Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Must..resist...placing...hold

Yes I have a bad habit of placing holds on all the cool new books at the library. No biggie, right? It's not like you pay for them. Not so fast, because you do pay in time. I read library books first as they have an expiration date, while my sad lonely books in my book pile await their turn. OK, they are just sad since each book has about 249 friends to keep them company. So, the lesson is, only place holds on books I really want to read, rather than give in to my Pavlovian response to the latest and (and often, not that) greatest.

Here's two new one I will likely save for later. Powell's has a review of the latest Cormac McCarthy which is set in a post apocalyptic America. The review doesn't make me that excited and I really wasn't fond of No Country For Old Men, so unless some one tells me it rocks, I will probably pass.

Dennis Lehane has a new one. Psych, it's really a short story collection of mostly previously released material. Short story collections are like B-side collections. The rabid fans have most of the stuff already. The casual fans probably aren't that interested, so interest is limited to those who are strongly attracted to the author, but not so strong as to hunt down every last bit of output. I think they kick these out, when an author is a long time between books, so we fans don't get too mad or drift away.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No Country For Old Men: Good, but not in the same vein as Blood Meridian or the 2nd & 3rd of the Border Trilogy. NCFOM reads like a noir movie script - in fact I'd be surprised if it hasn't been optioned.

Tripp said...

I'd rate No Country a lot lower, it just sort of petered out for me. And it does read like a script. I heard it was edited way down. Too down for me