07 July 2011

Mysterious Book

I love when I get to the library to pick up a book that I requested, and I have no idea what the book is.

Sure, I get an email (more on that later), and/or I check out my account on the website, but sometimes, sometimes, that title and author isn't enough to jog my memory.

And then I get to the library--sometimes days later--and I pick up the book, and, bingo, it's that book. The one I requested six weeks ago and it's finally in. The one that I randomly saw in the stacks the last time I was in the library. The one that was recommended to me over a year ago, and I just found the slip of paper inside another book.

It's a great surprise.

Or, there's an ongoing confusion for sometimes hours on end, until I can get home and look up the title. Have you ever noticed that some books--mostly paperbacks, I think--don't have a summary anywhere on them? The back cover is full of accolades, the first page offers an extract of maybe a paragraph or two that doesn't divulge much. There's no hint of A Jacqui Hale Novel or something, anything, to give away the secret.

So there's nothing left to do but read.



My latest "mysterious book" is Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, a detective novel. It is, of course, a paperback with no summary. Where did that come from? The book has been turned into an eponymously titled BBC series, starring Jason Isaacs, whom I've adored ever since I was more interested in his villain than Mel Gibson's hero in The Patriot, and I was scoping out his IMDB page while looking at HP7.2 stuff. See? I get book recommendations from random places.

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