I made a completely rookie mistake this week.

As you know, I have a highly curated library account.   My Holds list includes books that are on order still, that I am on the waitlist for and quite a few books that I have “paused”.  Every couple of weeks I go through all the paused holds, resume a few of them and then reset the pause date to some time in the future – usually three to four weeks out.  This has been my pattern for a couple of decades.

The past month my attention span has been fairly limited to the new dog.  Paperwork, initial vet intake, spay, the cone of shame, then the sleeve of shame (she got razor burn from where they inserted her IV and she just could not leave it alone).  Now we’re through all that and have started working on preliminary training and walkies every day.  Add the early morning potty breaks and the last in the evening journey outside as well and I feel consumed.  In a good way.

So it was shocking when I opened up my library account Monday night and saw that I have THIRTY books in transit.  THIRTY!  I completely forgot to check my Holds, so everything that had been set to July 27 is now on its way to me.  How could I do something this dumb?

I called my buddy who’s the manager of my library and he said there is really no way to circumvent this process short of calling the origin library for each book and asking if they can catch it.  I’m not doing that.  In addition to being a serious pain in the patoot for me, it would be an even bigger pain for the libraries and as my buddy said, probably wouldn’t work anyway.  Sigh.

So I guess I’ll have to seriously step up my reading for August.  For fun, here are some of the titles that are on the way to me right now!

• And to My Nephew Albert I Leave the Island What I Won Off Fatty Hagan in a Poker Game (one of the long-titled books I found earlier in the month)
• The Chinese Parrot (a Charlie Chan novel)
• The Concord Quartet (Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne & Thoreau)
• Crock of Gold (people, gods, Irish fairies…)
• Cursed Cocktails (blood mage tries to retire)
• Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (“biography”)
• Elizabeth I, CEO (what you think)
• Ex-Wife (1925 woman finds herself after divorce)
• Illuminations in the Flatwoods (wild turkeys?)
• In Seven Stages (Elizabeth Bisland side of the Around the World story)
• Kipling Sahib (Rudyard Kipling bio)
• The Last Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes knock-off)
• Lost Believers (novel inspired by true story… we’ll see….)
• Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (2013 Pulitzer Prize)
• Marie of Romania (queen consort of Ferdinand, King of Romania)
• Murder and the First Lady (Eleanor Roosevelt solves the murder)
• No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain’t Never Coming Home Again (another long and intriguing title)
• A Short Bright Flash (lighthouses!)
• Enuf is Enough (a book about English spelling – yeah, I know I lead an exciting life!)

What’s a rookie mistake you’ve made?  Any good books on your nightstand?