So, one of the things I’ve suuuuuper excited about in this move back to the U.S. is the prospect of having a public library where there are lots of books I’m interested in reading. Not that there weren’t libraries in Madrid (there are and I frequented them), but most of the things I want to read are, alas, in English, so I usually just had to spend ridiculous amounts of money ordering what I wanted from Amazon.co.uk.

But no more! Yesterday I went and found my local branch library – the Northwestern Branch – which was just a few blocks away. It doesn’t compare to my beloved Berkeley Public Library, it’s not big, but there’s still plenty there I want to read.  I could’ve checked out a dozen books i found just browsing the shelves, but I limited myself to two, telling myself, it’s ok, the library will be there next week, I can come back for the others later.

What did I check out?

Fareed Zakaria’s The Post American World.

I’ve only gotten about 80 pages into it. It’s a survey of the “rise of the rest” of the world and what it means for global economics, for U.S. power, etc… I take some issue with his rosy view of well we’re doing, but on the whole it’s an easy read, and interesting so far.

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Margaret Atwood’s Payback.

Since I’m about to go into massive debt to finance a master’s degree I thought I might try this book that touts itself as a sort of philosophical/historical tract on the issue of debt. Not a practical financial guide, but there are plenty of those. I thought I’d go with something more abstract. Haven’t started it yet. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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