Oh Wait…I Forgot: Apocrypha

where I post things that don't make it on Oh wait…I forgot.

Bookstore mischief!

Some serious mischief went down at the Thrifty Peanut this afternoon.

I went there because I wanted decent hardbound copies of The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit. As you can see, I was fairly successful, and I only spent $15. The dust jackets are in terrible shape, but the books themselves are good. Also: the YooHoo.

I have a feeling I’ll be able to score a hardback Hobbit somewhere around Houston, where I happen to be headed tomorrow!

A literary dilemma

I finally finished Ready Player One (blog post forthcoming), and I’m having a hard time deciding what book to read next. I’ve been wanting to reread The Hobbit (and Lord of the Rings) for quite a while, but I’ve had holds on Damned and The Marriage Plot, and, of course, they both came in at the same time. I think I’d like to read The Hobbit, but Ready Player One, which is scifi, messed up my sleep, and worried that fantasy will do the same. What to do?

In the process of reading: Ready Player One #2

I hate when books invade my dreams – even good ones. In fact, I’ve stopped reading books that I was otherwise enjoying because I couldn’t stop dreaming about them. For a while, I was into gothic novels. I really liked The Castle of Otranto and The Monk, and I had plans to read Northanger Abbey and The Mysteries of Udolpho, but toward the end of The Monk, I started having nightmares, so I stopped reading gothic novels altogether.

201201110827.jpg

That’s what’s happening right now with Ready Player One. Not nightmares, but dreams in which I’m still vaguely awake, calculating what I should do about finding the keys and gates in the novel. And the kicker is that I don’t even like the novel. My annoyance with all of the eighties references only grows. I got to 70% last night, and I’m gonna try to read at least half of what’s left tonight because I’m dying to read something else, but I don’t want a book on the Fail Pile so early this year.

I guess this is what I get for trying to read pop fiction.

In the process of reading: Ready Player One

I have a habit of putting down a book I’m reading for a day, or so, then picking it back up and not liking it half as much as I had. That’s happening with Ready Player One. It’s full (overflowing, even) of 80s pop culture references. They’re fun for a while (I grew up in the 80s), but they’re really getting old. I think this novel would be much better if it was much shorter.

That, and The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings keep popping up, and I’m looking forward to reading them again. I almost picked up The Hobbit instead of Ready Player One, but since I’m blogging for the liberry now, too, I didn’t want to start off with two books I’d already read, neither of which are remotely new. I’m kind of regretting that now.

I think I’ll spend a good chunk of the afternoon reading. I’m only at 35% of Ready Player One. To stay on schedule, I have to finish by this time next week, which won’t be hard. I’m just getting tired of reading it.

Bonus: Biblioklept posted this oldschool paperback, which is one of Tolkein’s original drawings and which, I’m pretty sure, appeared on the first copy of The Fellowship of the Ring I ever owned (there have been several).

201201081152.jpg