Time For Some New Books!

I'm so excited!

I had bought about 12 books when I was at the Strand in NY a while back, and I've bought a few books here and there since, but I finally have worked my way through them all -- and now, its time for some new books!

I've taken to listening to MPR as of late as it seems like I'm in the car all the time and all the rentals that I've gotten have been sans satellite and so I've had to rely on FM radio. MPR has been a God-send as I've driven some long distances.

On my drive from Grand Rapids, MN to Minneapolis, I was listening to an interview with this woman who reads books for a living! Can you imagine! Thats all she does -- she spends like 10 hours a day just reading because she HAS to! UGH! Dream job! She reads because she writes and she writes these books called "Booklust". They're books that just talk about some of the best reads out there. The whole program was reviewing books and letting people call in to talk about books. I had my daytimer and my pen by my side and I kept on jotting down book names.

I knew that I needed to get more books for Budapest for the flight there and also, I'm probably going to have a day or two of actually nothing to do after the project.

I ran out to Borders late last night and picked up the books that they had. As I've been totally hooked on Bill Bryson as of late, I had to grab the ones that they had that I've not read.... "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" and "A Walk in the Woods". Those will be easy breezy read and I always laugh the whole way through his stuff!

One book that I'm especially excited to read is called "Gertrude Bell Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations". I've honestly never heard of her before, but she was born in the 1800s and she actually helped to literally form the borders of Iraq and put its first King in place. She sounds like she had an amazing and full life and it intrigued me so much, I had to go out and grab it.

Of course, you can't put me next to a book and expect me to not pick it up, so I immediately went home last night and opened up the Gertrude Bell book.

A great start, but I think the sad thing that stuck with me as I worked through the introduction was a comment on Bell's spiritual life.

"At fifteen, she decided that the unprovable did not exist, and told her scripture teach so without prevarication." The text continues to talk about how gutsy she was in telling people her opinion, etc, and thats all admirable, but that first comment just stuck with me and made me so sad. Sad that someone who, from what I'm reading, is so vivacious and so smart, but had nothing else in her life except for what she did and who she was. When her life is written, you can talk about all her accomplishments, which seem to be great, but the sad thing is that I know that if she could talk about her life now - all the stuff she did would be insignificant because she came to a conclusion long ago that nulled the eternal portion of her life. She basically made her life on earth the only life that existed and the only life that mattered. I can't even explain how sad it makes me. I'm still very interested in finding out more about who she is, but I do admit that as I worked my way through the first few chapters, that sad fact just sat in the back of my head and I saw Gertrude Bell's like in a different way - all that she accomplished is only history and a story to tell and one day those stories and those accomplishments won't even matter anymore.

We'll see what books I finish while I'm on my trip! :) I know that once I get to Budapest, that first week will have almost NO spare time, we'll see what happens the second week!

P.S... If anyone has any good books to read - make a comment as I'm always up for a good read, and I know a lot of people who read my blog are also looking for good reads!