Er...Pardon That Life-a-thon

Okay, so when I posted that Read-a-thon wrap-up last Sunday morning, I definitely wasn't thinking "oh hey, well, this will be my last post til next week." In fact, I was hoping to have a post Read-a-thon review-a-thon week in which I would catch up on my reviews which I seem to be getting more and more behind on, and filling in the extra time visiting the new faces I saw here on Read-a-thon day and slightly after.

Rather what I got is a Life-a-thon, which is when your job and, well, your life kick your butt mercilessly all week so that you feel like everyday is like running a marathon and you ran out of energy and the will to continue three days before. You know, the kinds of days when the only thing you feel like doing when you get home is taking a long nap and watching TV or something else that requires similarly little brain power. So yeah, all my blogosphere "high" left over from the Read-a-thon dissipated all-too-suddenly. Nonetheless, I (in no particular order) bought some cheap books, slept a lot, watched a good baseball game that ate into the extra hour of sleep I was supposed to get (and was totally worth it), did some pseudo Trick or Treating, and drank a fantastic milkshake, and am feeling semi-recharged. Given that, I should probably be writing a review or five right now, instead I'm writing one of these posts about life and reading randomness.

Much to my surprise, I actually finished a book amid all the lousiness that was last week. It's The Fireman's Wife by Jack Riggs which I probably should have read and reviewed some time ago, no really, some time ago for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I had started it and put it down a few different times because the first 50 pages just aren't catchy. I was concerned that the writing wasn't ever going to flow and I wasn't going to care about the characters, but once I finally got through to the middle of the book, I was pleasantly surprised. There were definitely some flaws, but overall I suppose it was a pretty good story. More later when I write the actual review.

And as for the books I bought to soothe myself about my rotten week? I knew you'd ask. My parents and I were poking around a town about an hour from where we live, and we ended up at a big (BIG!) antique store. Now, most antiques don't really thrill me, so imagine my happiness to find they had a book sale going on in their basement. Needless to say, I looked at books while my parents ogled the antiques. Honestly, the selection was pretty poor in the grand scheme of used book sales, and I really thought I was going to strike out, but then there it was glimmering, a diamond in the very rough, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, a book I've wanted to get my hands on for so long that I probably should have just bought it new or got it from the library. Now, I don't have to. I also may or may not have picked up Runaway by Alice Munro because I feel like I've heard good things about her short stories, A Spectacle of Corruption by David Liss because he wrote The Coffee Trader which I liked, and Hanna's Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson because who doesn't love a good generational saga? And that's all I found. Which is probably a good thing.

Anyhow, here's to next week being a better (and more productive) week around here! Hope you all have a good one, too! =D

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