I <3 Books...

but apparently i have no time to actually READ them. i am busily importing the 5 discs of an audiobook into itunes (so i can listen to it on my ipod, get it?), and i have spent the last few minutes rearranging the bookshelves in my home office. i cleared a couple of shelves so that i could use them for the giant stack of books that i have either bought or received as gifts over the past year but haven't had the time to read as of yet. and they pretty much fill two shelves. 30 books. wow. i have a TON of books. i have read most of them... some of them several times. but somehow i still have 30 books on my shelves waiting for me to open them up and take them in. i think it's because i haven't done any HPLC in the last couple of weeks (i've been setting up that lab experiment, if you remember - a task at which i finally succeeded last weekend). on a typical HPLC day i spend a couple of hours getting everything set up, making standards and stuff, a couple of hours entering data, and a couple of hours reading in between injecting samples into the machine, which i have to do about every 20 minutes. so i get a fair amount of reading done when i do HPLC. i'll have to devote a large chunk of that time to reading a chapter or so per day in those text books i told you about (you know, the ones i have to study for comps).

it also doesn't help that i've spent the last few months re-reading a bunch of books because they precede others that i've bought, and i want to make sure i remember previous events before i launch into the newest book. for instance, i re-read all the harry potters before reading book 7. i also re-read eragon before reading the second book in the series, eldest. i plan to begin re-reading jonathan stroud's the amulet of samarkand and the golem's eye before i finally begin ptolemy's gate, the last book in the trilogy, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for over a year (looks like i'm really in the mood for kid/YA fantasy, eh?). but first i need to finish the time traveler's wife, a book that kelly lent to me a couple of weeks ago. i'm about half way through this book, and so far it is wonderful. i just wish i had more time to devote to it. i've been reading about a chapter every night, and i would love to read more, but i'm just so damn tired at the end of the day....

so what prompted all this book talk? well, i recently started working in earnest on the delta project in dr. v.'s lab (my new source of funding since my fellowship is over), and it looks like i'll be spending a fair amount of time picking samples. that is, picking all the little critters (which are stained pink) out of samples taken from the delta. this is fairly tedious work, and katy has introduced me to a new method of passing the time more quickly when picking samples - listening to audiobooks. i still prefer to actually READ a book, rather than listening to someone read one to me, but she was right - it passes the time.

but, dudes - audiobooks are PRICEY. so i stopped at the library on the way home the other day and procured myself a shiny new library card (i can't believe i've lived in mobile for seven years, including when i lived in the dorms at USA, and haven't gotten a library card). now, i used to check books out from the library all the time... pretty much my whole life until college, when i started just buying any book i wanted. i order a lot of them from amazon, but i also get a lot of them from secondhand bookstores and thrift stores. so, as i mentioned, i have a ton of books. i like them. i like having them around. i like reading them. i like owning them. and now i think i'm going to start checking them out of the library again. see, i can check out a BUTT LOAD at once (up to 50!) and keep them for four weeks at a time, so i should be able to check out a few at a time and have time to read them before they're due back. in fact, yesterday i made a list of books i want to check out and list of audiobooks that they have at the branch closest to my house (the west mobile branch) that i'd like to listen to. not to mention the fact that i did some quick browsing on my first visit and checked out 5 audiobooks that day (candace bushnell's trading up, dean koontz's brother odd, meg cabot's queen of babble, sophie kinsella's can you keep a secret?, and agatha christie's the a.b.c. murders). i should have time to listen to those over the next couple of weeks.

but before i start checking out library books to read, i need to put a dent in the 'unread' shelves in my home office.