New book and other literary updates

I am about a quarter through Magical Thinking, a book of true short stories from the life of Augusten Burroughs (the guy who wrote Running With Scissors). It's hilarious. I find myself laughing out loud every other page. What's even better is I didn't buy it, well not recently anyway. I found the book in my bookshelf. I vaguely remember buying it a few years ago and having every intention to read it as soon as I finished whatever book I was reading at that time. When we moved into our house a few months ago I unpacked all my books and it was kind of like Christmas.

I am also happy to announce that I followed the good example of some fellow bloggers and finally got my library card today.

Here it is...my new bookstore.

Yay!!! I have my list of "to read" books all ready. As soon as I finish Magical Thinking instead of heading to Amazon or B&N I wil go to my local library and check the books out FOR FREE. While I was there I also joined the local Friends of the Library chapter. I am VERY excited about this and hope I have time to participate in some of the cool things they do, like the annual library book sale and their book clubs. Thank you MIL for introducing me to this wonderful organization with an equally wonderful cause: literacy and public libraries!

The first book on my list is actually the same one that my MIL is currently reading: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food by Barbara Kingslover. This is the description from the Good Reads website:

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain. Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ."

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."