Sunday is Library Day! The Book of the Week

I have a few shares this week. The first two are signed books by Lauren Child that I picked up a couple days ago:

Charlie and Lola's Animals

Charlie and Lola's Things

We have been enjoying them very much and in between reading, they go back up high on the "special shelf."


It's such a thrill meeting an author and getting a book signed. Eleanor has many a book made out to her by various authors, lucky girlie. I like thinking of her owning them in the future, maybe passing them along to her children. As you can see here, I also have some made out to a future baby (god willing), so they have a few as well if I go through a dry spell of seeing authors.

My last share is Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It was a book I saw on Robin's influential list (here's mine) and have seen other times about as well - displayed at the library, in the hands of a library customer checking out...and then luckily in our library here. It's definitely not a book I would normally gravitate to, but I really enjoyed it. I felt it pulled me through and I am left thinking about it. I highly recommend it. It is the story of Pi, an Indian boy, who survives 227 stranded on boat after a shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean, with a Bengal tiger.

There were many parts that resonated in me. And these lines certainly struck a cord:

Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult

The answer if the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.

I can't share the other part that truly affected me. It would give too much away to a future reader, but it deeply saddened me. I love when a book is so affecting.

I generally remember when I read a book - not the day, not even maybe the year--but generally where I was in life, be it childhood, college, when I was a budding children's librarian, an apartment we lived in before our house....on and on. Or I will think of the person who told me about if that was the case. I like that books I read this year will be marked with being here in the UAE....so far away from home. I take them in differently.

I am continuing to add books I am reading this year to book challenges I set forth for myself at the start of the year. I keep my sidebar updated and here is the updated original post if you are interested. With a small child running about, I don't get in as much reading as I would like, but it's something.