Diving in the Book Ocean

That sound you hear, like a whale spouting and taking a huge breath, is me coming up from a deep dive into reading.

Julie mentioned a couple of Mark Kurlansky books that I had read reviews on, Cod and Salt, and when I logged onto the library's online catalog to see if they were available, I found another book by Kurlansky, The Basque History of the World. I had to know what that was about, so I put holds on all of them, and they came in just before Christmas. So I had plenty of post-Christmas reading to occupy me.

The online catalog is a dangerous place. With a couple of clicks and my library card's bar code number, I can order any book in the system delivered to my local library. I used my original library card so much that I literally wore the bar code off, so I have now memorized my second 14-digit library-card bar code.

I already had out Peter Menzel's Material World: A Global Family Portrait, a book of photos of typical families from countries around the world, surrounded by their material possessions. As you can probably imagine, the contrast between a family in a place like Haiti and one in the US is . . . pretty striking.

And I had what's-his-name, Graham-Campbell's The Vikings, too. Naturally when we went to the library for a free showing of Cars, and I saw that they had Terry Pratchett's new book, Wintersmith, I got that, too.

So, ah, what was I saying? When I'm reading, I'm 90% gone. I'm not ignoring you, I just don't hear you. Knitting has to stand in the line behind all the books and wait, too.

Watch this space: I'll be back. Right now, my sonar detects another book . . .