On the Pile

Let me hang my head in shame. Two "On the Pile" posts in one week.

October has been a very, very bad book-buying month for me.

I went into the bookstore yesterday to do some early Christmas shopping. It's become a tradition that I get my parents and my sister each a book that I give them with the "stocking gifts." And I came this close to getting out of the store without buying any books for myself. But then . . . I was in the cooking section (looking for Rachel Ray's lowish-carb cookbook for my parents) and I started browsing through the vegetarian cookbooks. And I saw Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe. I'm going to see them speak in a couple weeks. F. M. Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet was hugely influential in my decision to become a vegetarian. It took me from thinking of meat as bad for the cute farm animals to realizing how bad a meat-based diet is for people (especially those in developing nations) and the environment.

So, of course, I had to buy the book.

But I had also gotten two other books in the mail yesterday:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
This has gotten great reviews and sounds really interesting, even though I already know the "surprise" twist in the story.

Saturday by Ian McEwan
It's gotten mixed reviews and I mostly got it because it was bundled with the Ishiguro book as a book of the month selection. I might give it to my father for his birthday.

I swear---these are the last two books I will buy until 2006. And maybe it will be my New Year's resolution to not buy any books next year (well, except for any of those mythology books). I certainly have enough to last me through next year---and possibly through 2007, 2008, . . .

And I always have the library, which I continue to use and abuse. My latest borrowings:

8 Minutes in the Morning by Jorge Cruise
I was inspired by Bdogg's success to give this a try. I've kept it up for a whole two days so far! The exercise part, anyway. I'm not even trying to follow his food plan.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Another curiosity read.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
I'm trying to catch up on a year's fiction reading because I've been so focused on nonfiction (and mostly depressing nonfiction on genocide, poverty, injustice) this year.

It's an illness. It really is.

I wonder if there's a book on it . . . .