Big shipments. Really big shipments.

Much staff attention has gone into the fiendishly complicated task of rounding up funds to put what may be the nation’s last exclusively paper card catalogue into databits, but the grant application was shipped off at the first of the month, allowing the Collector to get back to the business of buying books, which he has done, which means great whacking cartons of the books America Wants to Read have been arriving and will continue to arrive for while longer until we are caught up. Here, then, are a few of the hotter titles from what may be the largest invoice we have ever had to pay. We do know, by the way, that some of you take these recommendations over to the Public, which is all well and good, but when you do that, you are missing out on the chance to chat with Norm and Ed and Nemo and the non-blogger, any one of whom would be more than delighted to drop whatever it is we’re doing to chat and advise and commiserate, none of which pleasant tasks or distractions are in the job descriptions over at the Public.

And none of that whining about parking, thank you very much. The bus comes to the door.