Library books!

Library books!

Well, there goes my idea of maybe keeping the TBR Double Dare challenge going through to May. I went to the library today, and the shelves of new books were so very tempting, and so very full of things I want to read. I walked out with this delightful stack:

  • Schematics: A Love Story by Julian Hibbard: I hadn’t heard of this book, but the unusual format (it’s a board book! for grownups!) and size caught my eye. It’s apparently about “love and loss,” and the publisher’s site says this: “Every spread pairs a quietly unfolding, enigmatic narrative with a visually arresting schematic diagram. Whether they plot simplistic dance steps or chart chemical decomposition, the illustrations complicate and supplement the deceptively simple narrative.” Sounds neat, right?
  • Invitation to a Voyage by François Emmanuel is another new-to-me book, but from a publisher I’m fond of. Dalkey Archive Press publishes a whole lot of interesting works in translation, and this book of short stories apparently includes, among other things, an “artist who tries to paint fog and ends up by disappearing inside it,” as the back cover blurb puts it.
  • Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt: I haven’t really read much of the Canongate myths series—I think the only ones I’ve read were The Penelopiad and Weight—but I like Byatt and when I read about this one in a “new releases” email from goodreads, I figured I’d probably end up reading it eventually. And there it was, just waiting for me.
  • Barley Patch by Gerald Murnane is another Dalkey Archive book I hadn’t heard of before. The back cover says it’s “in the spirit of Italo Calvino and Georges Perec,” both of whom are authors I quite like.
  • Dani Torres mentioned Berlin Stories by Robert Walser a while back, and it sounded excellent. I like books about cities.
  • And last but not least is Ali Smith’s There but for the, which I think I first heard about last year via Litlove’s excellent post on it. More recently, Erin, who knows my taste in books, was reading it and mentioned she thought I’d really really like it. I expect I shall.

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