So Many, So Little

 Last year, I participated in Victober--when people read Victorian literature in October and discuss on youtube and Goodreads. When I was reading some of the threads, I learned about the Serial Reader app, which I had never heard of. I immediately went to learn more about it and within a few minutes, I'd downloaded it and started going through the options. I haven't looked back. I've been using the app daily for almost a year and I love it. They send the books you choose in installments that they estimate will take between 10 and 20 minutes to read.The books are all in the public domain so it's all older books. There are well-known books and authors available, as well as obscure and unknown (at least to me) books and authors. There are long books (The Complete Sherlock Holmes, for example is over 250 installments) and short stories that are two or three installments. There is a wide variety of genres, which is cool. I've read books in genres that are among my favourites, like old mysteries and I have read work that is old sci-fi, a genre I normally don't read. Some of the latter have been truly strange, but I find them fascinating nonetheless. It's interesting to see what people thought life would be like in the future. I read a book published in 1894, written by a French astronomer, about a comet that was going to hit the earth. He forsaw the EU. Another, published in 1836, was about a guy who was transported 300 years into the future, which put him close to the present day, if I remember correctly. There were all kinds of things the author imagined life would be like, but in the story, large blocks of ice were still being transported to China by ship. Mary Griffith, the author, who is considered the first female utopian writer in the US, couldn't foresee freezers, apparently. Some of the books I've read have been wonderful, some have been weird, some have been not my cup of tea. But because it's just a short installment each day, it's easy to keep reading. There has only been one book that I decided not to finish after reading a couple of installments and that was a Willa Cather book, the name of which escapes me at the moment. I've tried a different book of hers in the past and didn't finish that, either, so I've concluded that she's just not for me. Anyway, if you're into classics, I highly recommend this app.

Besides that, my reading plans were recently upended, but in a good way. I was at the point where I had about 300 pages left to read of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens. Then I got this in the post:

Several weeks ago, I reviewed Davis' new book, Our Strangers. I loved that book so much that I wanted to read her previous work, so I went to the library website and requested The Collected Stories. Bill found a copy online and bought it for me, so I cancelled the library request. I'm thrilled to have my own copy, because it's the kind of book that is great to read in chunks.

Shortly after that, the postman dropped off another book parcel. Bill had found this book at Kenny's and bought it for me:

What a fabulous book it is, too! I am almost at the halfway point and I am loving it so far! But I ended up having to set that aside, too, because suddenly books I'd requested from NetGalley weeks ago got approved all at once and a couple are close to publication date by now. I already had a few others on my shelf, so those 4 got added. I've been reading those books for the past week or so. And the icing on the cake is the new Agatha Christie autumnal short story collection that appeared on the 'new ebooks' list at the library website. I reserved it and although it said it would be available in October, it came in the other day. 

I am not complaining, mind you. I think that an abundance of books is not a bad thing. I have a pin that says, 'so many books, so little time' and that about sums it up. If only there was somewhere I could click to request more hours in a day. 😀😁

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