My imaginary foreign friend would probably be correct. Pushing through fifteen hundred pages in a week is a sure way to make sure I barely absorb any of it if there is something decent to absorb. If there’s nothing to absorb, well, maybe I’m just reading candy anyhow.

However, in a effort to spite my imaginary foreign friend, at least partially, I hatched an idea. Since my finances are at a notoriously all time low (what do you want, trying to be a writer?) I’ve begun embracing a service I haven’t taken advantage of since I was about “yea” (we call that about 3 feet where I’m from) high: the library. In the interm years between being “yea” high and my current “yea+2.8 feet” I bought my books at the bookstore, acquiring an impressive collection of trashy paperbacks and other books situated at about “yea+3 feet” in my understanding of them.

Now, getting my books from the library means the collection of ideas I’ve supposedly transported into my brain will no longer be represented on my shelf, which frightens the American consumer in me, but delights the evanescent causist in me. I’m not sure who will win, but for right now, the wallet dictates the library. Still, I can’t just read books and give them back! If all I’m doing is “paper pushing” (though I do hope it’s more than that, and my imaginary foreign friend is dead wrong), I need to remember I read them somehow.

Hence, Ladies and Gentleman, the booklist is born(e). What better place to demonstrate my utter self-centered charm than a blog where I not only talk about the struggles of trying to be a writer, but put a list of all the stupid junk I have time to read? That’s right, there isn’t one (except perhaps a notebook by my reading lamp, but then I couldn’t put it out on the internet with the idea that everyone would want to read it but no one ever will).

Since I decided to start the list recently, after I’d been using the library for months, this can’t be exhaustive. If I tried to remember all the books I’ve read in the last year my head would explode, so I’m just gonna start from the recent past. Yesterday I finished a book. This morning I finished a book. I’m gonna start there.I may or may not comment on the books. I’m not running a book review here.

In the future, I don’t want to explain all this, so I’m just gonna list the books at the bottom of the entries as they happen. Probably, when my magic blog-post-readership-number happens, people will wonder what the hell all the books are listed at the bottom of the blog. I’m not going to tell them, though. “Let em get their own Dorritos!”

-m. out.

AMONG OTHER THINGS, I’VE TAKEN UP SMOKING – Aoibheann Sweeney – The first line (and title) is by far the best line in the book, which makes me almost sure it was placed there after the book had already gone through several drafts. I enjoyed the sections that used the Maine setting (since I’m from there), but the story itself seemed rote and overly predictable. Maybe it’s because I got sucked into watching the first episode of “The L Word” a few nights before, so I was looking for this sort of thing, but I saw it coming right away, which bothered me. It’s fine to know where a story is going if the writing is good enough to keep you interested, but if the pot has holes in it, water’s gonna leak all over the front of your pants when you try to take it out of the sink (or something). http://www.amazon.com/Among-Other-Things-Taken-Smoking/dp/1594201307

STRAIGHT MAN – Richard Russo – A thoughly entertaining read with a less than satisfying ending. the writing and chracterization itself entertained me enough to break one of my cardinal rules, which is never read more than one book by an author, or at the very least, not back to back. I’ve picked up EMPIRE FALLS (same author) on account of it winning the pulizter prize and all. We’ll see. http://www.amazon.com/Straight-Man-Novel-Richard-Russo/dp/0375701907