Monthly Archives: March 2010

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva at A Striped Armchair and Marg at Reading Adventures that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. To join in this week’s event, click on the badge at left.

I don’t participate in this meme every week, because even though I work at our local library usually a couple of a days a week (this week three, as I’ll be working there tomorrow also), I don’t always check out books. In fact, I’ve been making a conscious effort not to do so and instead keep a list of books I “find” while shelf-reading so that I might return to them later. However, after starting a Donald E. Westlake book (Smoke) the other day, I thought about trying to find one of his that wasn’t in a series (since I’m such a stickler for reading books in a series in order).

I’ve only read a few of Westlake’s work last year after being introduced to him by my brother-in-law last year, but most of the books at our library are part of series that Westlake wrote. I searched on the regular shelves before I started working yesterday, but nothing there in particular caught my eye, with most of them being later books in a series. Then later as I was returning books to the shelves as part of my job, I saw it: Memory, the final never-before-published (well, until now) novel by Westlake, who died on Jan. 1 last year, on the “new book” shelf. To say I was excited would be an understatement.

Then later as I was shelf-reading in the biographies, I happened upon Step by Step: A Pedestrian Memoir by Lawrence Block, who among his credits and for whom I know him, has the “Burglar Who” series with Bernie Rhodenbarr. I’ve only read a few of that series, but to me, what was interesting was that this was an autobiography and not about his writing, but about his racewalking. I figured anything I can read to get myself out walking and running is good, and this seemed to fit the bill.

I did pick up one other book, but as my wife took it with her this morning, I don’t have my own photo of it. However, I can tell you that this is what it was:

I thought she’d be interested after I read this review by Kasey Cox, who along with Kevin Coolidge owns our local bookstore (yes, only one in our town) From My Shelf Books. Yes, I thought I might be interested too, but as I’m reading Westlake’s books now as well as delving into The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories, I don’t know if I’ll get to it now. That said, my wife read about 15 of 1088 pages last night before she went to bed and already said, “This is really good.” That said, she’s still trying to get me to read The Double Bind by Christopher Bohjalian and I haven’t read that yet either. So I’m making no promises at this point.