Reading in the Dark

I make considerable use of the library these days, dodging my love for and tendency to be acquisitive about actual physical books, since they seem to be filling up too much of the space around me.  The library is wonderfully supportive, allowing for on-line placing of holds.  I do regret the obvious deterioration in opportunity for actual librarians to work their magic on me and others.  But I guess I am pretty self-directed when it comes to books, probably rarely in the past couple decades having interacted with a proper librarian in the way I once did.  Librarians have always been at the top of my admiration-pyramid.  I glommed on to a number of them over the years, intrigued that they actually unquestioningly supported my gluttony for more and more information.  While I appreciate on-line access, I greatly regret the denigration of the role of these wonderfully resourceful folks.

On return from vacation recently, I was greatly amused at the collection awaiting me on hold at the library.  I made a point of joshing with a couple co-workers that I had assembled these books to purposefully compensate for their happy-happy talk.  In one case it was sarcasm, in another a response to our mutual cautious censorship of topics.

My books on hold were:

The Arsenic Century: How Victorians Were Poisoned At Home, Work, and Play;

Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work; and

Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West 1846-1890
Just the sort of thing to bring balloons and cotton candy to mind, ehh?  (Not to say I have had a chance to even start one of them.)  The first was inspired by a review sent to me, the second recommended by co-worker, and I had it in hand once before but had too many things going at the time to even start it and had to return it.  The last I came upon during our vacation and felt compelled to look at more closely.

I have already finished one book (non-fiction regarding Stanley Basin - Traplines) inspired by vacation, am working on another (fiction by regional author - C.J. Box's Nowhere to Run), and have at least one besides Slaughter in line.  I have only limited prior experience of the territory (there's a similar term used in the wine-making industry that I can't quite seize on - "terroir"?) in question, though I did find myself similarly inspired when we traversed northern Wyoming a decade or so ago and ended up reading something regarding the Wagon-box Battle and, I believe, a classic novel set in the area - Shane?

It's not as if I am in need of reading suggestions.  The queue is full for at least the next several decades.  And that is if I find a sugar-librarian to pay my way to read full-time!  I suspect more realistically that I am currently equipped with enough new reading (and there are repeats I have in mind, e.g., Ulysses and Alexandria Quartet) to last me for this and the next lifetime.

At the very least.

Sigh.