I SO need to stay out of the book store

I don’t know why, but I cannot make myself stay out of Barnes & Noble and Borders, which are right down the street. I just get the urge to walk around all those books… and when I do, I have to take at least one of those lonely looking books home. So yesterday, while the weather was blustering outside – yes, we got more snow – I decided to go to the bookstore. I started looking at the best sellers, which normally I do not buy because they don’t tend to fit my genre (except Eat, Pray, Love which is supposed to be AWESOME), and I found P.S., I Love You. I didn’t realize that it was a book (I should have known better, since most great movies are based off a good book). So that little puppy took the lead and I brought her home to read after my hitchhiker series. I’m so excited! And the girl who wrote the book is only 23! Imagine, to be so young AND published AND have it produced into a movie b/c it is such a best seller! WOW! I want to see the movie too, but I am boycotting the movie until I read the book. Guess I better hurry up so I don’t miss it in the theaters!

So my reading list for the year has changed. It now looks like this:
1. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all five novels)
2. P.S., I Love You
3. Eat, Pray, Love
4. His Dark Materials Omnibus (The Golden Compass, and two others in series)

Then I need to return to some oldies-but-goodies that I have and have not read:

5. Wicked (and if it’s any good, I’ll continue to read some of his others)
6. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (author of DaVinci Code – another great one)
7. Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
8. Hannibal by Thomas Harris (Both are supposed to be great!)

Anyway, a lot of reading but that gives me a plan for the year and I think it’s a pretty good start. Even David is trying to read at night with me. He has chosen Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It makes me proud that he is trying to read. He wants to, but can just never seem to get into it. We’re working on that one.

We have also started collecting leatherbound classics so that we have a library of good books, including the one that David is reading – Classics of Horror (Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde). Some these you can find really cheap used, such as the works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, & The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde) that I got for $0.25 plus shipping used on Amazon. It’s like new! You can’t beat that. I want to read some of the older classics from high school and college again, and I think David wants to try also. I got a bunch on sale at Borders for $10 a piece, including the Wizard of Oz, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Works of Nathaniel Hawethorne (The Scarlett Letter, Moses of Manse, and House of Seven Gables), Works of Victor Hugo (Les Miserable, Hunchback of Notre Dame)… there are so many! I will try to add to this collection as often as possible. And you should see them! They are beatiful with their leather covers and gold-gilded pages! They make me so happy… especially when I know I have nice hardcover, leather books that I get for the price of a paperback! That probably seems weird, but it’s true!

What are you reading these days?