This Week at the Library (9 December)

This being the Christmas season, I'm currently in the middle of a Harry Potter re-read. This is not a tradition, though it may become one: in 2007 I re-read the entire series during Christmas break after I'd returned home from university, and for whatever reason the Christmas season strikes me as an appropriate time to revisit the series. Perhaps it is the magic of the season. In any case, my desktop wallpaper is also of Harry, Hermione, and Ron sitting in the Griffyndor common room, dressed for winter. At the moment I am halfway through Goblet of Fire, and Harry is stressing out over who to invite to the Yule Ball.

For serious reading, I'm halfway into The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. Like most books on physics and cosmology, it's a daunting mindscrew...but I'm staying with it and even learning from it. I've been using Galileo's Finger to help me, as it covers some of the same territory in a different perspective. (Galileo's Finger is a science book I've been chewing on for months. I could rush through it, but I like the author's approach enough to take things slow.)

Additionally, last night I began re-reading a book I read earlier in the year, but never reviewed. (It is on the cumulative reading list, though.) I'm in the mood for it, it's an excellent book, and I'd like to share it on here before year's end. The only other book I've failed to review is Erich Fromm's The Sane Society, and I will re-read it, too..eventually.

Oh! And I just realized today that there's a reason my library doesn't carry a novel called Sharpe's Skirmish. There's no such thing. That's a short story in another novel, Sharpe's Christmas. So, next week I'll be continuing in the Sharpe series. I'd been reading it chronologically, and wasn't sure what to do when I saw Skirmish is next in the series and my library didn't have it. Next up is Sharpe's Enemy, which is set around Christmas, so that's perfect.