Books I Borrowed Today...

Started off the New Year on a good foot with a visit to the local library.  Like many public libraries, ours is grappling with the problem of street people using it for temporary shelter.  People have been hanging out in libraries, spending the day dozing at the tables, probably as long as there have been public libraries.  But I'm not sure they've been urinating inside them, as is, sadly, the case in ours.  Kind of shocking.

I picked up a Books A Million page-per-day calendar at a rummage sale last year; saved each page as I tore it out and brought them to the library today.  Used it to make a short list of books to check out; got four:


1.  The Lost: A search for six of six million, by Daniel Mendelsohn
The author recalls visits with his elderly Jewish relatives in Florida, and their stories of family members who stayed in Europe, only to be killed in the Holocaust.  His gift for description has hooked me from the first sentence.

2.  Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris
One reviewer has called this "The Catch-22 of the business world."  How could I resist?


3.  Rough Music by Patrick Gale
Family secrets at a beach cottage in Cornwall.  Couldn't resist dipping in a toe.

4.  Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen
I may not get to Florida this year, so this may be the only way to get my fill of tabloid murderers, stalkers, drug-runners, wise-ass adolescents and alligator wrestlers.  At least until Dave Barry writes his next novel.