Previously I talked about the horror of discovering that the end of the book backlog was in sight and my efforts to scramble. Elsewhere I discussed how I helped stave that off with a bargain sale at Lisbon Falls' annual Moxie festival, and now, happily, I have further replenished it with some Stephen King, who was hit badly in a 2013 purge (because I stupidly believed I would get money for hardcovers at a used book store, let alone for an author like Stephen King, who surely is already well-represented in such venues). So I stocked up on some of his more recent works, with the exceptions of The Dead Zone, which assuredly is an older work, and The Dark Tower, which concludes the seven-volume epic in controversial fashion (because apparently a work of metafiction that has bled into numerous other King novels can't end with King himself popping up). The newer books begin, appropriately, with the Dark Tower tangent The Wind Through the Keyhole, continue with the Hard Case Crime effort Joyland, and conclude with Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining. Additionally, I picked up Horns from some guy named Joe Hill.
I'm feeling less panicky about the book situation nowadays, not because of all the ones I've gotten in the last few months, but because, well, changing up how I read maybe isn't such a bad thing after all. I already anticipate slowing down the pace next year (I used to read about a book a month, an average that was accelerated a few years back), and there's always the novelty of actually being able to join in with more recent releases as they're actually being released, a luxury I haven't had in a long time, with a few exceptions. Some of those exceptions are coming up in rapid succession. First, there's the fourth book in the Millennium Trilogy (written by somebody else), the third Cormoran Strike (written by someone other than who it seems), and a novelization of a Doctor Who adventure (written by someone adapting Douglas Adams), all of which should be great fun. I also want to read Go Set a Watchman, because I hate to believe that its reputation should be governed by controversy rather than whatever it accomplishes on its own. First there was doubt that Harper Lee wrote it at all. And then there was the uproar that Atticus Finch turns out to be different than he once seemed. But then, isn't that always the case? To have a different take from Lee herself is remarkable, in the best possible way, and I think adds to the legacy and significance of To Kill a Mockingbird. But that's exactly the kind of intellectual conversation I never see...
