I feel like one of those little squirrels you see this time of year, hopping all over the yard gathering nuts, cheeks puffed out, storing them away for winter. I haven’t been gathering nuts but I have been picking up books for the snowy Iowa winter ahead.
We have an annual community book sale in my area that is so huge, they hold it at our state fairgrounds. Writer friends have driven to Des Moines from Omaha to check it out. It starts on Friday evening and runs through Monday. It used to run for two weekends in a row but the past few years they cut back to one and added Monday. The first night there is an entrance fee but for the remainder of the time, it’s free.
I happened to have both Saturday and Sunday off this week. Saturday I skimmed the long rows of novels and mysteries and felt pretty good when I walked out with – ‘In the Tenth House, by Laura Deitz – a Tarot mystery, ‘The Unseen’ by Alexandra Sokoloff, and ‘The Novelist’ by Angela Hunt. I read Tarot so was intrigued by that. I have always wanted to read Alexandra Sokoloff and was pulled in by ‘The Novelist’ because it was about writers. I spent $19.00.
I thought I was done until this morning I was playing around on the computer and joined a few groups on yahoo. One was a readers group that reads women mystery authors. They sent the reading list for the rest of this year. For October they are reading ‘ Episode of the Wandering Knife’ by Mary Roberts Rinehart, November – ‘An Expert in Murder’ by Nicole Upson and for December – ‘Beautiful Lies’ by Lisa Unger. Because they were not books I chose to read, I decided to check out the library first. The only book they had was Lisa Unger’s.
So I trekked on back to the book sale at the fairgrounds and started searching the tables of books again. Didn’t find any of the three I needed but I did find four more books I had to have. ‘The Witch of Blackbird Pond’ by Elizabeth George Speare, ‘Writers of the Purple Sage’ by Barbara Burnett Smith, ‘Murder on the Ghost Walk’ by Ellen Elizabeth Hunter, and ‘All Hallows Evil’ by Valerie Wolzien. In case you couldn’t tell, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and yes I do dress up, when I get a chance. For those four books, I spent $3.75. Sunday is half price. Monday they knock it down to 75% off but alas, they will be closing about the time I get off from work. If any of my local friends have any of the books from my reading list and wouldn’t mind loaning them, please let me know. I plan to check 1/2 Price Books on Tuesday.
What are your reading habits? Just curious.
Virginia
All The Books 