28 June 2009

Sunday Salon: Disappearing Books

My favorite movie of all time is The Women (1939). However, before I even found out that it was a movie, I was in love with the stage play that it is based on. When I was about 12, I would check out copies of famous plays from my local library. I loved the snappy dialogue in plays, and this play by Clare Boothe Luce had it in spades.

Even though I can rent the movie version whenever I want, I got a hankering this week to read the play again. Imagine how disappointed I was to find that the book was no longer in my library's collection. I know that a library can't house all the books ever written, and new books are in higher demand than something that is old and relatively obscure. Still, it was a letdown because this is the same library that I've been borrowing books from since I was 10. I keep expecting that my old favorites will still be there, but they've got to make way for the books that the current crop of 10-year-olds want to read. I guess this is the sort of occurrence that makes the rest of you out there buy books.

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In other disappearing news, you may have noticed that I've taken away the By My Bedside widget from my sidebar. It was powered by my Amazon affiliates account, and that account was closed this week. Apparently, North Carolina is working on a law that would make it too complicated for affiliate programs to deal with residents of this state, so Amazon decided it would be easier to cut us off now. I have mixed feelings about this. I should be saying "good riddance" because I never made a penny from the Amazon links on any of my blogs. On the other hand, I was hoping that if I improved the quality of my blog, I would increase my traffic and more people would use the links. Ah, well. Now I can stop worrying about it and get back to reading!

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READ: I zipped through The Big Skinny and one of my kids' books Babymouse: The Musical (click links for my reviews). Both are graphic novels and quick reads. I took a break from my other book to read them so that I could reduce the stack of library books by my bed.

CURRENTLY READING: I'm still working my way through The Dirt on Clean. The book is filled with fascinating tidbits, but it doesn't compel me to pick it up. I read a few pages at odd moments, like when I'm waiting for my teakettle to boil. At this point, I may have to skim through the rest of it so I can be ready for the next stack of library books that I'll be picking up tomorrow.

UP NEXT: Besides a collection of Noel Coward's plays, I have nothing but kids' books on my table. I may have to read a couple of them because I am tired of non-fiction at the moment. I want to be swept away by a story. Maybe a romance would fill the bill.

5 comments:

Frances said...

Here is a link just in case you haven't pulled it up yet.

http://books.google.com/books?id=tnOxBZL4yJUC&dq=the+women+by+clare+boothe+luce&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=K3tHSrLWJYK0tgff4MiMCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

I think I would love to read more plays so thanks for planting the idea. And you can never go wrong reading children's book (says the children's librarian).

Today I am reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Happy reading!

Dani In NC said...

Thanks for the link, Frances. Honestly, I didn't bother looking up the play because I assumed it wasn't in the public domain. The Google link is just a preview, but it should satisfy my craving.

Jena said...

I've tried watching The Women a couple of times. I'm not sure why I never make it through (maybe it has something to do with my husband not liking it), but I know it's on TCM... this tonight and sometime Thursday.

Dani In NC said...

Jena, I rarely try to watch classic movies while my husband is home. If a movie is in black and white, he won't even give it a chance! He also dislikes movies and TV shows with snappy dialogue. Every time I would try to watch Gilmore Girls, he would grumble, "People don't really talk like that!"

Anonymous said...

The NC affiliates program seems to be affecting a lot of bloggers. It's a shame that they cut it off rather than fighting for their NC affiliates.