Los Libros

Our family consumes books by the box load. In order to constantly feed our addiction to books, we must spend a lot of time in thrift stores shopping for them. These limitations mean that I cannot simply find the latest and greatest to read. I’m subjected to the local township folk’s literary choices. This has had me reading books that I never, in my right mind, would have read before. Even Steve has been reading books way out of his genre in a desperate attempt to find something well written hidden amongst the John Grisham, Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy.
Steve and I both have different tastes in books. He’s a science fiction and nautical history buff wherein I’m more of a travel literature and historical fiction girl. When we went around the world for a year and a half, we were stuck with what would fit in our backpack and what we could find on trade shelves at hostels. We made a deal that we would each carry two books, one of which the other had to agree to read as well. I remember sitting on a beach in Ecuador reading Indiana Jones and realizing I had gotten the short end of that deal.
In Toronto, we found a fantastic thrift store that sold kid’s books five for $1 and adult books three for $1. This was awesome for us as the kids alone could spend a few dollars and feel like it was Christmas. Steve and I struggled to find anything worthwhile. And yet with surprise, I found a book called The Outback that I fell in love with and read in two afternoons. The cover looks …almost like a romance novel. It wasn’t. It was actually written in the 1920’s and followed the life of a family over three generations of hard living in the…Outback. Steve started reading a book called The Adventures of Goodnight and Loving that we have both really enjoyed and yet NEVER would have read otherwise. Both of these books have one thing in common – horrible covers. Really horrible covers and yet they are very well written.
For the time being though, I get to be a book snob again. My literary compadre from Georgia sent us a couple of care packages for the road. There were books for all but I scored the most and should be deep in escapism for a few weeks. Thanks Bache!
Books we’ve read as of late…
The Last Tasmanian – Interesting book of fiction about a small fishing village in New Brunswick seen through the eyes of two teenaged boys
The Girls – A horrible ridiculous book that I struggled to read through. The book was written from the perspective of six friends that have all grown apart over the years talking trash about each other in the form of letters. I didn’t like it and yet read the whole like as if I was in a book club.
Blasphemy – I just asked Steve what this book was about and this is what he said “about a scientist that built a particle accelerator that left mysterious messages from god”. This is why we don’t share books.
Streets of Laredo – This book killed me. We both loved Lonesome Dove (before you laugh thinking of Ricky Shroeder in the mini-series years ago, let me tell you that book won a Pulitzer Prize for a reason, it’s great). The sequel was horrible and made me wonder if Larry McMurtry’s agent thought so too but didn’t have the balls to tell him so.
Nemesha’s Ship – A young spaceship designer who takes an experimental ship on a test run and accidentally enters a worm hole (I blush writing that for Steve). Although props to Anne McAffrey for writing a book in a field dominated by geeky science boys and Ursula LeGuin with whom I’ve met and may actually be a geeky science boy.
Mountain of Black Glass – this is the last book in the Overland series. Enough said.
Lamb – About the missing adventures of Jesus and his friend Biff traveling the world. It’s Christopher Moore!

Ryder has read the first book in the Warrior series (it’s about cats), Dragonsdale, The Lightening Thief, The Candy Store Wars, a Little’s book and that is just since this past Sunday (it’s Thursday). So, I cannot list all of his books.