Books Books Books

Yesterday Chelle came and took me to Fort Union for a movie.  We had some time before the available showing so we stopped in at my favorite place in all the world: Barnes & Noble!

I don't drink coffee but I love the smell of it, especially when it is combined with the deliciously musty smell of paper and binding.  The first thing I do when I enter a B&N is breathe in deeply, inviting the familiar scent to completely infiltrate my nostrils. 

Generally I begin in the bargain section (since they are the first shelves you come to upon entering.  Yesterday my routine was disrupted and instead I started in the back with Shakespeare.  I only glanced across the plays and commentaries before rounding the corner to the poetry section.  To my great surprise and delight, the Fort Union Barnes and Noble had a full two bookcases full of poetry books!  Much better than the two unlabeled shelves squished between sci-fi and western novels at another location.  After spending some time thumbing through any collections that caught my attention, I wandered up toward the bargain stacks but diverted my attention toward a table display of Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics. 

The name Ray Bradbury caught my eye and I pulled the book from the small plastic easel and randomly opened to a page in the middle of the story The Illustrated Man.  I paged backward until I came to the introduction of the story.  I haven't read any of Bradbury's stories.  In 2009, however, in the very first class I took from Dr. Vause, he read some passages from Zen in the Art of Writing and I was completely captivated.  The paragraph or so of the introduction to The Illustrated Man, affected me the same way.  Ray Bradbury is now on my list of near future reads.

After replacing the book on its small pedestal, I turned to find the New Release Fiction shelves directly to my right.  A title caught my attention so I started picking up books and reading the covers, flipping through the pages.  I pulled out my phone and created a list of the books.

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly

The Traitor's Emblem by Juan Gomez-Jurado

22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

The Upright Piano Player by David Abbott

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Just to name a few.  I'd like to get around to reading each of these, plus about a million others.  I just finished Bid Time Return and am now reading I Am Legend, both by Richard Matheson, and Persuasion by Jane Austen.

I had forgotten how much I love reading.  I guess I was a little burned out for a while, after all the reading that has been required for school.  But my plunge back into stories began last month when we read The Hunger Games for book group.  Those books shook me up.

Recently the need to pull back and spend more time alone has increased as friends have become less available.  I'd rather not spend so much time by myself, but reading makes it much more enjoyable!  And now, with the aforementioned list, I have plenty to keep me occupied. :)