The best part of my job is getting to order books, but the worst part is finding the time to read. Now, I don’t "wanna read" every book I order. Many of those books are filling a need in our library collection. For example, I don’t wanna read "Chapter 13 Bankruptcy", but someone else might "needa read" it so I purchased it. It breaks my heart that I can’t find time to read everything I want.

Today, I wanna share some of the books on my Wanna Read List.

"How Free Is Free: The Long Death of Jim Crow" by Leon F. Litwack.

"Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World’s Most Notorious Nazi" by Neal Bascomb.

"Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage" by Heather Rogers.

"Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution" by Richard Beeman.

"Poe: A Life Cut Short" by Peter Ackroyd.

"White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson" by Brenda Wineapple. Although they only met twice, the letters between the two clearly indicate the depth of their friendship. Higginson said of Emily Dickinson that he never met anyone "who drained by nerve power so much."

"A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East—from the Cold War to the War on Terror" by Patrick Tyler.

"Climate Change: Picturing the Science" by Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe.

The preceding books of course are all non-fiction. I also wanna read some fiction.

"The Disastrous Voyage of the Santa Margarita" by Richard Woodman. This is a fictional account of the wreck of a Spanish galleon, the Santa Margarita, off the Philippines in the spring of 1601.

"Lost River" by David Fulmer is set in New Orleans in 1913. A murder takes place in a Storyville brothel, and Creole Detective Valentin St. Cyr, sets out to solve it.

"Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon" by Joe Gores. I am a sucker for these books that take a classic novel and try to add to the story.

"Eat, Drink, and Be from Mississippi" by Nanci Kincaid. Two divorced siblings, from Mississippi take in a troubled teen and make it their mission to "rescue" him.

This is a short list of my wanna reads. Hopefully, I will get them read in the next few months. If some of you, who read this column, get to them before me, let me know how you like them. All are available at the Scottsbluff Public Library.

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