeth (I’m at 10). In my formerly deluded state I would relax and figure I have plenty of time. But the veil has been rent and I know better, at least until I can stitch the tear back together.

That leaves only two other books on my holds list and both are currently on order, The Vegetarian by Han Kang for which I am first in line, and All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Anders for which I am number 11. There is no telling how long it will be before the book is available. They are like jokers or wild cards. The likelihood that in two days I will get an email from the library telling me The Vegetarian is ready to pick up is high given how these things seem to go. The messed up crazy thing is, that when I think about it, if I don’t get an email in a couple days regarding The Vegetarian I will be disappointed rather than glad!

Part of me is looking at my hold requests and thinking, hey! I got this! I can totally add Svetlana Alekseevich’s Voices from Chernobyl to the queue because I’ll be number 33. Or maybe I could be number 64 for Rushdie’s Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-eight Nights? Or maybe even number 14 for Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan would be okay?

Except the other part of me is yelling really loud right now and it is so distracting! She is saying things that, well, let’s just say I didn’t know she knew some of those words! She says I can’t add any books to my hold requests until I have finished one book from the reading table.

Fine, be that way. Sometimes I can be such a party pooper.

With Nimona and the Small heart of Things I managed to clear two books off my reading table. However, I picked up three books at the library yesterday. Two steps forward and three steps back.

The good news is that I shouldn’t be getting any more books at the library at least for a couple weeks. Though I just checked and I have moved from second position to first in line for Sorcerer to the Crown. Perhaps I am too hopeful that everyone who has it checked out now will be slow and I’ll have at least two weeks before my library sends me an email to come pick it up. Or I’m probably deluded.

Definitely deluded.

Nonetheless, my poor little table remains standing despite Bookman’s dire predictions regarding its load-bearing capacities. And, I have a three-day holiday weekend approaching for which the weather is forecast to be even colder than last weekend—we probably won’t even get above 0F/-18C! Get the coffee brewing and the quilts piled up, it’s going to be the perfect holiday weekend for reading! Hopefully I can convince Bookman to bake me up something delicious to nibble on too. I can hardly wait!

But wait I must.

The books I brought home from the library are ones I’ve had in the holds queue for quite some time. Months. They are Fates and Furies, Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library, and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Volume One: Squirrel Power.

Squirrel Girl is a superhero comic and our hero is part human, part squirrel. She has a squirrel sidekick named Tippy-Toe. I started reading it last night and it’s as crazy and frenetic as two squirrels chasing each other around the trunk of my maple tree. It’s cute though and there was a brief moment, and thank goodness it was brief because it worried me a little, in which I might have actually thought squirrels were cute and kind of cool. But then I remembered how they are not good garden sharers—I’ve had a hazelnut tree for ten years and have never gotten a nut off it because the squirrels eat them all first. Every. Single. One. I’m cool with sharing but the squirrels, not so much.

Anyway, Squirrel Girl, so far, wacky fun. Haven’t started the other books yet. Those will be for the frigid weekend ahead.

So Stef, it’s day four of 2016, how’s that New Year’s goal to read all the books on your reading table going?

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Hello?

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Anybody there?

Hush? Oh, are you talking to me? I’m sorry, what did you say?

Your 2016 project to Read the Table, have you started on it yet?

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???

Fine. If you must know I haven’t picked up any of the books yet and actually added three more to the table today. The books came from the library, I cannot be faulted for adding library books to the table.

???

Stop it! Stop looking at me like that! Now I know how Bookman feels when I raise a single eyebrow at him.

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Don’t you want to know what books I added to the table from the library? C’mon, you know you do.

Okay.

Great! So there is Nimona, a graphic novel by Noelle Stevenson I have been waiting my turn for since October. There is A Timbered Choir, a poetry book by Wendell Berry. This is part of a kind of project for the year with my friend Cath. We share poems through the mail and this year we have decided to focus on reading poets who are currently writing who we have not read before and whose poetry focuses on nature. I’ve been wanting to read Berry’s poetry for ages so now seemed like a good time. The other book is called Toolbox for Sustainable City Living. I have no idea when I requested this or where I came across it so I would know to request it, but there it is. Good books. And because they are library books they won’t be around long. Once I get through them I’ll start working on the books that are on the table.

Is that right?

Hey! What’s that saying about stones and glass houses?

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Yeah, thought so.

I hope the New Year is off to a good start for everyone!

I did not stay up until midnight, I haven’t made it up that late in so long I can’t remember when last I did. This morning person has to have a darn good reason to be up that late and since parties and other sorts of gatherings aren’t my thing, there was no reason to not read in bed and go to sleep as usual.

However, BookerTalk is a curious person and wanted to know what reading was winding down 2015, so to satisfy her nosiness, I read The Small Heart of Things: being at home in a beckoning world by Julian Hoffman. It is a lovely, quiet book full of observations of the natural world and humans in it.

Today though, today, let’s talk about 2016.

2016 goal: Read the Table

Therefore, it is time to clear the decks, or rather, the table. I am growing weary of Bookman’s jokes that he is worried about it collapsing. But if you think I am going to go through and list every single book that is on that table in the post for your edification, you have another thing coming! As the year progresses I will definitely make updates so you don’t have to worry, you’ll find out what is on the table as I do because, big reveal, I don’t even know all the books that are piled up on it! Surprises for everyone!

And of course there will be non-bookish Sunday posts to look forward to as well. Chickens ahoy! Biking adventures! Chills and thrills! You just never know what might happen. Oh, and then there is Vocalis too. I had better get working on my next essay. I already have the title: The Joy of Socks. Do you like it? I wonder what it’s about?

It’s going to be a good year.