How vain it is to sit down to write if you have not stood up to live.-Henry David Thoreau

I finished up reading Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen by P.G. Wodehouse on Saturday. As I said in the previous post, of course I enjoyed it since it’s Jeeves and Wooster. Nothing is better than Jeeves and Wooster when one feels the need for a little mayhem and a good laugh.

After finishing it up, I decided that a trip to the bookstore (or two bookstores as was the case) was what I needed. First, I went to see the man who always sets books aside for me since I haven’t seen him in about a month due to the amount I had been working. He hadn’t found anything new to set aside for me, but I grabbed a couple of Nancy Drew books. The first was #24 The Clue in the Old Album in yellow hardback, with the 2^nd cover art, and with 25 chapters instead of 20 (meaning that it’s the unrevised text). The second was #37 The Clue in the Old Stagecoach in yellow with the back cover picture adapted from The Secret of Red Gate Farm. I *heart* Nancy Drew.

After leaving the first bookshop, I went next door (yes, right next door) and got a copy of E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I had been wanting to read. I read it all in about an hour and a half yesterday, curled up in my chair next to the heater, listening to City and Colour’s CD Sometimes on repeat. All in all it was a very pleasant time. I really enjoyed the book, which I hadn’t read as a child, unlike a lot of people I’ve talked to. It’s about a sister and brother who run away from home, hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a week, and try to solve the mystery of whether or not a recently acquired statue was carved by Michelangelo. The premise of running away from home and staying in the Met for a week was what really got me, and made me want to read the book. It’s like a dream for me; kind of like why I went and saw Night at the Museum in the theater – because it’s always been a fancy of mine that museums really do come alive at night. I really enjoyed the book, and sometimes it’s really nice to just pick up a children’s book like that and fall into another time.

Now I’m reading The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex. It’s an account written by Owen Chase, first mate of the Essex, and one of only five men to survive the months spent adrift after the wreck. Basically this is the true story that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. I’m not very far in yet, but I like that I have read to this point.