My last book order before finding out that layoffs are in my library's near future (how near? who knows!) has arrived. I now have a pile of Murderbot books. Yes, they were pretty expensive considering most of them are novellas priced more like novels, and if I do have to move sometime in the next few months I'll probably regret getting them as physical books. But hey, what's a handful more when you already own enough to fill four bookcases, right?

Anyway, they're very nice, and I'm looking forward to reading them. I'm hoping that Booklikesopoly will be accommodating and put me on a spot that lets me read Artificial Condition after I finish the third volume of Ascendance of a Bookworm.

[Edit: The pandemic is inescapable. Minutes after posting this, I saw a new update for my area: one of the local post office employees may have tested positive for the virus. Yeah, that's some good motivation to let the package sit in my quarantine area for a while.]

I did some online book shopping last weekend. It maybe wasn't the greatest idea, because I already have tons of books, haven't been reading much lately, and my opportunities to offload books in order to free up space are much more limited right now. But book shopping is one of my comfort activities, so now I have a big package sitting in my little quarantine area.

I did all my shopping at Right Stuf, which is primarily focused on Japanese anime and related merchandise and which therefore put some limits on the kinds of books I could get. Assuming everything shipped okay, here are the goodies that should be inside the box:

The first three books in the Ascendance of a Bookworm series, about a college girl who loves books who then dies and is reborn as a child in a world where she has no access to books. Since there are no books, she decides to make them somehow.

I own the first book as an ebook and should have read it before taking this plunge, but they were on sale and I couldn't resist. I've heard good things about the series, so I'm crossing my fingers.

The fourth and fifth (and final, at least in terms of what was translated into English) Fullmetal Alchemist novels. Yes, they're destined to eventually end up on my offload pile, but they were super cheap and the previous volumes were all at least decent reads.

I had never heard of Anime Supremacy prior to this little book shopping spree, but it sounds really interesting. From what I can tell, it's fiction about several women working in the anime industry.

I've been interested in Brave Story for years, but never took the plunge and actually picked up a copy. According to its product page, it's an 820-page brick of a book.

The Miracles of the Namiya General Store is by the same author who wrote the Detective Galileo books, but this one sounds more like heartwarming General Fiction.

That feeling when you discover that you never bothered to buy volume 2 of a 2-volume series, and now it's out of print and the lowest price anyone is selling it for is $49.95. And it's an adult manga, so getting it via ILL isn't happening, because "we don't judge you for your ILL requests" doesn't apply as much when you're library staff.

::siiigh::

This is why I sometimes buy full series before I even know if I like them.

... because I needed a "design your own" blank-page calendar to create a birthday present for my mom, and one of the large local bookstores happens to be my go-to place to get such a thing. (I create a calendar as a BD present for my mom every year.)

Obviously, this being a bookstore, it wasn't just a blank-page calendar I brought home ...

And while there, I also found the perfect props for the "read by candle light or flashlight" square ... (in the two bottles to the left and right of the books -- they alternate between the seven colors of the rainbow).

I feel like a broken record, saying that this was a hard week. It seems like most weeks are hard now. The new thing that's been added to the list: my sister suddenly lost her hearing in one ear about a week and a half ago. Her hearing test didn't go well - a few of the sounds did provoke a response from her, but she didn't hear them so much as experience them as pain. Also, the tinnitus is driving her a little nuts. Doctors are still trying to figure out if there's any particular cause, and in the meantime they're trying to get at least some of her hearing back with steroids. I currently live about 700 miles away from her and, depending on how things go in the next week or two, I might be visiting her to at least help with childcare or something. I've begun cross-training someone at work so that cataloging can continue to limp along even if I'm suddenly gone for a while.

Anyway, I had the day off today and decided I should try to make the best of it. I had a nice lunch, offloaded some books, and bought some new-to-me books. The ones I'm looking forward to the most:

Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O'Keefe - I don't actually know too much about this. But it has an AI-controlled warship, and that's very much my catnip.

Defeating the Demon Lord's a Cinch (If You've Got a Ringer), Vol. 2 by Tsukikage - "But you only gave Volume 1 3 stars!" I hear you saying. "And the author couldn't stop bringing up boobs!" Both of these things are true. But the main character is also extremely angry (even if he doesn't seem to want to acknowledge it), competent, and doggedly determined in the face of a universe that repeatedly throws obstacles in his way. Those things appeal to me right now.