What was I thinking?

When I just went and bought a bag of books I have no space for in my apartment and had never heard of?  More to the point, what was I thinking last night, because that's really the root of today's stupidity...  I swung by Cmark last night for just "a drink or two" - and I was feeling pretty confident that I'd stick to that, unlike the last couple of times I ended up disappearing into that Bermuda Triangle of awesomeness for hours upon hours.  After all, I actually paced myself on Friday night, despite it being a birthday party & being out with T (who is a very bad influence and a whole lotta fun all at the same time). 
But Boston is in the middle of a heatwave (today is day 3, makes it official), and it was H-O-T last night, so I was craving something icy and refreshing, and I had a good iced tea & vodka over the weekend, so my beloved iced tea/lemonade/vodka it was...  And I loved it a half dozen times or so.  As I did beer, and wine...  As always, the company of the lovely V was too fun to walk out on, so I stayed to close, made some poor choices, and woke up still drunk.
Needless to say, when I finally got up the energy to leave my cool, quiet office to get lunch, it had to be take out from Hong Kong (what did people do when they had hangovers before American Chinese food existed?).  And I forgot to walk on the far side of the street from the Harvard Book Store, so of course I got sucked in to the used book trolleys outside. 
I ended up buying FIVE books (total was under $8, thank goodness, but the stop still almost doubled the cost of "lunch") which I deemed "engaging enough to distract me from the fact my head is still spinning a bit, but nothing I really have to concentrate on, or think about" - as I explained to the sales clerk, who probably wished she hadn't tried to make conversation about the book.
What are these bits of fluff? 
Hangman Blind, Cassandra Clark, 2008
The White Witch of Rosehall, Herbert G. de Lisser, 1958
Cane River, Lalita Tadmey, 2001 (whoops!  this might not actually be too fluffy after all...)
The Black Tower, P.D. James, 1975 (I just realized this is the second time I've picked up a P.D. James for "hangover reading" at the Harvard Bookstore, and I told the clerk then, too, why I had chosen it, and she got all snippy about how James was not trashy.)
The Wine of Angels, Phil Rickman, 1998 (holy crap, am I still drunk?  I totally thought this book had a picture of Florence on it, and it's actually a little ye-olde-Englishe town.  Goodness...that is the problem with trying to get books from the bottom shelf of a cart when bending down gives you the spins - you just grab!  But this is the one today's clerk nicely suggested I start with, given my condition, so I guess it's fine.)

and again, a while...

home sick last week/end, and knocked off The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal.  Also read Danielle Trussoni's Angelology: A Novel.

Huh, been a while.

Read Murder in the Museum of Man, by Alfred Alcorn, which I had high hopes for (nice little author profile in the Harvard Magazine, an academic protagonist who works in a museum), but ultimately rather boring, and the "quirky" narrator voice quickly became somewhat annoying.  Ah, well.


The Coral Thief, by Rebecca Stott, was rather fun, but not as good as her earlier novel, Ghostwalk.  Still, I enjoyed it, and would/will likely read more by her.













My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk, was awesome (not surprised), and I'm sorry it took me this long to get around to reading it.  Very different from Snow, which was also great, but similar attention to detail - settings, in particular, are described with a keen eye.


Mom started chemotherapy last Tuesday, and brought along two books by a woman (I assume??) named Nevada Barr.  While Mom was napping I borrowed and started one of them, a mystery called Winter Study.  Mom had read other books featuring the same heroine (Anna Pigeon, a National Park ranger who apparently solves mysteries fairly often, or at least is around as they play themselves out), and said they were good, whereas the other book was by the same author, but a standalone.  And this one had wolves!  And maybe a windigo.  Obviously irresistible, so I read about a third at the hospital  and then checked out the Widener copy.







Finally, last night I finished Buccaneers of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire, by Jon Latimer, which was f---ing awesome, although a bit confusing in places (doesn't help that I'd normally read it before bed, so I'd be falling asleep and getting totally confused about which island port was being raided) and possibly a lazy editorial team (not to mention the whole were the buccaneers he is describing really pirates, per se, which I think - unless I totally misunderstood the book - they were not, so it's a problematic, if catchy, subtitle).  Super interesting though, and accessible, if overly crammed with details.  I would have appreciated a bit more big picture, but hey, it's his book, he can write it however he wants.