In Which I Try to Be More Like Sarah

 Oh stop laughing, I know I'm nothing like Sarah. What I am is still in my Year of Pillaging the Library on the Regular, which I started after Sarah read the newest Kate Alice Marshall book before I even knew it was a thing, and she said she researched new books and tried to be the first in the hold line, and I thought 'damn, why am I not doing that', and I realized I was shying away from anything I had to physically go to the library for, and then realized this was dumb, so started haunting the New Arrivals lists and putting a million books on hold, with predictable results...

Apologies for the longest run-on sentence ever. Anyway, it's been insane and also delicious. I go to the library every Wednesday after my afternoon school, and return two or three books and pick up seven or ten new ones. Every couple of days I check my account so I know the order I have to read them in - what's overdue first, what's coming due next, what has people waiting for it, etc. I haven't had to return anything without reading it, and I haven't kept anything for more than 21 days overdue (which is when my account gets suspended until I return it). In the past this has stressed me out a bit, but right now it's very enjoyable, it feels like a well-ordered process, and well ordered processes are few and far between in my life.

If I was feeling at all like this was a weird, inadvisable thing to do, I read an article or post recently - dammit, I did not bookmark it and cannot find it - where a librarian was saying 'Borrow all the books! Borrow them even if you don't think you'll read them! Give them a vacation from the library!' It's one of those screamingly obvious things I still needed to be reminded of - more books being borrowed looks better for funding requests. If a book isn't borrowed, it risks being weeded. So yes, I am bringing these books home and letting them sit beside and on top of books they usually don't associate with, and this is all right and good. 

Book dance party!

It's been a thing of joy. I feel like I'm bathing in beautiful words and sentences, with brilliant metaphors and allusions and synecdoches splashing up over the edges and blooping me in the face.

I have mentioned here that I sometimes regret the first time I set a reading goal on Goodreads, because it sometimes gets weirdly in my head, but now that I've done it I can't make myself not do it. I sometimes consult Eve on what she thinks my goal should be - only sometimes, because I often like to pick odd numbers like 111 or 99 or 103, and she hates those - she likes round numbers and multiples of five. She usually sets her goal around 20, like this year, so she suggested that I set mine at 120, seeing as I'm not trying to do a master's degree in biochemistry - so I did. Then her housemate Zoe was over at our house - Zoe is fearsomely goal-oriented and competent and I kind of think she should be running the country. When I mentioned that I was shooting for 120 books because Eve was going for 20, she burst out laughing, and we finally figured out that she misunderstood and thought I was flexing on Eve rather than following her suggestion. 

Due to the whole 'emptying two library shelves every week or so' thing, I was coming up on my goal fast by the beginning of September. I don't know if anyone else does this, but I usually try to make my first book of the year special in some way - it's always a Frances Hardinge book if there's a new one, or something that is auspicious in some way. I try to do the same thing for the book that brings me to my goal. But then I was transcribing book notes - I used to use sticky notes or book darts to mark passages I wanted to remember, but that got really unwieldy, so now I take a screenshot if it's on my ipad or take a picture if it's a paper book, and then I type them up when I have time. I usually write the title of the book on the screenshot or take a picture of the book cover, but sometimes I forget and I come to a passage and have no idea what the book is. I look at successive passages, I rack my brains, and then I google, which usually works if there are names, and sometimes does not and I have to live with the mystery. This time I was able to find out what the book was, but when I looked in Goodreads I had not marked it as Currently Reading or Finished. And when I did so now, I was suddenly at my goal, which was a bit anticlimactic. 

I am coming up on the point where I am going to have to self-defensively suspend all my holds, given that I have returned three or four books and retrieved eight to ten books on hold the past two Wednesdays. I've never been one to blame a bartender for continuing to serve drinks to a drunk person, but I did look at the holds shelf this afternoon and for a second I imagined myself complaining "I was over-served!"

This is a finite experiment. I have books on my shelves at home and on my Kindle that I have been ignoring. This isn't sustainable. I have a measly two kids and half a job and I own zero pairs of barrel jeans and I do NOT look adorable in leopard print and I, sadly, am no Sarah.

I do wipe my bathroom down every morning before I leave, though.