Birthday Books!

Sunday was my birthday, and (as always) I got books! I've been using the library so much this year that I didn't ask for as many books as I used to ask for, but what I got was quality:

• Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy in the Tiina Nunnally translation -- I can read the language of Charles Archer's older translation, but it tends to feel like Archer is trying too hard. His archaisms are grammatically correct, so I can stand to read them, but they still feel strained to me, as if he's trying just a little too hard. I've read that Nunnally's translation is also more faithful to the tone of Undset's own words, but I don't read Norwegian, so I can neither confirm nor deny.
  
• From my brother: Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory, and Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton. My brother just started working at Borders, so he was looking for books to buy me, and I picked a few from my old Amazon wishlist and a few from Diana Gabaldon's "Methadone List". Armed with the list, he actually walked into the store where he works and bought a Phillipa Gregory and a Laurell K. Hamilton! Coming from an almost-21-year-old, that's real brotherly love. (I mean, Master and Commander is love too, but without such potential for young-manly embarrassment.)
  

Adam may very well have gotten me books, too; we haven't had our celebration together yet.

My very own library card...

Adam was getting sick of my excessive booklust putting him over the 60-item limit on his card...

Also, it turns out that there's now a unified library card for all Maryland public libraries, so that you don't have to be a Howard County resident to get a Howard County library card.

So on Saturday we went and signed me up for my very own Howard County library card. It's shiny and holographic!

In honor of this new development, I'm going to start posting the things I check out (and return) on each trip to the library, so you can see how excessive my booklust really is (even as compared to the number of books I claim to be reading at a time).

On Saturday, we went to both the local branch library and the central library. Here's what I checked out:

• Local branch:
  
  
  • From a display shelf of selected young-adult "good reads":
    
    • Nine Days a Queen: the short life and reign of Lady Jane Grey (Ann Rinaldi)
    
    
    • Just Ella (Margaret Peterson Haddox)
    
    
    • Singer (Jean Thesman)
  
  
  • From New Books: One Night at the Call Center: A Novel (Chetan Bhagat)
  
  
  • The Borgia Bride (Jeanne Kalogridis)
  
  
  • For Adam: The West Wing, season 4, disc 5.


• Central library:
  
  • From New Books: The Ladies of Grace Adieu (Susanna Clarke)
  
  
  • Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
  
  
  • A Morbid Taste for Bones (Ellis Peters)
  
  
  • The Last Templar (Michael Jecks)

On Sunday, I went to study at the central branch. In the last 15 minutes before the library closed, I browsed the new nonfiction books and grabbed these:

• My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned By Becoming a Student (Rebekah Nathan, aka Cathy Small)


• The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial (Susan E. Eaton)


• Poor People (William T. Vollmann)

Total items out so far: 13.