So it’s happened.

The first time in thirty-four years.

The last time it almost happened, I was five, but we eventually found it, behind the frame of a picture that hung alongside the staircase. It was determined that someone had kicked it over the stairs and it had lodged behind there. Much later, one of my sister or I kicked a pair of scissors the same way, which went careening down into the goldfish tank and hit one of Bert or Ernie (I was an kid raised on television; what can I say?), who swam tilted over for quite some time before he finally righted himself and went back to being an upright goldfish.

I have lost a library book.

I think we left it where we were staying last week on holiday. I emailed the proprietress and told her, should it turn up, the book can be returned to any library in the province (yay full-across-the-province library system). But I have yet to hear a response (actually, no one I’ve emailed in the past week and a half has emailed me back. What’s up with people taking summer breaks and not attending to my needy needs?) so I am not hopeful.

Now I have to go and shamefully reveal my trespass to Allan the librarian, who will shake his head and look at me like maybe I don’t deserve to take out any more books ever. But then whose books will you put on the hold pick-up shelf Allan? I always have books on that shelf.

So goodbye Burning Your Boats Collected Stories of Angela Carter. I wanted to read you and was judged, by my inability to gather up all my detritus, to be unworthy of the task.

Also, we seem to have left Og behind. If anyone is in need of a present for Tesfa, here you go.

Number Seventeen. That is, I am reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Put it on hold at the library. I’ll let y’all know what becomes of it.

See here.

I decided to do all the ladies this time. My list:

1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
2. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
3. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe
4. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
5. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
6. The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
7. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
8. The Devil’s Pool by George Sand
9. The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield
10. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
11. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
12. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
13. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
14. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
15. Middlemarch by George Eliot
16. Beloved by Toni Morrison
17. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
18. The Collected Stories of Colette by Colette
19. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
20. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The number will be picked on August 11th. So stay tuned.

I took this from Reading in Bed. I think, dear reader, you could save a lot of time on this blog if you simply read Reading in Bed, since I take the memes she does and I read the books she reviews (much more competent reviews than my own) and basically am just a creepy internet follower/stalker, so maybe you should be reading her. Like right now. Go and read it (but maybe open it in a new tab in case you still want to read here).

So I made a list of the ten ten authors I own the most books of. Since I have five Billy bookcases, plus another bookcase in Tesfa’s room, plus books strewn around the house, plus no organisation to our books whatsoever, this took a little work. I included books that are Geoff’s because Geoff is always saying that they aren’t my books and his books, but they are our books. He says it a lot. Underlined books in the lists below are books I have not read, so likely astute readers can determine which books are our books but less so mine.

Honourable Mentions (5 $$\le x \le 7$$): Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (5), Graham Greene (5), Michael Ondaatje (5), John Irving (5), Robert J. Sawyer (5), Anton Chekhov (5), Judy Blume (5), Lloyd Alexander (5), Mo Willems (5), Margaret Atwood (6), Douglas Adams (6), Minette Walters (6), Warren Ellis (6), Mordechai Richler (6), Robertson Davies (7), Jim Benton (7).

And I have to do twelve authors, just because I have four authors with eight books each.

12. George R. R. Martin (8 books): Fevre Dream, A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance With Dragons, Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle), Dreamsongs Bundle Volumes I and II;

11. Douglas Coupland (8 books): JPod, Microserfs, Generation X, The Gum Thief, Shampoo Planet, Polaroids from the Dead, Worst. Person. Ever., Life After God;

10. Neil Gaiman (8 books): The Doll’s House, Dream Country, Seasons of Mists, A Game of You, Brief Lives, Endless Nights, Coraline, Fortunately The Milk;

9. John Le Carré (8 books): The Honourable Schoolboy, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, The Constant Gardener, A Small Town in Germany, Our Kind of Traitor, Three Complete Novels (Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold), Absolute Friends, A Delicate Truth;

8. Philip K. Dick (9 books): The Man In The High Castle, The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford, Eye in the Sky, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, Minority Report, Galactic Pot Healer, Ubik, Solar Lottery, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?;

7. Joseph Conrad (9 books): Under Western Eyes, Nostromo, Three Short Novels, Lord Jim, Suspense, Chance, Heart of Darkness, The Nigger of the Narcissus, The Secret Agent;

6. Dr Seuss/Theo LeSieg (10 books): Ten Apples Up On Top, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Fox in Socks, In a People House, Dr Seuss’ ABCs, Hop on Pop, Green Eggs and Ham, Horray for Diffendoofer Day (with Jack Prelutsky), And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins;

5. Beverly Cleary (11 books): Henry Huggins, Henry and Beezus, Beezus and Ramona, Ramona the Pest, Ramona the Brave, Ramona and Her Father, Ramona and Her Mother, Ramona Quimby Age 8, Ramona Forever, Ramona’s World, Dear Mr Henshaw;

4. Roald Dahl (11 books): Tales of the Unexpected, Someone Like You, Ah Sweet Mystery of Life, The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar, Matilda, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Twits, The Witches;

3. CS Lewis (11 books): Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, The Last Battle;

2. William Shakespeare (12 books): The Norton Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Two Gentleman of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Late Romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, A Winter’s Tale, The Tempest), Titus Andronicus and Timon of Athens, Three Tragedies (Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear), Othello;

And….

1. Agatha Christie (55 books): Yeah, I’m not writing all of those out. Come over to my house and I’ll show you the shelf if you’re really interested.