Feeding a Reader

This week is a great one to be a reader in Wilmington, Delaware. The local shopping mall, Concord Mall, is the host to the AAUW's (American Association of University Women) annual used book sale. This is a fabulous sale for a serious reader, or for browsing. It starts this Thursday, and I plan to be there with a friend when the sale starts at 10am. The first day is always exciting - it's fun to watch the book dealers hovering over the tables before the volunteers uncover the tables at precisely 10am.

The dealers can be quite grabby and rude, but the readers that attend the sale are generous and friendly. I received some great book recommendations from fellow shoppers. One gem was Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi.

My "to read" pile is still pretty substantial in size, so I have been trying to downsize and make room for a new stack from the booksale. I found, buried, an almost-finished copy of Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson. So I finished reading that. What a knock-out of a book! Larson tells the story of the hurricane that destroyed the Texas city of Galveston one hundred years ago, from the point of view of the representative of the fledgling National Weather Service. Well written and very compelling, I wish that Larson would revisit this book and write a forward or afterword regarding Hurricane Katrina.

So, off to the sale tomorrow. I will detail and list my finds in another post.