Due Dates

I should be able to post a book review today. However, I’ve gotten myself all muddled up because of due dates.

Libraries are fabulous, and I am a huge fan and patron of my local one. I have a problem, though, with overloading each time I go to the library—I pick so many books that I can’t possibly finish them all during the three-week checkout period.

I have three books due within the week and one I’ve borrowed from my sister’s boyfriend. I have been trying to finish them all at the same time, which, I’m discovering, is an impossibility.

• I’ve read about one-third of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next: First Among Sequels. Thursday Next is currently inside Pride and Prejudice. What could be more exciting? I honestly believed I would finish the book today, but little things like caring for children, cooking dinner for the family, and editing other people’s blogs got in my way. Darn life.
• I am also about one-third of the way into Patricia Wrede’s and Caroline Stevermer’s The Mislaid Magician, or, Ten Years After: Being the Private Correspondence Between Two Prominent Families Regarding a Scandal Touching the Highest Levels of Government and the Security of the Realm. Is this the longest title ever? I wasted a whole week just getting through it. And let’s be honest. Is there any way a book could live up to a title like this? I think not.
• Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass has been in the news recently, so I needed to read it. I borrowed a copy from my sister’s boyfriend, so both the sister and the boyfriend are now pressuring me to finish it. Despite devoting a significant amount of time to the book, I’m just not into it. Shouldn’t a popular young adult novel be a faster, more engrossing read?
• I’ve just barely started Elizabeth Noble’s The Reading Group. I might return the book unfinished and repost it to my “to read” list. Yet, the premise intrigues me. Who doesn’t love a book group?

Of course, I interrupted all these books to read the disappointing Pandora’s Daughter. If you consider how many pages I’ve read, though, I really have finished an entire book for today’s blog. Come on, humor me.