“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English.”

Well, ok. So this maybe has the chance of being a weekly thing. If another post like this comes up next week, then, well, you know, the idea is a Great Success or something like that.

Yeah, right.

Library visits: why they are always so frustrating

My pubic library — or rather, the community library, as it calls itself (is there a difference? There must be, right?) — isn’t really all that close to my house, and to get there, I have to drive. I have no idea how to get there by bus and I am not adventurous enough to try anyway. Not worth trudging all the way to the bus stop/LRT station in the heat and all. The library isn’t open every weekend — on first and third Saturdays and Sundays of the month, they’re closed. I can understand that, really.

My problem is, when going on Saturdays, it’s always such a hassle to get a parking space. The parking spaces are very limited. I think I’ll just go on weekdays after seven in the evening like I always do, and brave the traffic and hope I find my books before the library closes. (Limited parking space is one of the reasons I don’t like shopping on weekends either; it just causes me so much frustration!)

Other things about the library this week: their website has been intermittently down for quite a number of days, and has been down each time I tried to access it the last few days. This makes me sad because it means I couldn’t check their OPAC and couldn’t find out if the books I wanted to borrow were available. I rather like searching for the books from home, so when I get to the library, I could just pick them off the shelves, or, if I wanted to, I could reserve the books online if they were on loan. Also it makes it easier for me to fill in the new book suggestion form. I’d hate to be redundant, really.

New books this week

Not bought, unfortunately. Just borrowed from the library. I have David Mitchell’s number9dream which isn’t exactly the first choice of mine of books of his I wanted to read — I wanted Cloud Atlas, but unfortunately the library doesn’t have that one. (There’s a picture of Mitchell on the inside cover. He’s kinda cute! :P Also, he was a teacher in Japan!) I have to wonder what is with the library and not having most of the Booker prize winners/nominees on its shelves. Especially since it’s like the major award for writers from the Commonwealth countries and all. Personally, I think they should go and add all the books in the longlist to their shelves the moment the list comes out. Quality fiction, people! Not all of us want to read romance novels (not that there is anything wrong with those)! I think number9dream made the Booker shortlist too, so this also should count for the Man Booker challenge. Poor challenge; it’s the most ignored one yet.

The other book is Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover. This one was in the Herding Cats challenge recommended books list, recced by cumuluscastle, whose reading taste I admire*, and I think I liked Mahy’s books that I read when I was younger. This book won the Carnegie Medal in 1984 — I didn’t know that until I saw the cover.

I really wanted to borrow Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora, but someone had already checked it out. Sad. I blame you, offline website! Otherwise I would’ve known that it’s already checked out and wouldn’t have been too disappointed when I couldn’t find it on the shelf.

Books finished/read this week

• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters — this was also shortlisted for the Booker prize, actually. I didn’t know how to describe this book the first time because I haven’t read it, now that I’ve finished it, I couldn’t describe it either. The first part of the book starts off with Sue Trinder, an orphan, agreeing to help Richard Rivers (otherwise known as “Gentleman”) to seduce a heiress, Maud Lilly, so that they would be able to share Maud’s fortune when Gentleman marries Maud and then commits her to an asylum for the mad. Of course, things aren’t really as they seem, and I enjoyed reading this very much. I’ll be adding the rest of Waters’s books to my list: Tipping the Velvet and Affinity.

I’m starting JG Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, and I’m only a few pages in, so I still don’t have much of an impression of the book yet. I’m still reading the same short story collection, East of the Sun and West of the Moon by Peter Asbjørnsen — well, actually I still haven’t moved from the last story I was reading, so this one is on the back burner, really, and one should just assume I’m still reading it until I say I’m done. (I can’t make head or tails of a lot of the folk tales, really. Is it just me, or I’m missing something here?)

I’ll probably leave Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain for later — I don’t think I can read two books about World War II almost back-to-back. So I’ve nudged Philip Reeve’s Predator’s Gold up on the to-read list instead, but we’ll have to see if I’ll choose Dorothy Dunnett’s King Hereafter over it instead.

Other things this week

I still haven’t written up my recaps of the books read in April! Man, I am slow. I had hoped to finish those this weekend, but alas! I am headache-y and very, very tired, thanks to spending almost the whole day either driving to or getting back from my cousin’s engagement ceremony (and being at said ceremony, of course). Yes, you read that right. There are ceremonies here. So no reviews this weekend, woe. I’ll try to put something up once I’m not asleep on my feet.

I think I’ll be participating in this week’s Weekly Geeks . . . and talk about video games and fanfiction, of course. I’ll try to have the post up by Wednesday or so. Also, there is also a read-a-thon in June. I’m not sure whether I’ll participate — I’ll have to figure out the time difference and see whether it’s feasible. Not that I already spend my weekends reading, oh no.

.

––
* proof of great taste: she also loves Diana Wynne Jones’s Chrestomanci books.