Look What I Found…

…in the library!

The thing is that I had been running out of books at home that I haven’t read yet… In early/mid-July I originally came home for only a long weekend, then I meant to return to Budapest around the 15th. However, things turned out differently, I am yet to find a summer job, and I probably won’t return to the capital until mid-August…. and all my books, well, at least the ones I wanted to read during summer are stuck in my dorm room. Hence the lack of reading material here at home.

I could not stand this state any longer, neither could I resist going to the library this afternoon… I browsed their stacks for about an hour (Boy, do I love browsing books!), went a little crazy and borrowed 9 books before their month-long summer recess. Although the local library’s English lit section is rather poor (to say the least!), they did have numerous volumes of John Steinbeck. (And two copies of On the Road, plus Ginsberg’s Howl Someone must really love the Beat Generation!). I am yet to read any work of Steinbeck, although The Grapes of Wrath has been on my reading list for such a long time. (Or at least since I saw  season one of One Tree Hill in which the character played by  Chad Michael Murray is  going on and on about Steinbeck and cannot stop quoting his works.) I got East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath, we will see whether and how I like them. I also got The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Shame on me, I already saw the movie at least half a year ago, and still haven’t gotten around reading the real thing. Then I borrowed four novels by Hungarian writer Edit Sohonyai. Back in my not-so-good-old teenage years I loved her books, written especially for young adults. She was kind of my role model, for I wanted to write novels like hers. Well, actually, I guess she is still my role model, since, should I be able to write such page-turner and successful novels (or at least one such novel),  I would be pretty pleased. Anyway, the last time I read anything by Sohonyai was at least five or six years ago, and I want to refresh my memory and see whether I still like her novels and her style. Plus, it’s also kind of a research on young-adult books – their language and way of telling a story, since I am (sort of) working on such a novel. And last but not least (enough with the stock phrases!) , I borrowed Révfülöpi nyár by Ottó Demény which, too, a novel for young adults. I also read it during my teenage years and absolutely loved it. Some time ago it occurred to me how much I loved it back then and started to look for the book but I had no luck locating it. To my biggest surprise, the local library has it. Of course, it’s the place where it did not even occur to me to look for…

Anyway, I am definitely not out of reading material anymore, my next couple of weeks will sure be pretty busy and entertaining reading wise!