Sunday Coffee

Is It February Already?

Do you ever feel just kind of ....overwhelmed? Two weekends in a row I was at professional conferences, and then I felt like I hit a literal wall. Okay, I really mean a figurative wall. This weekend I finally got some much needed rest, and had some time to look over my recent acquisitions.

I might as well admit that I am incorrigible. I don't even want to change.

Two recent releases activated the *want* and *must have* areas of my brain:

Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books by Wendy Lesser

Lesser is the founder and editor of The Threepenny Review, and has written eight books of nonfiction and one novel. Books about books, and, more specifically, books about the pleasures of reading (some of my favorites are books by Michael Dirda, Francine Prose, and Jane Smiley) offer, well, endless pleasure for me. So I can't wait to get to this one.

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

Are you kidding me? I should have written this book! Except I'm not a writer for The New Yorker. But I did write this post: "Middlemarch My Love."

Middlemarch is my favorite novel. I've read it five times (at least). Love. So of course....I hope that Rebecca Mead's love for my favorite novel will somehow mirror/enrich my own.

How to Read a Novelist by John Freeman

I picked this up at the wonderful indie bookstore Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia. It is a collection of interviews with novelists, many of whom I love insanely and worshipfully, others whom I hope to adore:

Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, David Foster Wallace, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Orhan Pamuk, Jennifer Egan.....

How did I not know about this book? How wonderful is it that I happened upon it in a bookshop (yay for bookstores!)?

There's more, but in an attempt to look less obsessive and more normal, I'll stop there. It's a kind of theme, anyway, books about books and reading and writing.

Do you have anything on your bookshelf you're especially excited about?