My Penguin Classics project is proceeding ve-e-e-e-ry slowly. I requested La Regenta, by Leopoldo Alas, via interlibrary loan. It took forever, but it finally came, all the way from Dallas! (Written by Alas, sent from Dallas. :) ) And you know what? They only let me have it for three weeks, and they refused to renew. Why they bothered to send it at all, I do not know. No one could read this thing in three weeks. La Regenta is a 19th century Spanish novel over 700 pages long. The first fifty pages were intriguing, as was the description in the Penguin book (“an intelligent woman’s quest for fulfillment through marriage, adultery, and religion”). I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and buy it. Hey, wait! Chrismubirthdaykah is less than two months away! But I don’t want to wait that long. It’s been ages since the last Penguin Classic and there’s fun stuff coming up after this one. After Alas comes Alcott, and then Horatio Alger, and then, whoa! Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis, one of the funniest books ever and long overdue for a re-read.

Still, although I know it wasn’t my library’s fault, I feel really let down that the ILL thing didn’t work out. I mean, it’s amazing that ILL exists at all, that someone in Dallas mailed a book to Ann Arbor just so that I could read it.