Currently reading a book Easley Library has?

[Werner]

Barb and I are reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare from a copy we own; but Easley Library does have a copy in the Juvenile collection.

[Werner]

The book I'm reading now, The House Without a Christmas Tree by Gail Rock, is a check-out from our Juvenile collection. (If you haven't realized yet that a lot of the Juvenile fiction books in that collection are wonderful reads for all ages, you're missing out! C. S. Lewis put it well: "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”)

[Werner]

My current read, Celia Rees' YA novel Pirates! is yet a third checkout from our Juvenile collection.

[Werner]

It's been awhile (back in December, actually) since I read a book from our collection; but one of the books I started today, Jane Austen's Emma, is an Easley Library check-out.

[Werner]

Right now, I'm reading Northanger Abbey in one of our enormous omnibus editions of Jane Austen's novels, It turns out that we actually don't have a free-standing printing of this novel by itself! That's a gap in our collection that I intend speedily to remedy, because having to manipulate a nearly 800-page tome in order to read one small part of it is inconvenient at best. :-(

[Werner]

Although I own copies of both the Sherlock Holmes story collection I just finished, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the one I just started, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and read/am reading my own copies, Easley Library has both books. The first one is contained in our copy of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories.

[Werner]

Later this afternoon, I'm about to start on a book I checked out from our collection, C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces.

[Werner]

For the second time this year, I've checked out our omnibus edition of The Complete Novels. This time, I'm reading Lady Susan.

[Werner]

For once, I'm reading an Easley Library check-out as the third book in a string of them --whoo-hoo! :-) This time, it's The Tory Lover (1901) by Sarah Orne Jewett. Our copy is a quality edition brought out by the Cornell Univ. library, using first-class scanning technology to accurately reproduce their own public-domain paper copy, and then employing desktop publishing POD technology to print paper copies. This is a wonderful example of how the computer revolution can actually be harnessed to serve and promote out-of-print paper books!

[Werner]

My recently-begun current read, Mansfield Park (by, of course, Jane Austen) is an Easley Library checkout. Our collection offers a pretty complete array of Austen fiction and nonfiction books about her, for the delight of any good Janeite!

[Werner]

Theoretically, Easley Library has the book I've started reading today, Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake. But, our copy is missing! So, I had to check it out from the Bluefield branch of the Tazewell County Public Library.

[Werner]

Yay! Our missing copy of Anna Dressed in Blood turned up the other day.

For another common read in a different group, I've now started on Stephen King's 1975 vampire novel, 'Salem's Lot. This time, I was able to check out our copy!

[Werner]

I'm once again reading a book checked out from our own collection, The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

When this thread was started, way back when our group was newly founded, we didn't yet have a more general thread where we were invited to share whatever we were reading, whether it was in the library collection or not. Since we have that one now, this thread in its present form seems sort of superfluous. I'm thinking seriously about archiving it.

However, I still think it's interesting to see what books from the collection are being read. One of my other groups has an annual "challenge" thread for classics --not a formal challenge that requires the whole panoply of dedicated bookshelves, a featured section at the top of the group page, etc., but just a numbered list where each member posts a link to a book they've read that fits the criteria. I'm wondering if, starting next year, we might do something like this for Easley Library books, and see what our year's-end total might be.

How do the rest of you feel about these ideas? (The rule of thumb in law is that "Silence is consent...." :-) )

[Werner]

Since no one has objected, this thread has now been moved to the Archives folder (but not closed to comments!).