#AMonthofFaves - This is How We (Don't) Read (Much)

Brought to you by Traveling with T, Estella's Revenge, and Girlxoxo

Mon. | Dec. 4 – This Is How We Read #AMonthofFaves – eg. Number of books read so far, genre you read the most from, picture of favorite (or most often used) reading location, most read author, % eBooks, hardcovers, paperbacks and/or audiobooks, hint at what your favorite read of the year is (let us guess), types of books you wish you read more of, month you read the most and least

This should be an entertaining post considering I'm too filled with shame to own up to my reading statistics this year and, well, most of the other years. But especially this year, the year of the "DNF I spent too much time on." I started and labored through a number of books this year, investing more than 50 pages in many of them before reaching that point where I was pretty sure I just didn't like them or was not interested enough to continue, so my DNF stack is high, but it didn't save me much reading time for other worthier books. I attribute this to my year of general book and life slumpery where, at numerous times, I couldn't differentiate between whether the books I was reading were really not any good, really were not for me, or I just, like, was so slumped that I just didn't like books anymore. Of late, I've been more inclined to blame the books and jettison them with impunity and have found that that's lead to a much more enjoyable round of reading.

I would tease some of my favorites in this post, but I'm starting to think I'm only just getting to them.

End of Year Reading Status: I have read *redacted* books so far this year which, in my more optimistic moments, I hope will end up equaling the value of the amount of books I read last year which was...*redacted.*

Favorite Genre: I read most from the genre I typically read the most from, which would be literary fiction. However, it seems my favorites this year fell into the sub-genres of literary horror, literary historical fiction, and literary "books with plucky southern heroines."
 

Favorite Reading Locale: Meet my couch. This is my favorite place to read books I don't like with occasional interruptions for reading books I actually do like. In the warm weather months, I occasionally read books I don't like that much on the balcony which is also pictured. I have taken the photo in this style to obscure my current read, which is likely to be one of my favorites which you'll have to wait to the end of the month to have revealed unto you.  No, really, I just took a really bad picture and am too lazy to take a better one. Focus on the nice view outside. Blogging is hard.

Most Read Author of the Year: Well, this is weird, it's a three way tie. Normally I'm hard pressed to read more than one book by the same author in single year, this year Justin Cronin, Stephen Kiernan, and Courtney Summers all qualify for this honor, which is especially honorific considering I've only read *still redacted* books this year!

Favorite Disregarded Gadget for Reading: My poor Kindle Paperwhite. It is a lovely reading tool crammed to bursting with enticing reads I've purchased for $2.99 or less over the years I've owned it. I've read only 2 e-books on it this year which, while it may be a significant portion of my redacted reading total for the year, it is also about .0031% of the amount of e-books housed on said neglected device. Oh wait, but I did DNF one e-book after spending too much time on it, so that totally counts as a third, right?

Favorite Book Format: Trade paperbacks. Far and away my favorite is the trade paperback. Hardbacks are too heavy, e-books aren't pretty and pagey enough, and mass markets are lucky if they can even retains their spots on my shelves, I'm usually so averse to them. Ironically, however, one of my favorites from this year actually was a mass market. There, I've duly teased a favorite.

Reading Accomplishment of the Year: Reading the longest book I've read since I read The Stand in 2012. Even at close to 800 pages, it's one of my favorites of the year. And it reminded me of The Stand, only I think I might have liked it better. Another favorite teased!

So that's my reading year to date. I'll be sharing my favorite books of the year at the end of the month (you know, after I've finished reading them), so stay tuned!

How was your reading year?

#AMonthofFaves : My Reading Year

Wow, can it be December again already?  This year has flown past at a glacial speed.  (This sort of comment may make better sense to those with broken ankles.  Days go by so slowly, yet it still seems as if three months of my life have vanished with astonishing speed.)  Anyhow, no ankle sob stories today.  I was excited to see that Estella's Revenge, girlxoxo.com, and Traveling with T have brought back their December blogging event - A Month of Favorites.  They've got blogging prompts for most of the weekdays of December to help us keep up our blogging mojo even through this busiest of months.  If you'd like to join the fun, just click over to the one of the hosts' blogs to find out the schedule.

To kick things off, we're doing a little "my reading year" overview.  My reading year was...good.  One more book read and I will have surpassed my number of books read at the end of the year last year.  Astonishingly however, I tallied up my number of pages read this year and last year, and I kid you not, I am within 50 pages of my number of pages read last year at this time.  I might be a slow reader, but it seems I am consistently slow.  Ha!

Also, strikingly similar to last year is my ratio of books authored by females to books authored by males.  The girls have it, making up around 75% of my reading.  I did a good job of balancing review copies with titles from my stacks.  An even half of my reading was not furnished by a publisher for my review consideration.  This was something that I meant to be better about, so it's exciting to have not lost track of that goal over the year.

May was tops for both quantity and quality of books read.  Thank you busted back and beautiful weather.  August was the worst.  Thank you workaholism and ankle surgery.  Ugh.  Thankfully, what the ankle stole in August, it returned in September and October when there was a major uptick in reading.  Obviously.  Those who cannot walk, read.  That's how that saying goes, right?

Thanks to a mid-summer move into a new apartment, I purged around 400 books from my collection, and I also haven't read a single e-book since most of the summer my goal was to unload books that would need to be lifted. I feel a little guilty about leaving my Kindle in the corner (nobody puts Kindle in a corner!), but hopefully I can make a return to occasional e-book reading in 2016.  I certainly haven't taken a break from e-book buying.

On the whole, 2015 was a much better quality reading year than 2014.  There were a random few duds that if I could go back in time I would totally DNF.  That said, looking back over the past few months, while I haven't read anything that's totally knocked my socks off, the books I've been reading have been consistently good.  Here's hoping the trend continues (except maybe a, uh, "sock knocker" is in order before the calendar turns another page) for the rest of the year!

What has been the highlight of your reading year?

Bout of Books: Wrap-Up

Wow, in terms of blogging, I had a lousy Bout of Books.  I wrote my sign-up/un-goals post and then disappeared from the blogosphere utterly.  The good news is, that's because I was actually reading.  I did a little better than I somewhat negatively predicted and read two books instead of a a mere one and I half.  I read...

Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert (325 pages)

and (finally!)

Divergent by Veronica Roth  (487 pages)

That's a total of 812 pages or roughly 2 and a half times what I would read in a normal week.  Not too shabby.  Plus, both books I read were excellent, fast-reading readathon picks and all-around excellent books.

 My mom (Bonnie!) who participated along with me read all 5 books she set out to read.  They are...

The Giver by Lois Lowry (180 pages)

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (163 pages)

The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan (211 pages)

Dear Zoe by Philip Beard (196 pages)

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (194 pages)

...for a total of 944 pages.  She enjoyed all five, but Bridge to Terabithia was her favorite.

All this reading has been fun, but now I have to get back to this blogging thing.  How come I can't do all these things at once??          

Bout of Books 11

Here ye, here ye - here lies my intention to participate in the Bout of Books readathon taking place this week.  Last time it helped to re-energize my reading and my blogging, too, so here's hoping it will do so yet again.  My blogging life is toddling along more or less as or better than expected, however my reading life needs a little more love just about now seeing as the TBR books are threatening to overtake the house.

Here is the blurb from their handy-dandy website.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 18th and runs through Sunday, August 24th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 11 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

My goal?  Well, I hate goals actually, so my goal this time is to have no goals, to put no pressure upon myself to live up to some uncertain standard all you fast readers of the world can achieve with ease.  In my life, I've found that the more goals I have, the more disappointed I become when I can't quite achieve them, and suddenly I'm on the fast track to self-loathing when I haven't read all the books/lost all the weight/done all the exercising/achieved all the career status that I planned, ergo I can't be happy with anything that I have achieved.

I intend to spend more time reading than usual, and I have already actually deleted the stupid TwoDots game off of my phone in hopes of achieving a more stress-free and reading-full coming week.  I'm not sure if I will take the plunge into the mounting pile of review copies that is looming on my desk or whether I'll eschew bloggerly responsibility to, say, inhale the whole Divergent series in one gulp so I can stop being one of the last few dystopian YA lovers of the world to have read that.

Exciting news, too, folks, my mom, who was recently overtaken by an obsession with BookTube and, consequentially, a mad scramble to buy all the brilliant YA books she's been missing all her life, is also going to take part with me this time around.  I may or may not be hoping this is an indication that I might be able to persuade her to do the next Dewey's 24 Hour thon which I am always harping on her about.  But I digress, my mom (or "Bonnie" as she insists I refer to her for the purposes of this blog post) has, like, real goals for the Bout of Books (I guess somebody has to.).  In this, her first official Bout of Books she intends to read the following:

She says, "Is that enough?"  Jeez, I hope so or she'll put my slow reading self to shame.  Also, I told her she'll probably have to budget some time for weeping.  Seriously, have you read any of these?

Here's hoping for a week of extra-excellent reading - wish us luck!

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.... ;-)

Weekly Geeks: A Love Note for the Library

According to the Weekly Geeks, National Library Week is upcoming. Actually, it's next week, as it so happens. As a result, this week's questions are about libraries, or course.

This brings me to my deep, dark book blogger secret. You see, I saw this week's topic "Checking Out Libraries" and thought..."Guess I'm not Weekly Geeking it this week," because...*gasp* I don't use the local libraries. Here, I'll give you a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor and recover from the shock and horror. That's right, I graduated from college in 2006, and I haven't stepped foot in a library ever since but for those ever-ripe opportunities to buy books, the much beloved Friends of the Library book sales. So, you could say, I support my local libraries, but I don't actually use them.

With little hope, then, I read the first question:

What's your earliest memory of a library? What was it like for you? Were you more likely to hang out in the gym or the library when you were in school?

Then I remembered, hey, I haven't always been totally ambivalent about libraries. In fact, when I was a kid, I loved my school libraries. The first library I can really remember vividly is my elementary school library. I was of the lucky class that was the first to spend all four years of our elementary school education in the newly built elementary school, and the library was the centerpiece of that school. It was at the very top of the center staircase. It had fish tanks and big beautiful windows, and, of course, more books than I'd ever seen in one place in all my young life. Of course, I fell in love, and set the lofty goal that I would read all the books there from A to Z. Okay, I may have fallen a little short on that goal, but it definitely set the pace for my reading future.

One of my favorite memories from elementary school were these Friday night things called "Prime Time," where you could bring a big stack of books and a sleeping bag, and I and many of my elementary school classmates would lay on our sleeping bags in the school auditorium and just read for three hours. Almost like a mini Read-a-thon for kids. I can still remember spending Friday nights there in the company of my classmates and a gargantuan stack of books. How nice to have three hours where you were told to come somewhere and just read. To this day, I love the idea of solitary reading being made into a community activity. Guess that goes a long way in explaining my love for book blogging (not to mention the 24 Hour Read-a-thon!).

The middle school library, while not as aesthetically pleasing as the elementary school one, was again the centerpiece of the school. The 5th and 6th grade wing was on one side and the 7th and 8th grade on the other, and there, right in the middle was the library. If I had to pick a place where I really came into my own as a reader, it was in that middle school library, home of untold treasures waiting to be discovered. I read countless books through my middle school years to the exclusion of most other activities. I read new books and classics. Books for kids my age, and books written for a much older audience. The school had a big Accelerated Reader program where you would read books, take multiple choice tests on the computer, and get points. Several of my middle school years, I came away with the most AR points in my grade because of my voracious reading, and reaped all sorts of extraneous rewards, and yet the reading itself was the biggest reward of all. Imagine getting awards, pizza parties, end of year trips to local amusement parks in exchange for doing something you already love! Man, I wish my job was like that.

Now, I must say, I prefer to own my books. In my adult life I hate deadlines and prefer to read a book when and where I choose, and I much prefer to have my very own library than to borrow books from someone else's, especially considering that going to the library is a little more complex and out of the way now than simply walking to the center of the place I spend my days anyway. Despite my lack of interest in public libraries as an adult, I can safely say that I give a lot of credit to my school library system for making me into the reader I am today.

My school always knew that reading belonged at the center, and it still does.

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

Dewey's Books Challenge

Despite my dismal failure at nearly every challenge I try, I'm going to have to give Dewey's Books Challenge a try, if only to try and honor her memory through reading. I'm sure you've all heard about this one by now, so I won't go on about the details - that's what the link's for! Anyhow, I'm going with option number 2 which is to choose and read 5 books that Dewey reviewed on her blog. Because I'm determined to succeed, I'm trying to make my list as easy as possible for me to accomplish, including mostly books that I already intend to read in 2009 and perhaps, uh, one that I've read already. Here's my list, which is, of course, subject to change upon my whims.

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Thanks to Chris and Robin for hosting!

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?



------------------------
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*

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!

The Meandering Reading Update

The good news about this week is that my absence from blogging has been indicative of my preference for reading over the internet. Since that's been a little rare lately, I decided to run with it. I'm still plodding through Schindler's List at a somewhat steadier pace than I have been, but it's still slow going. I have, however, reached the final eighth of it, so that's a good sign that the end is near.

I've been alternating it with a few rather engrossing magazine articles including one from New York magazine about Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee and steroids as well as a nice breakdown of Super Tuesday and what the future looks like for the American presidential race at this point from The Economist. If I haven't mentioned my love for The Economist lately, I must say that I appreciate that it can be counted on to provide some fairly trustworthy news and smart analysis, the kind of which doesn't seem to emerge so often from the wildly scaled down reporting in what we (or I) suppose to be "news" magazines in America. I like to believe that I'm a thinking American who wants to know more about what's going on in the world and it feels as if The Economist treats me as such while magazines like Time seem to get fluffier and fluffier. Or maybe reading The Economist just makes them *seem* fluffier. Sure, I could get quality news from the internet, but I prefer the feel of the magazine in my hands and the fact that I can carry it around whereever I may go. Okay, that's the end of magazine snobbery. For now.

I sit here now wondering if snobbery is indeed a word. In a last ditch effort to find out definitively without trying too hard, I've clicked the spell check button on Blogger only to be reminded that it's not working. Which leads me to a question. Do a lot of you actually use the spellchecker in your blog? This is assuming you use Blogger, otherwise I don't even know if your blog edit page *has* a spellchecker. I've seen the non-working of the Blogger spellchecker has been troubling a few bloggers, which made me notice something about myself. I don't use it. Unless, of course, I'm worried that I'm using a non-word. I re-read my entries and edit them the hard way. Is that unusual? I usually don't find too many screw-ups (that aren't intentional) anway, but it just struck me as funny that it doesn't even occur to me to use the spellchecker. I am my own spellchecker! Oddly enough, spelling something wrong would really bother me (despite my disuse of the spellchecker), but I don't seem to have any problem with over-abundant and awkwardly constructed parenthetical phrases nor does it bother me that I have a tendency to use lots of sentence fragments (for example, the above "Unless I'm worried that I'm using a non-word."). Sure, I could write it correctly, but I like how it sounds. It sounds like it's coming right out of my head. Which it is. Maybe my blog is meant to be read aloud? Okay, that's the end of spellchecker and standard grammar pondering. Aren't you wildly tempted to fill me in on all the terrible errors I've made in this post now? =P

Last but not least, and possible the most coherent of everything in this post, a meme! Susan tagged me for this one, and it seemed fun and easy, so here it goes!

The Rules:

1) Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2) Open the book to page 123
3) Find the fifth sentence
4) Post the next three sentences
5) Tag five people

Well, there are a couple of books sitting near me. I hesisitate to spring some painful image from Schindler's List on people without due warning, so I'm going to use my mom's current read: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.

She was twelve years old, lying still like this, waiting, shivering in the narrow bunk with polished mahogany sides. Her mind was a blank, she felt she was in disgrace. After a two-day crossing, they were once more in the calm of Carteret harbor, south of Cherbourg.

I'm going to break the fifth rule and not tag any specific people, but it's a fun and easy little meme, so if you haven't done it yet, I invite you to do so!

Some of us read, some of us just buy books....

Today was a lovely fall day, and I spent it shopping. There was a small library book sale this morning, and I can never seem to resist uh.... supporting the library. Who doesn't love to pick up wish list books at the paltry sum of 50 cents a piece? I got 10, and my mom got 5 or 6...two of which piqued my interest, which is always good since we tend to make our book collection almost entirely shared. After that we headed off to Muncy to partake in a tasty coffee drink at the Seattle's Best at Borders (where I - much to my credit - didn't buy any more books), to scout out some Life Is Good clothes on sale (which is almost as common as pigs flying or hell freezing over - so naturally this endeavor failed), and to swing by the consumerist fantasy (or is it nightmare?) that is Sam's Club to buy chicken in bulk. Adding to the excitement was a moment of terror wrought by my dad's locking the keys in the car. Luckily, with a shout of "Don't panic! It's no big deal!" I was able to save the day with the help of my cell phone and my AAA card. Definitely getting my money's worth out of that one.

And now, the important stuff. A brief rundown of my most recent book acquisition...

Strange Fits of Passion - Anita Shreve
Go Ask Alice - Anonymous
Until I Find You - John Irving
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel - Louise Murphy (a duplicate copy for my permanent collection. Yay!)
The Best of Friends - Sara James and Ginger Mauney
Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin
Second Glance - Jodi Picoult
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison
A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray
The Mercy of Thin Air - Ronlyn Domingue
The Art of Mending - Elizabeth Berg

In other news, I'm pretty inspired by all the folks doing the 24 hour readathon and plan on stopping by and doing some unofficial cheerleading. I love to read, but 24 hours is quite the committment! Nonetheless, they're all making me think that I could be doing a great deal more of reading than I am - even if it's far shorter than 24 hours in a row. I have the attention span of a flea these days and seem to always be able to find an excuse to not read, which is a crying shame considering I do get such enjoyment out of it. So here's to reading! You can see what the readathon is all about and go visit the participants here.

Books Read in 2013

Books Read in 2013

January

1. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (388)
2. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (305) (E)
3. The Lost Art of Mixing by Erica Bauermeister (272)

February

4. Indiscretion by Charles Dubow (386)
*5. The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin (416)
*6. The Grave of God's Daughter by Brett Ellen Block (289)

March

7. Come In and Cover Me by Gin Phillips (342)
*8. Angelfall by Susan Ee (284) (E)
9. The House Girl by Tara Conklin (368)
10. Loving the Way Jesus Loves by Phil Ryken (190)

April

11. A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty (384)
12. The Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton (238)
13. Every Day by David Levithan (336) (E)

May

14. Shakespeare Saved My Life by Laura Bates (289)
15. The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson (261)

June

*16. World War Z by Max Brooks (342)
17. The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag (304)
*18. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (336) 

July

19. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (178)
20. The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan (426)

August

21. Rutherford Park by Elizabeth Cooke (324)
22. Stargazey Point by Shelley Noble (373)
*23. Brewster by Mark Slouka (281)

September

24. Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman by Minka Pradelski (226)
*25. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (335)
26. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black (432) (E)
27. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (221)

October

28. Sanctuary Line by Jane Urquhart (226)
29. Clarity by Kim Harrington (244) (E)
30. The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen (425)

November

31. The Whole Golden World by Kristina Riggle (419)
*32. Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden (221)
33. Paperboy by Tony Macaulay (288) (E)

December

*34. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (550)
*35. I Shall Be Near to You by Erin Lindsay McCabe (297)