Loose Leafing: Currently

Happy Sunday, world!  It's been a while since we've met which, of course, is my fault, as usual.  Big life changes are afoot, so I've been preoccupied with lots of tasks that don't usually enter my purview.  Let's get right down to it...

Planning...   to move!  I've finally put down a deposit on a little apartment of my very own.  It's farther from most of my family (but still close enough to drop by with ease) but way closer to work and church.  I haven't signed a lease to make it official yet, but I'm expecting to be moving in mid-July.

Purging...  as much heavy stuff as I can stand to part with.  There's nothing like moving to make the stark reality of how much of an overabundance of stuff you have really sink in.  As you may have noted, the book problem is a big one.  I have a lot of them, and they're heavy.  I can maybe fit half of my present book collection into my new digs and hope that my parents will put up with storing a few.  However, I'm trying to unload as many as I can.  There are presently 9 boxes of books awaiting donation on the couch behind me, another probably box and a half waiting to be packed up upstairs, and that's really the tip of the "things I should be getting rid of" iceberg.  Weeding out all my stuff (from heaviest to lightest) is going to be the order of the day for the next month and a half.

Purchasing...  all the stuff I don't have.  Like furniture, kitchenware, a TV, etc, etc.  See, I have all the wrong stuff.  I'm already having some luck, though.  Living in rural Pennsylvania offers its occasional perks, one of which is the opportunity to pick up some decent starter (*ahem* used) furniture and stuff at local yard sales.  Yesterday, I bought a couple lamps, a small kitchen table with chairs, a coffee table, a lightly used Keurig mini that's purported to work, and a lightly used Dyson vacuum cleaner that definitely works - all for under $150.  My grandparents have a sleeper sofa that they're willing to part with, and I am breathing a sigh of relief at not having to spend a fortune up front on furniture and other necessities.

Poking fun at...  San Andreas!  My mom and I love to go to the movies and have got to see a disaster movie at least once a year to enjoy the special effects.  Also, they're fun to make fun of, and we love that, too.  See there are only two qualities of disaster movies: good bad and bad bad.  They are always cheesy, overwrought, and unrealistic, but if they have sufficient cool effects and action to counteract the cheesy overwrought dialogue/acting, they can prove to be very enjoyable.  I'm happy to report that San Andreas definitely falls within the "good bad" camp providing thrills a minute and plenty of opportunities to make fun of cheesy scenes and all those stereotypical disaster movie scenes.  Definitely a fun movie to see at the theater with friends or family that don't take these things too seriously.

Pondering...  announcing an official blog hiatus.  I'm an especially busy girl this summer both at work and at home(s), and I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off taking a little official break from the action here.  So busy am I that even the outlook for taking a real vacation is decidedly dim.  However, there's a stack of books sitting here that I'd really like to get reviewed so I don't have to take them with me, ergo the jury's still out on this one.

Packing...  nothing yet.  I'm not ready!  There's too much stuff!  And no boxes!  Agh!  Moving stress is already creeping on me.  I'd love to stay and chat, but I have to go continue attempting to cut my belongings in half so that I can pack what remains.

(This post has been sponsored by the letter "P" who knows that when you spot a trend, sometimes you should just go with it.)

Hope you're having a more relaxing Sunday than I am!  What are you up to this week?

Loose Leafing: Adventures of the Absentee Blogger

Unintentional disappearance take 10 zillion?

Life has been busy on the ranch these days, and the holidays are only just now truly upon us.  I keep thinking I'll have a few minutes to sit and bang out a few posts to schedule ahead so when I get busy I don't go totally dark, but that sort of advance work and planning is not really working out.  This week I'm live-in dogsitting for a friend of a friend who is out of town, and I'm hoping I'll have a few minutes of peace and quiet so I can review some books and make excuses for why I'm such an inconsistent blogger (in iPhone photos!).

For one, you maybe remember earlier this year when I mentioned the lovely new porch we had put on our house.  It was lovely until it got cold and my mom let her inner animal lover emerge victorious and start feeding the stray cats that have been going it on their own all summer ("It's cold!  They'll starve!  They'll freeze!").  So, first we had these two...

We'll call them Patch and Declan.

Not long after that, we discovered some very little kittens in our garage.  So obviously we had to feed the mama, too, so she could feed the kittens, with the hoped for outcome that we may soon be able to take her and stop the kitten-having madness, if you know what I mean. 

Now, we have these...

And our porch looks like a little Hooverville for cats.  They're all very sweet good natured cats, and we're hoping to have them fixed and find homes for at least some of them so that we can stop being the cat ladies of our town.  Until then, cuddling three fluffy kittens and attempting to flea treat outside cats has proven to be a bit of a distraction.

Soon after we adopted the local cat colony, I was off to visit a friend of mine from college.  We had a great weekend together, one day of which we spent in Philadelphia, where, despite being a Pennsylvanian, I've hardly spent any time that wasn't apart of a school field trip.  We ate yummy food,

discovered the ugly Christmas sweater shop (awesome!),

and yes, it was me that started the dominoes falling.  ;-)

This week, of course, was Thanksgiving.  I hope you and yours had a great one, if you were celebrating.  We definitely did.  We had more family and friends at our house than we've had at the holiday for a long time.  It was crazy but also a ton of fun.  Last year we had about half as many people and it felt all boring and sedate, so it was kind of nice to return to the normal chaos.  Odd how you kind of miss that when it's gone, isn't it?

My dogsitting charges are giving me some peace, so I'd better run and take advantage of the rest of this quality blogging time.  Happy Sunday, all!

Loose Leafing: Christmastopia!

Hello, blog, it's me, Megan! I know, content around here has been sparse lately. As usual, I have just buckets of excuses several of which involve me never being home, several others of which involve Christmas, still others of which can be blamed on the TV, and one more that can be blamed on Damn You Auto Correct! Well, that last one is pretty self-explanatory. Nonetheless, this week is likely to be more of the same, ergo, I am writing this post to assuage any fears that I may have just fallen off the face of the earth. Because I'm sure you were totally just worrying about that, right? Because you have nothing better to worry about? ;-)

First, Christmas. It's coming. I'm not ready. We got a (real!) tree that we decorated while drinking wine (one of the great new holiday traditions!). I've been to see a local production of The Santaland Diaries, and we even finally made it to the Christkindl Market in local Mifflinburg where we devoured delicious German foods, drank hot mulled wine, and purchased some items from local crafters all while marveling at things like an itinerant Christmas tree.

In between all this and you know, working at my job, I've managed to order a few presents, and even buy a few in person, but they are decidedly not enough, and I am totally stalled in the whole Christmas gift inspiration thing. Despite the fact that there are no good bookstores that I know of less than 45 minutes away from my house, buying the books is the easy part. ;-) I'm afraid, though, that I've stumbled into one of the pitfalls of online shopping. The books that I ordered from Barnes and Noble (in my valiant but only token effort to patronize an online business other than the dread Amazon) arrived without incident on Wednesday. Yesterday I tracked the CDs which departed for here via "Smart Mail" the same day. These CDs, if they ever get here, will be more well-traveled than I am. I live in Pennsylvania. The CDs started their journey in Kentucky, traveled to Maryland (almost here!), and then they went to..... California? There they have been cooling their heels cases (?) for several days now. I beg to differ on the assumption that this mail is "smart." If they don't start working their way back across the country tomorrow, somebody will be receiving an irate phone call from this Christmas shopper.

In other news, my mother, who doesn't share any of my reservations about Amazon purchased this beauty for our (male) dog for Christmas (in theory). Here is the promotional photo (compliments of Amazon.com):



Here is the photo that made my dad and I eat our words ($80??? It's pink???) as Rudy happens to thoroughly enjoy what we are now affectionately referring to as the "Barbie Hut."



Mom 1, Dad & Megan 0.

And here is what I stumbled upon this morning...



Rudy 1, Barbie Hut 0.

On the reading front? I'm finally giving myself the gift of The Hunger Games series this holiday season. Okay, actually my aunt (hello, stealth blog reader! LOL!), the one who always buys great books as gifts (see previous post), gave them to me last holiday season, but I am giving myself the gift of actually reading them this holiday season. So I can join the rest of the free world. And what says Merry Christmas more than a pack of starving teenagers slaughtering each other in a woodsy future arena? But seriously, I just finished the first book, and loved it as much as everyone said I would. Really, the only reason you're seeing me now is that I've briefly come up for air between books.

These are the perfect holiday season books because during this time of year reading time isn't found, it's made, so I needed something totally engrossing that would keep me reading despite the odds, and I've looked in the right place! Unfortunately, I've "made" my sleeping time into reading time, my blogging time into reading time, my eating time into reading time, my Christmas shopping time into reading time, my...well, you get the idea. This is killing my noble goals of closing out my backlog of reviews before the end of the year and giving my Christmas shopping a tendency toward the uncreative and easy to buy gift cards, but jeez, am I enjoying it!

How's December treating you? Are you crazy busy like me? What great books are getting you through?

Loose Leafing

Ok, so, once upon a time when I started my blog, I started it with the idea that it would be about my life and books. As the years went by, I started to buy into the lie that my blog needed to be focused, and that if I mixed in all these silly "life" things on my blog, my "book blog" would have no street cred. (Heh heh, a book blog with street cred. That's funny...). Then I made (over and over again) the stunning realization that I prefer book blogs where I get a glimpse inside the minds and lives of the blogger behind the book reviews. Given this staggeringly obvious realization, added to my dismal dirty little secret (shhhh, don't tell) that if I manage to read a whole 4 books in a month that's considered a big win in Meganland (yes, all you proper book bloggers put me to terrible shame), I've decided to loosen up and bring back the random life stuff. Probably once a week. If I can think of some good random life stuff.

- I went to the chiropracter this morning and when I scheduled my next appointment it came up for December 10th. December 10th! Can anybody tell me where this year went? And shouldn't I be out Christmas shopping??

- Today I faced one of my life's great fears. The automatic car wash. Stop laughing. I'm not talking about just any car wash that you drive into and the nice little automated arm goes around and sprays your car with any number of mysterious chemicals. I'm talking the one where you have to drive onto the little conveyor thing and put your car in neutral and it tows you through while any number of mysterious chemicals are sprayed on your vehicle and big floppy heavy duty cloths beat on your car and then some guy towel dries your shiny clean vehicle at the end. For some reason, I've always been mildly petrified about this particular car wash - maybe it's the stage fright of knowing when to put your car in neutral, how to maneuver your wheels into the conveyor-y grooves, when to drive away at the end. I mean, jeez, I don't want to look any more idiotic than some moron who would pay 13 freaking dollars for a car wash already looks. However, today I was feeling brave and forked over an exorbitant amount of money to try out the wash. It was not so terrifying, and my car looks like new, but now I have a new fear to face. Am I becoming one of these people who will actually pay $13 for a car wash? Jeez.

- One of the front page headlines on today's local (small town) paper has to do with conjecture that a big evergreen tree from what looks to be somebody's yard in the tiny town across from the river from where I live is being plucked for use in New York City's Rockefeller Center this Christmas. The transporting crew is the crew that normally does this apparently, and they have been taking care of said tree for months now according to the paper, and when asked about the destination of the tree, crews give a number for an NYC publicist. Could it be true? Magic eightball says....Ask again later.

Say, where'd you get that tree?

- Did you know that if you spend a grand total of two hours being wildly productive on a Saturday, it totally makes you feel like it's acceptable to do absolutely nothing of consequence for the rest of the weekend? I'm not sure if this is true, it's probably not, but if I don't accomplish anything until Monday, I'm pretty sure I won't feel too guilty.

- I think I'm trying to make a triumphant return to doing Zumba next week. I'm a little nervous because whenever I attempt to give Zumba a shot, one of two things happens... A) I attend the class, love it, get hooked on it, lose some weight and a month later the only class I have time to go to is suddenly and sometimes inexplicably cancelled forever or B) I manage to fall deathly ill or injure myself in some utterly unrelated way that renders me far too physically infirm to attempt anything more physically demanding than getting out of bed. Wish me luck, I'm afraid I'm going to need it.... ;-)

- Okay, a bookish tidbit for those that are hanging in there with me. I've been reading The Legacy by Katherine Webb since last weekend, and it is absolutely perfectly atmospheric and has reminded me how much I dearly love books where you get to roll around in the perfectly pitched atmosphere of the story.



So, what's going on in your life? Or perhaps, you'd like to recommend for me a few good atmospheric books...?

Get Outta Town!

Ugh. It's been one of those weeks. A week filled with work and obligations and distractions. A week that demands that you sneak in a little reading in between sleeping and working and appointments and disappointing social engagements. The sort of week, even, that wears you down a bit because even when you have the time to sit and read or write a book review or whatever, you find that you you don't quite have the energy and your foggy mind precludes you from reading intelligently or writing anything of worth, so you just go to bed and get up and go to work again. Have you had this week? (Have you seen this week? $500 reward for the capture and permanent removal of this week! And yes, I'd offer a better reward if I had it....)

Nonetheless, it's been quiet around here this week, and it's going to stay quiet for a little longer because...I'm getting outta town!

That's right. I'm getting out of here, and I'm taking this....



and perhaps this....



and maybe even this (the summer fiction issue - YAY!)...



and possibly even some other things that have pages to turn.

I'm not taking my TV, my dog, my computer, my phone, or most of the people I know. I'm going to enjoy a weekend of reading without all the distractions and diversions that come with living life as a grown-up now. I'm going to relax and really read until next week comes to call.

See ya Sunday. If I come back.... ;-)

Life Comes At You Fast...and So Do Dodge Neons

You can file this post under "many and sundry excuses for blogging failure."

Last week had many highs and one big low.

When I booked a 3 day trip to Washingon DC on one weekend and a trip to New York City to see the Yankees play the weekend directly following, I knew I was setting myself up for a pretty busy stretch, but I figured I could handle it and still maintain a slight presence in blogland. You know, leaving the occasional comment and at least reviewing Maggie O'Farrell's great new book The Hand That First Held Mine. I love going places and had a brilliant time in DC seeing what little I could of its many things to see (the Lincoln Memorial by the moonlight! Cherry blossoms! Smithsonians! the Jefferson Memorial! Et Cetera and so on!) and eating great food and generally appreciating the fabulously incredible weather that graced the entire weekend. As for New York and the Yankees, but for the subway ride back from the stadium, it was nearly all I could have hoped for. I've been holding out hope for seeing a game at Yankee stadium ever since my dad and I took one ill-fated bus trip to a game for my 16th birthday that ended in the game getting rained out, the bus breaking down on the way home, and my ultimately never seeing my favorite baseball team play in person. Though I am a distinctly less rabid Yankee fan than I once was, the experience was thisclose to perfect.

So, my travels aside, I was even on track to accomplish that lofty goal of maintaining a bloggy presence through it all, when, on Thursday of last week, a careless driver pulled out in front of me while I was no less than 10 minutes from home on the "safest" road my hometown has to offer (Hey! It's true about accidents happening close to home!). After a brief second of utter shock, I stomped on the brake and bounced between the bad driver and a parked car and somehow emerged on the other side virtually unscathed for which I am eternally thankful. My car, which I had purchased 3 months ago to the day of the accident, was not so fortunate. It's fixable, it seems, but it's going to cost someone's insurance company a considerable amount of money. Needless to say, most of the rest of my week's plans fell unceremoniously by the wayside while I dedicated most of my free minutes to chatting with cops, giving my story to untold numbers of insurance company personnel, and, um, drinking. ;-)

So, now, I am attempting to catch up with everything I was supposed to have done last week while keeping up with the car situation and taking care of the stuff I have to do this week. With that in mind, please do excuse my absence as I try to get myself back in order. I have not abandoned the book blogosphere - I've just been detoured a bit. Here's hoping I'll have it back together this week, but if I don't, and you don't see much of me until next week, try not to be surprised. Many thanks to those of you who continue to hang around for your longsuffering patience with my unpredictable blogging habits! ;-D

A Little Something For Ringo

Sorry, this is an interruption from the usual book related programming.

Our dog, Ringo, left us yesterday. He was 14 years old, so it was a possibility we were at once expecting and ignoring, so when it happened it still came as too much of a shock. He'd been having health problems but none that we thought would be imminently life threatening.

He was a Christmas puppy for me when I was in the seventh grade, and true to form, he loved Christmas. Nothing gave him greater joy than ripping open Christmas presents, so much so that one year when we were wrapping presents, he grabbed a scrap of paper and put it over one of his toys and attempted to "unwrap" it again. When it came to his name, Ringo got it honest. He loved to run rings around us and around the house. He was never as much for fetch as he was for keepaway. Ringo always loved to be chased and loved for everyone to want whatever he had. A lot of people didn't quite get his appeal. He was a one-family kind of dog, but when it came to us, he loved with all his heart.

Through all this, I can't help thinking about taking him for walks when he was a young dog. Despite my best efforts, he'd always manage to slip his collar. I can remember one day when I was chasing him along the road, traffic perilously close, desperate to catch him and avert certain catastrophe. Chasing and yelling and crying wasn't doing the trick. Then I remembered - Ringo loved to chase almost as much as he loved to be chased. Tears streaming down my face, I did the most counterintuitive thing imaginable. I turned around and ran. Soon enough, there he was - chasing me home.

Thanks for all the joy you brought to our lives, Ringo. We'll miss you so much, but one day, we'll be the ones chasing you home.

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

Fair Week Mish Mash

Phew - this week has been a real marathon, and it obviously hasn't been a marathon I've been running here in blogland. This evening finds me taking a break from the Sunday Scramble, which is my friendly term for my frantic efforts to catch up with everything from blog reading to cleaning in a few hours before the next work week starts, to actually write a post. Fair warning, the first part is me going on about my week, the second is the more bookish part. Choose one or read both (or run screaming in horror!), the choice is yours!

This week was Fair week. Yes, that's Fair with a capital F. You see, each year our town hosts the biggest fair in Pennsylvania starting, oh, usually the last Saturday in September and spilling over into October. One stat I heard this week is that it is the 22nd largest in the U.S. which isn't too shabby considering my town is pretty small. It so happens that I'm generally a lunatic about going to the fair, and this week I proved it with reckless abandon. I think 6 out of the 9 possible days to go, I was there eating deep fried foods, tour guiding fair newbies (mostly my co-workers), seeing Sugarland in concert (excellent!), and watching the Dock Dogs competition which is new to the fair (and also awesome!). What's more fun than devouring a dozen funnel cakes and watching a bunch of dogs jump really far off a dock into the water? Perhaps, you think many other things would be more fun. I, however, had a fantastic week, though I am totally beat. P.S. If you like dogs and the Dock Dog thing comes to some place near year, you should definitely see it. I could have watched for hours. I did watch for hours.

My freakishly extensive fair going didn't leave much time left over for reading, though I'm still plodding (and I mean plodding) through Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Angel's Game for the R.I.P. challenge. It's a little too easy to put down, but not so easy to put down that I would consider giving up on it. The jury's still out on it.

Despite my lack of a considerable amount of reading, more books did arrive at my house this week at a nice steady rate of about one per week day.

First came:



Intertwined by Gena Showalter. It's a giveaway win from Robin at My Two Blessings. I first read about through an ad on Shelf Awareness, where I ended up reading an excerpt from the first chapter. It's just the sort of fast reading guilty pleasure I need from time to time, I think.

Next came:



Black Angels by Linda Beatrice Brown - an ARC from Penguin. Susan at Bloggin' 'bout Books first tipped me off about this book with her excellent review, and I knew it was something I was going to have to read. It's her I've got to thank, in part, for the galley in my mailbox, too, so thanks Susan! =)

Up next:



2666 by Roberto Bolano. I've been curious about this one for a while. Thanks to Frances at Nonsuch Book and her Book Blogger Appreciation Week giveway, now I've got a copy which I will hopefully read when the big old Picador readalong thingy (which hasn't quite launched yet) comes along. Even though it's such a delicious looking read, it should definitely be good to have some conversation and encouragement (read: deadlines) to go along with it since at 893 pages it's quite a considerable tome.

And last:



Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going from a a BookCrosser. I think I remember even from my pre-blogging days Susan from West of Mars just raving about this book, and so it's been sitting on my wish list. Now, I've got it, and let me tell you, it's accomplished quite an incredible feat. I nearly never start reading a book the moment I get it. It gets logged and then it goes to sit on the shelf gathering dust with the rest of its brethren for an indefinite amount of time until a not predetermined time. Well, Fat Kid Rules the World was waiting by the computer for its logging, and don't you know I read the first chapter? And then I read more, and more and I'm totally hooked. Troy the self-proclaimed Fat Kid has an incredibly engaging voice and it just took me right in. This should deepen my conviction that any book that has that Printz medal hanging out on the cover has a 99.9% chance of being totally awesome. Further gushing, I'm sure, to come.


In other news, I've been cruising the 24 Hour Readathon site from time to time thinking maybe, just maybe this will be the one where I actually read. I don't think I have any plans for the appointed weekend, so that's one road block out of the way. I don't think I'll probably be able to manage the whole thing without sleep - you don't even wanna know me without my 8 hours of sleep - but I could probably manage 16 or so hours...couldn't I? It would be a good chance to catch up on all the reading I've neglected, right? And play with all the book bloggers? Oh, I don't know. I'm such a committment-phobe. I need to go think about it a while. I'll probably sign up, like, the day before, or chicken out and settle for cheerleading....

A (not bookish) Funny!

Tonight I have for you - an illustration of me - IN REAL LIFE! Point, laugh, and be merry!

So (my friends always said the funniest stories started with "so"), my 10-year-old cousin got Guitar Hero World Tour for Christmas. I tried it once and quickly became addicted. Now, I take every chance I get to go over and play with his toys rock with him and my aunt and uncle, on occasion, too. We're not very good, but we have a great time. So, tonight after they provided me with a scrumptious (and authentic!) Mexican dinner, my cousin and I set off for the playroom to have a round of Guitar Hero. As we were playing, my aunt decided she would go visit my grandparents - behold this dialogue and see if you notice anything odd.

Aunt: I'll be back in a little. I'm going to see Gram and Pap.
Cousin: You're leaving us here by ourselves?!?!?
Aunt: Well, your dad's here!
*pause*
Aunt: And you know, Megan's a grown up!
Me: Surprise!


Guess my secret's out, though I am, apparently, "too fun to be a grown up." Being a grown-up is way over-rated anyway, no?

Christmas Redux

Greetings! Hope you and yours had a Merry Christmas!

We made lots of merry here at our house, and I'm wholeheartedly satisfied with my gift haul, and more importantly how much everybody else liked the gifts I bought them. Or, at least, how good of a job everybody did of acting like they really enjoyed the gifts I bought them.

I made a concentrated effort to buy at least as many books for gifts as I do most years and quite possibly more. For my mom, who loved Wally Lamb's previous two books, I grabbed a copy of the newest, The Hour I First Believed which she's already started to read. For my dad, we had the old standby, the yearly Odd Thomas release from Dean Koontz, Odd Hours, which he always enjoys. He's badly in need of a new author to love, so I'm trying to get him hooked on Neil Gaiman with a copy of Neverwhere, too. My grandmother, who almost never wants books, kept bringing up the good things she'd been hearing about Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, so naturally, I had to pick up a copy of that for her. Lastly, and my crowning achievement of the year, for my cousin who has just begun learning to read, I grabbed a copy of one of my very favorite childhood books, Animalia and made a severe annoyance of myself until my mom bought her a copy of Mo Willems' The Pigeon Wants a Puppy. It's so much fun picking out cool books for new readers. I hope she enjoys them as much as I do!

As for me, not too many books under the tree, but the quality was definitely there. The first gift I opened was a copy of Leif Enger's So Brave, Young, and Handsome which I've been dying to have since I knew it existed. I loved Peace Like a River, so I'm quite excited about this one. I also got a spiffy new copy of the new ESV Study Bible which the people at my church are simply rabid over, if indeed, it's quite correct to be rabid about a Bible.... Anyhow, it's full of awesome stuff, so I'm quite excited about that, too. My ever-thoughtful 10 year old cousin got me a book light. Now does that kid know me or what?

Another gift I consider to be quite bookish that I'm wildly excited about is my hunter green SLANKET! This is a great gift for when I want to read in my arctic temperature bedroom. As a matter of fact, cozily tucked into my Slanket I devoured the end of How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff last night after the holiday merry making had come to an end (and a few re-runs of House had been watched). Believe it or not, I've actually already written the review, but I'm going to save it for sometime over the next few days because I predict that next week is going to be pretty harsh on the old blogging time because some folks at work are taking some vacation which means that I get pressed into service at all kinds of weird hours. After which, I'll definitely need to drink some of the !wine I won in their mystery holiday giveaway drawing! which is doubly cool because I'm going through a real wine phase right now, which sounds kind of bizarre because I'm not much of a drinker at all.

All in all, a very satisfying holiday. The planets aligned properly allowing everybody to be in a fairly good mood on the holiday. Children were relatively well-behaved. Great gifts were given and received, and a sense of humor prevailed. Can't ask for much more than that. It's about time for me to leave for the matinee of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which will be, hopefully, as good as it looks.

So, what good stuff did you get for Christmas?

Wherein I Rant About Life and Perhaps Even Talk About a Book

It's been a long week. I'm wishing I could get a new job again, but I don't know where or if that's even a possibility given the economy of late. I just finished subbing in full time for a girl who just had a baby in a different part of my department. Nobody really thought she would come back to work - I don't think she even thought she would come back, but come back she did, so now I'm really out of a job that I legitimately liked and sent back to a job that, for the most part, is just something to get through to get my paycheck. Not only that, but after I'd done my best work, better than most even, my boss saw fit to remind me that I'm only "part time" (except for when, on a whim, he feels like he needs me to be full time) and take 20 hours per pay period out of my schedule. It was pretty much like being demoted when you've been doing better than good work, better work than many full-timers around you who don't seem to appreciate their good fortune in having a full-time job. It doesn't really give one much of an incentive to be a very good employee. Is it a total oxymoron to say that someday I'll find a job where my boss actually appreciates what I do? Or is that one of my naive, youthful beliefs that I'd do better to be disabused of as soon as possible? Either way, it's been pretty much a bummer of a week, and I haven't felt like doing much of anything (which may also explain why I punked out on that Weekly Geeks first line list - thanks to those of you who helped me - but I just kind of got bored and wandered off to look at shiny things). Well, the good news (if you choose to take it as such...) is that you may well be seeing more of me around here which could lead to more blog posts, more book reviews, more comments, and more responding to comments (which I have been sadly lacking in lately). The bad news is, well, I'll probably be resenting the extra time instead of embracing it for awhile because of my natural propensity to spend undue amounts of time obsessing over stupid crap that I'm pretty much powerless to change.

Luckily, I went out for dinner and a movie with some friends last night and it kind of shook me loose from my funk. So now, I'm semi-enjoying a stormy, crummy day by vegging out in front of the computer and with some books. I was out of town visiting with my old college roommates last weekend, so yet again, I missed the Read-a-thon. One of these times I'm really going to be able to get it into my schedule....I hope. But, I'll at least get back some of that reading time today because it seems the perfect day to engage in the doing of nothing productive whatsoever.

I've also been diligently attempting to switch from Bloglines to Google Reader. Yes, I'm finally taking the plunge. I finally got just fed up enough with Bloglines' perpetual malfunctioning when I realized I was missing posts from some of my favorite bloggers because it up and decided to just stop collecting them for no apparent reason and with no indication of its failure to do so until I thought, "hey, I haven't heard from so-and-so lately" who had actually, it turns out, been posting with some regularity. As with everything I do, I had to make it into a project and make sure I only brought along the blogs that I really think that I'm going to read on a regular basis, as opposed to bringing along all the blogs that I let their posts pile up and then mark them all as read without ever taking the time to look at them. Alas, only a few have failed to make the cut so I'm sure Google Reader is going to fill up with unread posts just as quickly as Bloglines did.

Sooo, now that you've been apprised of all the mild misfortune of my daily life, maybe I'd better actually talk about a book (because I do that sometimes...really). Being down and unmotivated all week, actually made it a great week for me to do something I don't usually do - read a novel that is absolute, total brain candy.


Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn by Sarah Miller (not to be confused with the uh...other Sarah Miller) is the story of Gideon's first year at prestigious and pretentious Connecticut prep school Midvale Academy as told by a female student there who has somehow managed to enter into Gideon's thoughts. The identity of the narrator is kept under wraps until the very end providing just the tiniest bit of suspense as we follow Gideon through his first year. It just so happens that in his first year at Midvale, the hapless Gideon ends up rooming with two big men on campus, good-looking, womanizing, pot-smoking Cullen McKay and quirky, vegetarian, also good-looking Nicholas Westerbeck. The two, upon finding that Gideon's virginity, despite one near miss, is very much intact make a bet as to whether Gideon will be able to get Molly McGarry, a girl within his "range," to go to bed with him by Halloween. Unfortunately, Gideon is distracted from his pursuit of Molly by the stunningly beautiful and far outside his reach Pilar Benitez-Jones who seems to be more into him than he could have ever expected. Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn is a fun romp as the more or less innocent Gideon gets sucked into Midvale's bizarre prep school culture where he learns its ins and outs and what makes its shallow students tick all while trying to bed preternaturally beautiful girls in part to win the friendship and respect of his slightly twisted roommates. It's not going to broaden your mind or increase your understanding, unless you happen to be wondering what sort of environment spawned those twisted bunch of frat boys at your private college which served as a haven for those who went to New England private school but couldn't hack the Ivy League. You know, the ones who would don their khakis and pastel shirts and golf across campus while in varying states of intoxication. Oh, what? That's just me? Anyhow, the book was fun. Read it for its escapism factor.



That's all I've got for today, but stay tuned for more on my stay in the book blogger leper compound where all the book bloggers who fail to be impressed by the books that the rest of book bloggers loved must lurk, wondering what it is they missed about that book that made everyone else love it so much.

Shades of Mediocrity

After one week of a relatively acceptable amount of activity, it seems that the blog is gathering dust again. You want to know why, you say? Well, you're probably not actually saying that. It's most likely that you care not at all, but if you thought that your lack of caring would be followed up by my own non-disclosure, you must not know me very well.

The first reason? Why, last week was Fair week. Yes, that's right, Fair with a capital F. My town has a rather ginormous fair (wait, I mean Fair) that traditionally takes place the last week of September. It traditionally rains for most of said Fair week, but not this year. So, I didn't stay home too much last week. As a matter of fact, by the end of the week I was hoping it would be possible to get a new pair of feet and maybe a new stomach to go with them. The Fair is about the biggest thing that ever happens in my town - I may have mentioned that it's huge and for one reason or another, my school district was one of a couple that actually had a whole week off for the Fair. I mean, now doesn't that seem pretty major? So yes, lots of Fairgoing and devouring of mercilessly deep fried food proved a major disruption to my reading and my blogging, which I don't regret in the least, which is not to say it wasn't somewhat of a relief to finally arrive at the weekend during which I got to cuddle up with a book or two and stay inside when the rain finally did arrive.

The other reason? Mediocrity. Everything that I've read lately has been uh...just okay for me. Not terrible. Not great. And certainly not inspiring of the lengthy contemplative reviews that have become my trademark. I feel like this happens to me all too often where I'm just stuck in a "nothing extraordinary" reading rut wherein nothing I read provokes a strong reaction one way or the other. The books are far from bad enough to put down without finishing but not good enough to feel especially rewarding when I finally flip the last page. The unfortunate thing is some of said books that I would describe as mediocre are pretty well-liked among readers and bloggers. So I guess I'm just the odd reader out with them. Anybody else get mired in this feeling of reading mediocrity? I'm starting to wonder if it's the books at all or if it's just me...

Blogging Without Remorse

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim". – Lyndon B. Johnson

That's one day of this week's Weekly Geeks down! It's the other six I've got to worry about now. That's right, Dewey proposes that we share a quote every day this week.

There's something I just love about this quote other than the total relevance it has for politicians (and rather many of the people who spend a lot of time in the public eye). That's not why I chose it, though. I chose it because there's something I feel like I can relate to in it. That feeling that no matter what or how much you're doing you're not doing quite enough.

I realized this week that I've been making this blog into a burden and letting it sit heavy on my shoulders. This makes me think that maybe I need to do a sort of second look at my motives and figure out what it is I'm doing here and what it is I intend to keep doing here. A rehashing that, perhaps, has little to do with the inderminate "you" who may be reading this right now and more to do with getting things out on the table for myself.

I started this blog almost a year ago, and I'm honestly surprised that I've stuck with it this long. I'm not particularly known for my stick-to-it-iveness in the face of more "extracurricular" activities. I started this blog for but one reason. I was bored. Last year at this time, I had no job. I'd just moved, and I didn't have a very demanding social life either. I missed using my brain. I missed the joy I took from writing. So, I thought, what if I just start trying to review every book I read just to see how it goes? I anticipated doing it in some sort of internet vacuum that doesn't exist. I didn't start this up thinking, "Hey, I gotta go out and get some readers. If nobody comments, then I'll be lost and feel unloved and unpopular." It was just a personal project. But then, much to my surprise people did read it. People who like books a lot. People who write books and saw their books reviewed here and liked what they saw. People looking for new sort of way to market books. Unwittingly, I was on the radar.

Suddenly, my focus changed. I began to think things like "I must post this week so that the people who read my blog will keep reading" or "If I don't have a book review done this week, what kind of poor excuse for a book blogger am I?" or "If I don't get around to participating in this or that blogosphere event then people will just forget that I'm here at all." Soon, my blogging became all about other people and stopped being about me. It started being another responsibility heaped on top of many I'm trying to balance instead of something I was doing just for the joy of doing it.

So...I'm refocusing. Not quitting, certainly not that. I love books. I love talking about books. I love the people I've met through this blog. I love the book blogosphere and finding people who are more like me than most of the people I know in real life. I love receiving comments and I love giving them. I just don't like the pressure I've created for myself to maintain a "good" book blog by the standards of everyone else, and I'm ready to settle for whatever it is that I can accomplish with the time I've got within the parameters of what I can do while still enjoying what I'm doing.

This is not to say that I will renege on commitments that I've made or anything like that - merely that I will get around to things when I get around them. I have a job, a family, a social life, and places to be that aren't in front of the computer. If I can't post this week, that's okay. If I have to mark the posts in my feed reader "all read," I won't be happy about it, but I won't feel bad about it either. I guess I'm just trying to say that from here on out, I've determined not to feel any guilt and not to make any apologies about blogging. Nobody wants to hear that anyway, right? This post is for me. This blog is for me first. If other people enjoy it and benefit from it or get a kick out of "knowing" me through it, then that is a great bonus. But then, if you all pack up and move on to other blogs, never to leave me a comment again, I'll probably be bummed about it, but I'll survive. If my Technorati authority plummets and the new hits on the stat counter fade away and the internet forgets that I exist, it'll be okay, because I'll still be here doing what I enjoy when I enjoy it, even if I'm back in my imaginary internet vacuum.

Having been thus relieved of my self-packed emotional baggage, I hope to be a better blogger than ever, mostly because I won't have to live up to my own lofty rules and expectations which are so much more difficult than anybody else would even think of putting on me. Ah, I'm feeling refreshed already.

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But wait! I've come up with a brilliant way to balance the me-fest that this post (this blog?) has become. Something I've been meaning to blog about since I heard about it, but am just now getting to. Hopefully, you've all heard about it by now, but if you haven't, allow me to share. I happened by Maw Books Blog the other week to find that this month Natasha is reading and blogging for a cause. That cause is to help the people of Darfur and to inform more people about the genocide that is taking place there. There are any number of ways that you can help ranging from something so simple as leaving her a comment to linking to her from your blog or even volunteering to donate a penny per page that she reads this month to organizations committed to doing something about Darfur (something I'm happy to say that I will be doing). Please if you've got an interest in this at all, click on the picture to learn more about the genocide in Darfur and what you can do to help.

Some Leafing and Some Life and a Winner!

Ah, the book reviews that need writing are piling up on the stand beside me, but I lack the motivation or the energy to write one that will do any book justice. You see, the co-worker whose job I was to take over when she had her baby, uh, had her baby today...a couple of weeks early. So now I find, instead of being the odd-job work whenever you tell me I ought to girl, I've become (temporarily) a legitimate nine to fiver (or, 5:30, but that doesn't have such a nice ring to it...nor is it so nice to actually work). Good on the old paycheck, not so great on the old cache of free time fit for blogging and reading and other such activities that are actually enjoyable (but pay far less in currency that can be traded for great things like food and telephone service and fuel for my vehicle, not to mention its great value in paying off what seems to be only the interest on my student loans which will dog me all of my live long days, no doubt). Oh, and if you were wondering, after my mostly selfish digression there, both mom and baby are doing well after an enviably short labor.

I finished two great books in the not too distant past that I have yet to review. One is my Penguin Classic which I still must blog, A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi, a delightfully slim volume of short stories/essays which fit perfectly into my lunch time at work. All were thought provoking and open to interpretation, most were interesting, some were downright clever and a few were even a bit funny. I've got to get to reviewing it soon, but first I'd really better decide on a few of my favorites to spotlight.


The other book I finished last weekend was Ellington Boulevard by Adam Langer which I surprised myself by liking...a lot. Why was I surprised, you may wonder? Well, it's one of those books, that are becoming more and more common, that seems to think it exists on a higher plane than the common laws of dialogue and quotation marks, which means, of course, that dialogue in its quotation marked, new line for a new speaker format is not to be found in Ellington Boulevard. You may recall that this is a massive pet peeve of mine, but alas, having turned the last page of the book, there was no denying that I loved it despite this transgression. I don't stand a chance of giving you any sort of concise summary of it, but it suffices (for now) to say that it's a great book about New York City and the people who live there. Langer's talent for unique, believable, totally fleshed out characters who are somehow lovable despite their many flaws is undeniable.

Now, I'm in the midst of devouring Tears of the Desert by Halima Bashir. I read the first chapter of this, and I was instantly sucked into Bashir's memoir of her childhood in Sudan. Hers is already a powerful story of growing up in a small, poor Zaghawa village but having a father with the means and the dream to invest in her education. He gives her the opportunity and inspiration to go to university to become a medical doctor who dreams of returning to her village to be the first real doctor there. I know that this story will certainly take a turn for the sad and depressing, but for now, I'm enjoying watching young Halima beat the odds and follow her dreams.

On deck is All We Ever Wanted Was Everything which I've hardly read five pages of yet, but feel the need to share with you because it's got this nifty cover photo of a melting ice cream sundae. Weirdly enticing, no?



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And finally...

As you may recall, my Farworld: Water Keep giveaway came to an end late last night, and I have, indeed, drawn a winner. And the winner is....

Janice!

Congrats Janice!
If you happen to be seeing this, you can e-mail your name and address to me at toadacious1ATyahooDOTcom (if not, I'll be in touch) and I will pass it on to the awesome J. Scott Savage himself who will provide you with a signed ARC of his book. Thanks for playing everybody. Sorry everybody couldn't win. But keep your eyes open, I can assure that this is not the last giveaway that will grace the pages of Leafing Through Life. *exaggerated winking*

The All-Purpose Reading Update

Hey, look at me. I blog. Sometimes. Er...rarely. I didn't feel very talkative last week. Well, I don't even feel very talkative this week. As a matter of fact, I spend most of my time these days feeling just stressed. Changes are happening at work and, while I'm not especially afraid of losing my job, I am afraid of getting forced into a shift that will make me want to quit it. Tomorrow is the day when the changes are supposedly going to be announced, and lacking any sort of seniority whatsoever, I've been feeling like I'm about to get shackled with an especially rotten shift (can you say 4 to midnight? Ew!) and no other available option. Hopefully I'm just overreacting and nothing so rotten will happen, but either way some big changes are about to happen and I fear that even if I end up with a decent shift, I won't work at the same time as half the people that I really like to work with which was the only reason that I took this job so far afield from my knowledge and experience in the first place. At least, hopefully, tomorrow's meeting will put to an end on the wild speculating that has been flying about in the absence of any concrete information. I'm just afraid most of us aren't going to like the concrete information and, in any case, the changes won't have much of an affect in achieving their aim of getting the work done faster, as a matter of fact, it's more likely that the opposite will happen which makes it that much more frustrating.

All right, job whining aside, there have been some interesting book developments. I got my Elle Reader's Prize jury books for the grand prize. That's all 5 of the best ones from each of the months they do it, and since I had the good fortune (or maybe the word I'm looking for is foolish? Or could it be "mixed blessing"?) to land on a fiction and a non-fiction jury, I get not just five books but uh....ten books to read. They're brand new sparkly hardcovers, and they look just delightful. The only drawback being, of course, that I'm supposed to have all ten read by mid-September, and let me just say that the final fiction one, despite looking to be a very good read, is way more of chunkster than I would have expected. Hmmm, maybe I should just quit my job and read - that would save me a lot of strife all around except for the whole not getting a paycheck thing.

So, I jumped in with both feet, using the time-honored "pick a number between one and ten" to choose the first to be read. Augusten Burroughs' memoir, A Wolf At the Table about his twisted, unloving father came out on top. If, after Running With Scissors you weren't convinced that this poor guy's childhood was ridiculously twisted and crappy, this chronicle of the time before the being the kind of adopted child of a nutty shrink should certainly convinced you. As I was reading it, I was sure I wouldn't have the severely ambiguous feelings about it that I've been having about most books, but alas, I do. So I'm letting it marinate for a while in an effort to discern whether or not I actually thought it was any good.

I just dug into the second one, Tom Perotta's The Abstinence Teacher, which was chosen by Somer's husband's creation, the TBR randomizer, a very handy tool for the indecisive. It sounds like it's got a very interesting premise, but I've heard a lot of mixed reviews.



I'm also reading Judith Matloff's Home Girl, a memoir of the author's rehabbing of a decrepit house in West Harlem before it was "cool" to move to that part of Harlem. Turns out it wasn't cool because the street she moves to is like cocaine Wall Street with Dominican drug dealers out in force all day and all night fueling the east coast drug trade, not to mention that frightening addict squatting in the house next door. It's a little bit strange and sometimes funny watching her and her husband embrace the many sides of their crime-ridden neighborhood. I should be finished with it in the next few days, so that review is forthcoming as well.

When the mood strikes I'm trying to hobble through Franklin and Lucy by Joseph E. Persico a book about FDR and all the women in his life and the effect they all had on each other. FDR is one of the most interesting presidents, in my opinion, and I care about this book, but it also sort of reminds me of something that I would have been forced to read in one of my college history courses which kind of puts me off every time I go to pick it up. It's definitely serious non-fiction, the kind that really takes an attention span and lots of time to read. And if there's two things I'm short of lately, they are...well...time and an attention span, which is making this a bit of a challenge.

So, that's the week in reading - turns out I was feeling more talkative than I thought. I never can tell until I sit down to actually write anyway. So...what's on your reading agenda for this week?

Sunday O'Meme

Greetings, earthlings.

It has come to my attention that I haven't afflicted all of you with a "life-y" post lately. Since we are leafing through my life here, it seems only right that I should talk some about, well, me. I was looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend complete with book sale and excessive laziness and maybe even a nice wrap up post for last week's Weekly Geeks, since I actually achieved the goal set forth therein, but alas, it was not to be. On Thursday, my best friend broke up with her dirtbag (opinion subject to change based on when/if she decides she can't go on without him) boyfriend, and being the good friend that I like to think that I am, I said, "you should drive down and hang out with me this weekend because I can't do anything for you from here." So instead of moping around all weekend and taking him back in a weak moment, she came down and uh...crashed my nice, easy, relaxing weekend. And I had good time - a great time even (and I didn't even miss the book sale!) - but I'd hardly term this weekend relaxing. Oh, we went to the movies (may I recommend not seeing You Don't Mess With the Zohan?), we wandered aimlessly about town, we made terrible jokes at each other's expense, we went to the local amusement park in the 90 degree heat to ride the roller coasters and that big huge ginormous log flume that soaks you so much that you leave a trail of water around the park and people that ride the roller coaster after you get an unpleasant surprise, we ate breakfast, we took pictures of ourselves (on roller coasters!), we played cards and ate fatty food. It was delightful. And not relaxing. I fear that it will be some time before I achieve any measure of relaxing during any time of the week.

Not that I need any help to talk about me, but Rose City Reader did tag me for that Six Random Things About You meme that seems to be always floating around. Since I don't seem to have the mental fortitude for much else (I need more relaxation, darnit!) Much to my surprise, I did manage to come up with six exceedingly random things to share today, so here it goes.

- I loathe eggs and milk. Yes, these two staple foods I simply cannot stand. According to my mother, I loved eggs for the first 5 or so years of my life. Now just the smell of them is enough to make me gag. I love dairy products - cheese, yogurt, ice cream - you name it, I want it. But milk? I can't remember ever liking milk. I begrudgingly put it on my cereal, but only in miniscule amounts. But I wouldn't dream of drinking the stuff!
- I love to dance in random situations. I am not a good dancer. I do not look good dancing. But I uh..."break into" dance at random intervals. I amuse my coworkers by grooving to the oldies at work. I dance to music on commercials with only my arms from the comfort of the recliner. I "dance" alone in my car (and with people in my car) proving to any passing motorists that I am, in fact, insane.
- I love riding rides at the amusement park. Okay, this isn't that random. But I used to be terrified of the rides with big drops or that went upside down. Now I love them and can barely handle rides that spin - which I used to love.
- I'm a science-phobe who works in a lab. All of my best friends are biology majors. Yet, despite testing into high school honors' science, science has always frightened me. I managed to dodge ever having to do a science lab in my college years despite the fact that I was probably required to do one. I slipped through a loophole. Now I practice amateur chemistry, file human tissue embedded in paraffin wax into tiny little drawers, and carry around coolers containing things like amputated legs and placentas that need to have parts prepped for microscopic examination. And I kind of like my job, and I'm rarely terrified by it's science-y implications. It's true that wonders never cease.
- I drove cross-country to Montana. Lots of people dream of taking a road trip across the United States. Most of them don't do it in January. Because that's stupid. I was going to take a job out there, then I didn't. So my dad and I drove all the way out. After two hours at the destination, we turned around and came back. The icy cold January wind nearly blew my debit card away twice while I was fueling up the car, my driver's side view mirror was nearly taken off by that same wind, and the gas cap was nearly swept away in similar fashion. It was 7 days of driving non-stop from before sunrise to after sunset (some days as many as 800 miles), except for our "tourist" day when we saw Mt. Rushmore and Wall Drug and drove a mere 280 miles. My dear old car, Buddy the Subaru, got us there and back. Amazingly. He's since been laid to rest. I still miss driving him.
- I moved to the city then moved back to the country and the thing I miss most is the public transportation (and my job at the bookstore! That was cool, too!) It used to be that I could travel back and forth to work (and pretty much anywhere else I felt like going) for a paltry $15 a week and read while traveling. Now I spend around $40 or $50 a week just to drive back and forth to work, and I lost all that reading time. And no, you're not going to sell me on listening to audio books. It's just not the same. Besides, I have to listen to the radio - and dance. ;-)


All right. That's six. And since I'm still at this meme thing, Mariel over at Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops tagged me for that one with the three sentences from page 123 one.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

It happens that I've got a stacks of recent acquisitions piled all around me (more on those later - the month o' book sales has surely arrived), so I had some options. I kind of enjoyed the one from I Know You're Out There by Michael Beaumier the most, so that's what you're getting.

When he would visit my parents, he'd arrive with a goat in the back of his truck, which he would roast to perfection, or bags of beautiful organic tomatoes that he'd serve to them with mozzarella newly flown in from Italy, or gorgeous fillets of salmon caught wild in Alaska, or dry-aged steaks from Argentina, everything fresh, everything the best. Dad would shake his head and criticize Colin for spending his money on such frivolous, indulgent things - but mom would sit in the corner of her kitchen, watching, proudly amazed, not quite believing a son of hers could so confidently know his way around a kitchen.

My taste buds are far more welcoming of protein shakes and microwave popcorn, meals that are thoughtlessly easy to make and hardly require the annoyance of "savoring" or appreciating their "subtle delicacy" - so when Colin pontificates about food, I know to keep my mouth shut.


I'm not tagging for either, since I seem to see them around everywhere already, but if you want to do them, I'd be happy to read them!

The Good and the Not So Great

Hey, look, it's one of those posts where I try to make up for all the posts I didn't make all week. Let's start with good stuff. Wednesday (was it Wednesday? I think it was Wednesday, but I could be wrong) was a very excellent day. I recently got offered a part time position at the place where I'm working as a temp which entails an automatic $3 raise and the possibility of more hours. Then on Wednesday I was offered more hours learning to do something totally new in the lab which will mean I'm working almost full time at a decent wage which is pretty exciting this being the first time I've ever deemed my hourly rate of pay an actually acceptable amount of money. Of course, it will also mean I'll have to juggle some stuff around until I've managed to establish some sort of routine so this whole reading and blogging about reading thing doesn't fall by the wayside. This blog was started when I was unemployed and needed a fun and constructive way to pass the time, which it definitely has turned out to be, so now I just need to figure out how to keep at it (with hopefully slightly more frequency) with much less time than I had when it was begun. Guess I'll have to cut out all those Law and Order re-runs my parents are hooked on and downsize the subscriptions on the feed reader a bit (uh, don't worry anybody, the cuts would most likely entail people who don't know I'm reading their blog in the first place).

So yes, Wednesday was a lovely spring day in which I got offered another nice new job and then came home to find that I was a winner! Amy over at Lives Less Ordinary whose awesome blog is about to celebrate six months of well...awesomeness...held a drawing for all kinds of Scottish goodies. And I won! And I pretty much could not be more excited. I've actually been to Scotland and loved it dearly and would love to return someday, so the prospect of Scottish goodies coming in the mail is simply delightful. If you haven't checked out Amy's blog, you definitely should. Her photos are beautiful and her writing just shines. Her posts at the very least always give me food for thought and they often brighten my day as well!

So there's the good stuff. Onto the not so great.

I've been trying to read this book about the trees (that would be The Wild Trees by Richard Preston). I like trees. I like them a lot. As a matter of fact, several households along our road have recently had trees cut down and removed from their yards for what seems to be no good reason whatsoever and every time I see the wood piles still sitting there massive outpourings of bitterness ensue even though the topic has been quite beaten to death among my family. Nonetheless, I just can't get into this book. I can't decide whether it's because the tree-obsessed people get on my nerves (which is kind of distressing because they are actual people and I start to feel bad that their lives as depicted by Preston just kind of bother me) or because the author seems to be trying to accomplish too much. The book's chapters are divided into sections where a great deal of different tree explorers are introduced often from early childhood, where descriptions of trees and the mechanics of their ecosystems are elaborated on, and where various explorations in search of the tallest or largest living trees are chronicled. Honestly, I don't know what I'm supposed to focus on. The trees? The people? The tree climbing? And having to keep so many things straight just kept making me want to put the book down because I just couldn't seem to get engaged with it when the narrative is bouncing all over the place at what seemed to be random.

The other part of it is probably just me. A part of me wishes I had what the people in this book have, in a way. These people are just living their lives not quite sure what they're doing or how to go about it, but then (as Preston would have us believe) they wake up one morning full of the knowledge that they are not only passionately in love with the idea of exploring redwood canopies but are quite certain that they want to spend their entire lives analyzing a certain type of lichen that makes these gigantic trees possible. That's right, they just wake up one day and know that their life's purpose is lichen! Would that I would wake up one day full of the passion and knowledge that would give me a clue where the path of my life should take me. Just so long as it's not lichen, mmmkay?

Being mildly uninterested and mildly miffed by the content of this book, I have at long last decided to not finish the book. When I look at the book I'm reading and see only a wall standing between me and other books I wish I was reading instead, that's usually a good sign that it's time to give it up. Despite my quibbles with it, I'm sure that this is a perfectly valid piece of narrative non-fiction. I was definitely interested in the parts describing the unusual way in which redwoods grow and even with the climbing experiences of the tree explorers, but it just seems there is a mental block keeping me from getting the most out of this book, so it's on to something new for me!

Not Old, Just Older

How come there's always plenty of time to go to work and so little time to do all the other stuff in the world (even when you don't really spend all that much time at work)? In this "explanation for prolonged absence post" I've decided to take a detour from my usual approach of whining a lot and well... not whine a lot. Alas, I have been a busy girl trying to keep pace with all the stuff I normally do and going to New Jersey for all but about 3 hours of last weekend and my birthday was this week so, people came and brought me presents and we ate cake - so there's another night with no reading, no blog-hopping, no blogging, and well...no regrets!

One of my best friends lives in New Jersey (the scenic central part as opposed to the not so scenic rest of it) and it's been some time since I've gone to visit her and probably some time before I'll be able to pin her down for a visit again. So, I left right from work on Friday and didn't get back until Sunday at six in the evening leaving me just enough time to get ready to start this week and none of the usual "catch up" time that the weekend usually affords me. Despite the lack of reading, I had a fabulous time. We went to her high school's musical (The Sound of Music - pretty good!), took the train into Philadelphia for the flower show which I'd never been to before and was pretty awesome (I mean, who knew that people could totally recreate Louisiana bayou inside a building), and inexplicably devoured vast quantities of ice cream (which I don't even like as much as other desserts, so it was rather strange). All that, and more! It was a great weekend full of quality catching up with her, and it was so, so nice to get away for a while, too.

In other news, yes, I'm another year older this week. No, I don't feel any different. Yes, I did eat lots of cake...some of it purchased by one of my co-workers which was really nice since I'm still kind of newish there (but, in additional good news, I may soon really actually be going "real" part time in the department instead of staying all temp-ish)! Yes, book gift cards were involved in the birthday festivities as was a new wallet filled with money (er, only small bills, though) and the promise of a free lobster dinner in the nearish future. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to hold off on my book shopping spree as the shelves are all full and the stacks of books on my bedroom floor have truly started to overwhelm me (who knew it would come to this?)! That and with all the activity I've hardly been reading. I know, distressing isn't it?

That brings me to the reading update. I'm about 70 pages into two different books. One, The Wild Trees, is narrative non-fiction which is, so far, about some vaguely irritating people with a dangerous obsession with climbing really tall trees. So far it's mostly introductions to people who seem to love trees a bit too much (you were so caught up in looking at trees, you forgot to register for classes for your next semester of college? Are you serious?), so I'm hoping it starts to have some sort of point soon. The other book is Sobibor by Michael Lev which is a Library Thing Early Reviewer read despite its already being available to the public. Not that I'm complaining, they sent me a sparkly new hardcover which, unlike ARCs, can be quoted in book reviews which is a big plus in my view. The downside? Yeah, I definitely inadvertantly signed myself up for a really Holocaust-heavy early 2008. So far this one is more about interesting nuance requiring some background Holocaust knowledge as opposed to clobbering one over the head with the sheer awfulness of it (a la Schindler's List). At times, I think it's a pretty good book which is pretty absorbing, at other times, I have little to no idea what's going on and the weirdly pitched dialogue bothers me (is that the translation, do you think?). Also kind of awkward is the the overkill of anthropomorphizing (that's a good 10 million dollar word for 9 in the morning, yeah?) things like the moon. The moon was doing lots of not-so-moonlike things for quite some time until it got to the point of, "are you being serious?"

So there you have it. The story of my week. And how I am not really reading. And, is it just me or am I less interesting when I'm happy? Because this entry is kind of putting me to sleep despite my having done much more exciting things than usual.

But I promise I'll be back on my (reading/blogging/blog reading) game soon!

One of *Those* Weeks

So, for many moons now, I have not had the uh...pleasure...of having a full time job. Nor have I had the pleasure of money in my bank account. This last week I had the (dis)pleasure of having the former, next week I can look forward to having the latter. Going from not working to working part time to a week of working full time on a particularly dismal schedule is rather painful. Nonetheless I have survived my full-time work week and will return to very part time next week and hopefully arrive at a happy medium some time in the future.

But let me just say, working from six in the morning until 2 or so in the afternoon plus a 45 minute (give or take some minutes) commute each way is not for the faint of heart and not for the people of the world such as I who continue to need all 8 hours of sleep per night to be able to maintain any amount of social civility. If I cut you off in traffic, talk about you viciously behind your back, or write excessively whiny blog posts, that's usually a good indication that I haven't been getting my sleep. However, going to bed at 9 really cramped my style. Last week was one of those where I felt like I couldn't even start anything because it wasn't likely that I could finish it before I had to shower and go back to bed and start all over again the next day. So yeah, other than the paycheck, last week equals a big waste. If it should come to pass that this should happen to me again I'll really have to work out a better routine for myself then shower, sleep, work, and mindless wandering/gazing at the wall as it seems that now I'm even more behind at well...everything in life. See, I'm good at adapting to stuff. Ha!

Now that I've broken most of the laws of good grammar by starting out paragraphs/sentences with words that aren't technically allowed to start sentences, I will proceed with my post as such. Reading has kind of slowed down. Despite the fact that I took Schindler's List along with me to read on my lunch breaks, I was severely impeded in reading it by the shortness of said breaks, my inability to eat and read at the same time without creating a rather large mess, and the way that the subject matter of the book doesn't really always lend itself to being read while eating. *grimace* I'm plodding through it, slowly but surely, as it isn't the type of book that you just sit down and read through a whole afternoon as you might expect. A person can only take so much before taking a break.



Sometime this week while I was off being generally maladjusted and getting myself behind at life (what do you mean I'm still supposed to deduct my spending from my checkbook on days when I have to go to work at 5 in the morning? I thought all normal necessary activity was suspended as a result of this paid torture!), the lovely Jill over at The Magic Lasso bestowed upon me the coveted (or shall we say "widely distributed") "Make My Day" Award. It's my first blogly award (yay!) and demands to be passed on to ten other bloggers that make my day. Despite the fact that everyone I could possibly give it to has probably received it from someone already, I will do my best to comply, because hey, you haven't been honored by me yet. And hey, I am very important! *removes tongue from cheek* So...onward!

First, I'll have to turn right around and give it back to Jill. I initially wandered over to her blog because of her great book reviews and found that she's a real sweetie! And, hey, she just gave me my first blog award, how does that not totally make my day??

Next goes to Susan at West of Mars for being the first person to comment on my blog, on the first lackluster entry no less. That, and for keeping me entertained with her fictional band and for even catching me off-guard and getting me to read (and like!) a little poetry!

One for Sam Houston of Book Chase who can pretty much make me want to read anything that he likes with his great reviews and keeps me up to speed on the latest bookish news.

One for Matt at A Guy's Moleskine Notebook for letting me do some Asian travelling through his blog, which is always fun for a traveler at heart who is rather limited in funding. And for the great book reviews, of course, but am I not starting to sound like a broken record?

Another goes to Literary Feline of Musings of a Bookish Kitty for not only having a great blog, but for being the first to comment on my "crappy January" post and make me feel better.

Let's see...Eva of A Striped Armchair gets one for her awesome reviews in which she seems to always include just the right excerpts of books to get me very interested in them. And because she reads The Economist. I have an unnatural love of The Economist and appreciation for other people who read it. So it kinda made my day when she told me she reads it. Is that weird?

One for Dewey for being one of the first book blogs I started reading and de-lurking at. I love reading her blog and her 24-hour read-a-thon which was happening as I started blogging helped inspire me to read as well as helping me get more involved in the bookblogosphere.

KookieJar gets one too for her awesome blog, her enthusiam for books, movies, and TV plus those crazy links on Wednesdays always keep me coming back. Plus, when I told her my blog was in its lonely beginning phase, she dashed right over and started leaving me some comments.

Another goes to CJ who was the first to leave a comment and say something to the effect of, "I like your blog. Can I link you?" which definitely made my day! And I like her blog, too! A lot!

And a tie for 10th place because these people probably wouldn't know me from a hole in the ground but they've made my day anyhow...

A Life in Books whose blog I first came across through BookCrossing. I didn't have much of an interest in blogs at all at that point, but I thought we had pretty similar tastes in reading, so I love reading her reviews and that kept me coming back until suddenly I thought maybe this book blog thing might be something I'd be interested in after all.

and

Amy at Lives Less Ordinary who I discovered when I was still doing Thursday Thirteens. Her thirteens were always thoughtful and/or inspiring so I found lurking back around on other days of the week to find that she takes the most beautiful pictures and seems to have this really great optimistic outlook on life. I love it when people seem to be able to find the good in things, so it's always pleasure to read her blog when I get the chance.


Well, I've already given too many out, so I hope nobody will be offended if I've neglected them. If you're on my blogroll, chances are you make my day - heck, you might still make my day even if you're not on my blogroll. I still have a lot of looking forward to do in terms of finding good "make my day" worthy blogs to read - oh, the possibilites! =D