Libraries: when holds collide …

I am on several waiting lists at the local Picton library, for both physical books and e-books when physical copies didn’t exist. And, as luck would have it, this month my number came up and up and up.! Day after day I was getting notified that a book I’d had on hold for weeks and weeks was ready for me to pick up or download. I’d even re-upped the hold on a few of them because I was too busy the last time they came in. This month, I decided to push through and read as many of them as I could just to get them off my list. Plus I suspect there is a limit to how many times you can re-hold a book… So here you go, the September library reads!

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

An intriguing story about a young boy, Daniel, who discovers a book in a secret library known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books (if only this really existed!). Daniel embarks on a quest to find the book’s missing author, Julian Carax, while being pursued by a mysterious stranger who is determined to destroy every copy of Carax’s books in existence. This book was written by someone who loves (LOVES) books and if you love books as well then I highly recommend it. It was suggested to me by my friend Chrystal, partly because it takes place in Barcelona right after the civil war, and we are heading there in a month for a vacation. To Barcelona that is, not to civil war. Although, we’ll be there during the US presidential election so who knows! BONUS: The locations in the book are real, and there is a walking map provided, just in case you happen to find yourself in Barcelona in early November looking for something to do.

How to Sell a Haunted House, by Grady Hendrix

You know that moment when you make the hard decision to finally sell your vacant family home only to discover that it is packed to the rafters with creepy, life-like dolls and puppets? And when you try to clear all the creepy stuff out, you find out that the house is haunted, not just by the tortured memories of your past but also by a very unhappy poltergeist who has no interest in leaving? That! Well, this book is here to help you! It checks a lot of boxes in my “no thank you” list (generational trauma, estranged siblings, haunted taxidermy squirrels) but I really enjoyed it. Hendrix has the ability to drop in just the right amount of dark humour to balance out the scary parts, and overall it makes for an entertaining read. I started reading a library book version, but I was so overloaded with books coming due that I caved and bought myself a copy instead. Grady Hendrix also wrote a book with the very intriguing title “The Final Girl Support Group” and I justified buying this book so that I can trade with my niece for the Support Group one.

The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig

A book about a library in a month of reading an excessive number of library books feels about right! In this particular library, visitors who linger in the space between life and death are given the opportunity to change the outcome of decisions that they perhaps regret making (“why didn’t I take that new job instead of staying in the job I hated” is one of mine). Then they get to live out that life in some kind of parallel universe to see how differently their life might have turned out. A similar concept is presented in the movie Sliding Doors, but in the movie we see only one other life, while in this book the number of lives that can be lived is infinite. I loved this idea, and any time the lead character is living a different life, I loved the book. However, what repeatedly took me out of the story was an excessive amount of exposition, drawing on physics and philosophy and whatnot to explain how the library worked, but honestly I didn’t really care. I just wanted the library to be magic, no explanation necessary. There was significant disagreement on this book at my neighbourhood book club, however. One woman loved it, and one found it kind of annoying. I find myself right in the middle.

Fifteen Dogs, by Andre Alexis

What would happen if a bored and frankly amoral god, Hermes, were to wonder aloud “what would it be like if animals had human intelligence?” and an equally bored and amoral god, Apollo, wagered a year of servitude that animals would be even more unhappy than humans if given human intelligence? Well, what might happen is that these same reckless gods could decide to grant 15 random dogs with human intelligence and frame the wager around whether any of the 15 dogs will die happier with said intelligence than without. Why this happiness quotient is measured at the time of death is, really, just the kind of thing you’d expect a foolish and alarmingly idle god to do. Of course, the only way to complete this wager is for ALL THE DOGS TO DIE. (……. oops …. spoiler …….) And because they are also asshole gods, sometimes they interfere in the process, in order to try and win their thoughtless bet, and in doing so create immense and unnecessary suffering for the dogs. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that this is a terrible book written by a man who knows literally nothing about dogs. Give it a wide berth and go hug a dog instead.

Artemis, by Andy Weir

Andy Weir can write a captivatingly fun and suspense-filled story! What I appreciated in this book was that the protagonist, Jazz Bashira, was female and Saudi Arabian. Was she a little too much of a mouthy brat and too smart for her own good? Yes, yes she was. But the story was entertaining, and high-energy, and mostly funny (although some of the jokes were a little boy-ish for my taste). The plot is a “caper” and many aspects of the caper adventure defy logic and believability, but just like in the Martian, I suspect the science is sound, even if many of the coincidences that create the need for the science are a stretch. So yeah. Lots to criticize, but lots to enjoy.