Loose Leafing: A Friendship in Bad Selfies

In case you missed the post where I guiltily admitted that if I didn't have the time to write up two or three posts on a weekend, the blog would almost surely go dark for a week, you've just seen it.  Or, wait, maybe you just didn't see it.  I didn't have time to amuse you with my bookish ramblings last week because I was busy catching up with an old friend who came to visit for the weekend.

 That's her (and me) at Walden Pond.

Methinks Thoreau would probably not be impressed.

With this friend, our relationship may be primarily defined by our penchant for taking ridiculous selfies.  I don't remember exactly when it started, but I know it started before "selfie" was made into a legitimate term.  We referred to them as the much clunkier "self-taking photographs." It could have started when I visited her when she was abroad in London while we were both in college.  We took a scenic and also hilarious bus tour through the Scottish Highlands and alienated most of our tour group by being irritatingly reclusive and refusing any and all well-intentioned offers from others to take our picture, instead favoring the juvenile inclination to take selfie "thug shots" at any and all historic landmarks.

Rockin' the porch couch is almost as scary as the future.

Whether it started there or not, I have a fine catalog of ridiculous photos of her and I with lots of chins making stupid faces.  There's the one where we're sitting on my family's discarded loveseat on my front porch in our graduation caps looking intentionally terrified either of the future or of what big hicks we looked like during that brief window of time when we had a "porch couch" to sit on. There's a winner from Thanksgiving where one of us is "drinking" out of the gravy boat.  We even went through a lengthy phase in which we would buy a disposable camera and take ourselves to a nearby amusement park where we would take selfies and crazy shots of each other on various rides.  Secure your loose items?  I think not!  Ergo, I have some fantastic pictures where we look utterly terrified by going through the train tunnel, a backwards taken shot of me being splashed on the log flume, and one of my personal favorites, a shot from the Great Bear at Hersheypark where I'm grinning like an idiot, and the location of the cloud behind me clearly shows that I'm upside down in the sky.  All this even before those great cameras that "officially" take your pictures on all the rides.

 She is a selfie taking professional from way back.

We proved this weekend that it doesn't matter how old you get or how many years its been since you rode a particular roller coaster, when you're a cheeseball like us, you never forget where the camera is, and you definitely don't forget to pose for it.  This past weekend, the first time on the coaster we both spontaneously yanked ourselves from average roller coaster enjoyment to give an enthusiastic thumbs up as we zoomed under the camera. The second time we planned a little better, and that shot elicited the rarest of instances.  We bought the picture instead of just giggling at it on the display screen.  Observe:

 Disclaimer: My face doesn't really look like that...

Usually.

I hope you laughed.  I worked hard on perfecting that look.  It even got some laughs from the guy who was sitting behind us.

Here's a few other highlights from our weekend adventuring.

There's the cute one from the train...

Aww!

 ...and also the one where I look like a scared photo-bombing phantom.

Ahhh!

There's one thing you can say for Crystal and me - for better or worse, we'll always have stupid selfies!

Do you and your friends have any goofy traditions?  

Where've You Been?: The April Edition

Some people post reading recaps every month.   Mine would be awful short, so I've decided to replace my reading recaps with excuses for why I haven't been blogging or reading enough, with verbs!

Adjusting - To this new job.  I used to have a job where I spent a lot of the day walking.  Now I have a computery desk job.  This makes me unlikely to want to spend my evenings with another computer.  Also, it makes me fat from sitting at a desk all day.  With that in mind, it's not surprising that I've joined my new co-workers on their daily lunch walks that get me up and moving away from my desk and burning off a few calories.  The bad news is, when you spend your lunch breaks walking, a good half hour of reading time disappears from your day.

Reading - Occasionally.  LOL.  No, seriously, though.  April wasn't a total wash of a reading month for me.  I did finish The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood  and Ender's Game for the book club that I very occasionally join.  The Wicked Girls was good, and so was Ender's Game.  I'd been meaning to read Ender for quite a while, so it was good to get that final push to pick it up.  I also read a big chunk of Five Days at Memorial which I have been anticipating and avoiding in equal measure.  Finally, this time when I chose it at random, I didn't say, "Argh, non-fiction, I don't think I can!"  I actually picked it up and gave it a shot.  It's compelling but also jaw-droppingly depressing.

Spending - A great day in NYC with a bunch of friends!

Freezing -  Seriously, the cold weather just won't quit.  My dad got us 5 game "season" tickets for a minor league baseball team in our area, but you have to use one set of tickets each month of the season.  We had fun eating overpriced ballpark food and clowning around with the mascot, but let me tell you something is really lost in watching baseball when it's like 45 degrees and windy out.  Brrrrrr.

Cheering -  For the 24 Hour Readathon.  I totally missed the under-publicized deadline for signing up to cheer, but that didn't stop me, I went "rogue" instead and had a great time cheering for the ridiculous amount of people that were signed up this time around.  However, having missed the official deadline, it kind of sucked because I had to go back to using the sign-up linky to find blogs to cheer for, and lots of people signed up and didn't participate or participated by Tumblr.  Is there a way to cheer for Tumblr users?  I mean, I'm pretty clueless about Tumblr, so maybe there is a simple way, but I couldn't find it and, unfortunately, couldn't cheer for those folks.  However, I did make up a great rhyme or two to cheer Readathonners on Twitter, and seriously, I had a ton of fun.  Thanks to Andi and Heather for not just keeping the event going but working to make it even better every time!

Crying -  Over Patchy.  One of our "stray" cat colony that is never quite stray enough.  Almost exactly a year after his brother went missing, Patchy got hit by a car.  You never quite feel like you did enough to help the cats you didn't mean to pseudo-own, but you can't figure out how you could have done more under the circumstances and the whole thing ends up in a morass of a sadness and mostly undeserved guilt.  The moral of the story?  Save another animal lover some heartbreak.  Adopt a cat, and get it fixed so it won't make lots of other (homeless) cats that some poor sucker won't want to watch starve and will feed and love and be heartbroken over when they can't take it in because they already have a zillion cats and the inevitable occurs.  :'-(

Celebrating -  It's birthday season for my family.  April is littered with birthdays here on the ranch.  My mom, dad, and two aunts all celebrate this month.  It's a month full of cake and cards stuffed with cash which is fun but hard on the ever-fattening recent desk job convert and those with ailing bank accounts. 

Planning -  To start blogging again.  For real.  But here's the thing, I've decided not to let myself start until I have a good stockpile of posts to schedule out.  I'm shooting for eight.  Counting this one, I have about three whole and four halves done.  Wish me luck - I do miss this blogging thing!

That's what I've been doing.  What have you been up to?

Loose Leafing: New Year Do-Over?

Let's see, it's January 26th and the temperature outside is a balmy 31 degrees Fahrenheit.   These facts mean two things.  I've gone approximately 26 days (the whole year thus far) with nary a blog post, and we're having a freaking heat wave.  We started and continued this year in a deep freeze to which I'm sure many of you reading can relate considering that much of the U.S. seems to have been afflicted with an unusually cold winter so far.  I can't stand the cold or the snow, and the extreme cold had plunged me into my "midwinter misery" stage before I could squeeze in the "new year, better me!" stage.  I've always said that I'd rather sweat than freeze, and it's proving to be that much truer this winter when it seems like it's so cold, it's hard to just live much less be happy, or dig into the daunting task of self-improvement.

Instead of reading more books, writing more blog posts, getting new jobs, eating less food, and getting in shape; I have been chattering my teeth, watching a ludicrous amount of football for someone who is more or less disinterested in football, and falling into a serious reading funk.  In fact, only just this week did I manage to actually finish my first book of the year.  By rights, there are two on my list, but the first one I read most of last year.  The first victim of my reading funk was a blog tour book that I read about a hundred pages of and discarded, which was followed by another book randomly chosen from my own stacks which I, again, read about a hundred pages of and discarded.  On one hand, this is a good thing.  I'm getting more discerning and not finishing the books that it's a pretty good bet I'm not going to love.  On the other hand, being so "meh" about a book that you invest a hundred pages worth of time into it and then realize you couldn't care less about what happens does not exactly lead to the warm fuzzies.

Happily, however, I finally bumbled my sad reading self into Mandy Retzlaff's One Hundred and Four Horses, a heartwarming, heartbreaking memoir of rescuing a herd of horses from Robert Mugabe's increasingly hostile Zimbabwe, and the funk was finally busted.  Here's hoping I manage to churn out a full review of this book because I really very much liked it.  I've since moved on to a book Random.org helpfully chose from my stacks, Falling Under by Danielle Younge-Ullman.  I was doubtful at first, but it's got its hooks in me now for sure, and I've been steadily devouring it this weekend.  Hopefully this one will help me put the reading funk firmly in the rearview.

This week offered an interesting occurrence in that while I was busy sucking at life and reading and everything, I unwittingly became the local poster child for shopping at the library's used book sale.  I mean, in the back of my mind I knew the local newspaper had a photographer roaming around, but surely he wouldn't take a picture of me, right?  Uh, wrong.

So, there I am, all dressed up in my blue "Property of HCSC" scrubs with mismatching red ancient Old Navy shirt looking all hyper-focused on my book nerdery, in full color in the local newspaper.  As much as I truly loath having my photo taken and don't think too much off this photo, either, I have to admit it's kind of fitting.  I mean, I kind of am the poster child for buying used books from local libraries.  Now it's just more official-ish. 

What?  You're wondering what delightful tomes are in my hands in that very picture?  Don't worry, I won't hold out on you.  Here they are!

(And if you're having trouble decoding the titles in the mildly abysmal iPhone photo that had to suffice because of the household-wide shortage of AA batteries or the Megan-wide shortage of energy to find the damn things, here's the list!)

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover
Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg
Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead
One Moment, One Morning by Sarah Rayner
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation Vol. II (Oops, I thought it was volume I when I picked it up.)
The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Also, I was kind of in a hurry, so I totally picked up several duplicates of things I already had and that copy of the wrong volume of Octavian Nothing, so despite my poster-child status, this was not exactly my best book sale performance.  Nonetheless, I think I still picked some winners while achieving extremely limited fame.

Despite the improvements brought about this week, I'm thinking of striking January from the record and trying to get back to "new year, better me!" when the month turns over into February.  Then I can stop being sad that everyone is reading great books without me and losing lots of pounds while I get fatter and attempt to hibernate until the temperature tops 40 degrees.  Here's hoping this year can be "rebooted" and I'll come back to my blog a healthier, happier reader in February (or, if the fates allow, sooner)!

Loose Leafing: In Which I Love All the Things

Time:  5:35 p.m.  (And it's full dark!  The horror!)

Place:  Hunched over my desk (because my desk chair is the suck)

Eating: Low-fat string cheese (because the popcorn and candy at the movies wasn't quite enough).  But forget Sunday evening's sad string cheese and let's think back to yesterday evening when I went out with friends to a local fancy pantsy restaurant, Seasons on Main, where I splurged on a several course meal that included a perfectly done New York Strip steak and possibly the most delectable salted caramel cheesecake ever.  Extra points because it was such  a well-paced eating experience that I didn't even feel like I was going to pop by the end.  I could get into this fine dining stuff.  If my paycheck were bigger. 

Bored by:  How whenever I manage to write a blog post it's boring old book review (hence this imaginative post)

Watching:  Just came back from the movies where I wept my way through the end of About Time which I enjoyed absurdly much.  But don't you hate it when a movie makes you cry at the the theater?  Because you can't cry as much as you want to and you're embarrassed about crying as much as you did.  And I will watch it again sometime when I can cry as much as I very well desire. 

Reading:  For all my boredom with writing book reviews, I am really into reading books this year (said the book blogger, much to your shock, I'm sure).  I just finished and enjoyed Kristina Riggle's The Whole Golden World this week, and Random.org has since helpfully chosen Molly Fox's Birthday from shelf obscurity for my weekend reading, and despite the fact that it has no chapter breaks, which I usually find loathsome, I'm liking it very much.

Starting:  To explore using Good Reads.  I know I'm so late to the party, and judging from my experience so far, I'll always be a LibraryThing girl at heart, but I'm open to trying new things.  I think this is me should you want to befriend me.  Also, I'm finding the whole thing mildly perplexing and somewhat disorganized, so if you wanted to give me some tips and tricks and assorted supercool things to be done with Good Reads (that I'm probably missing) in the comments, please do, so I can stop feeling like a super-moron. You could also easily dissuade me from using it at all, if you're more that sort of person. ;-)

Promoting: The Literary Fiction Giveaway Blog Hop at Leeswammes' Blog.  I'm a total literary fiction nut, so I'm always excited to see what everyone's giving away and enter a few, too.  Someday, if I ever stop being a somewhat suckish blogger, I'm going to join up and give something away because I love it so much and I ought to give back even though I find giveaways to be a distasteful amount of work.  So much the more love I have for all you lit fiction bloggers who are giving away cool stuff!

Joining:  Agh, this week I joined the gym.  Okay, well not quite, but I purchased a half price 6 month membership voucher for the purpose of joining the gym.  My health insurance is supposed to reimburse me $100 toward it which will make it a mere $35 out of my own pocket which is just about the top of the range of money I would consider spending on a gym membership what with how I'm not a hundred percent sure I'll actually um, go, and get fit and all that.  Now that I've bought it, I'm rather a bit terrified about the whole endeavor what with how I've never joined a gym and am uncertain about working out in the presence of hordes of people.  Plus, I'll probably injure myself within the first few days.  *paces nervously*

Surpassing:  My total books read last year (already)!  You will be more impressed by this if I don't tell you the paltry amount of books I read last year.  Otherwise, you'll slap a pitying look on your face, shake your virtual head, and pat me on my virtual head in the patronizing way of someone who surpassed my total books read last year in, um....February.  Not that you'd ever really do that, but I fear you'd be sorely tempted if I were to divulge such information.

Dreading: The coming work week.  Last week was one of those weeks that I would have danced/skipped/shouted for joy my way down the hall by the end of my shift on Friday evening....if I only would have had a shred of energy left for such behavior.  Instead, I forgot where I parked my car, got off the shuttle bus two stops early, was vaguely humiliated, and walked the other mile or so to my car in the dark in a howling wind.  Yeah, can't wait to get back to work again.

And, I think that's all I have to say on the subject of this week. 

What are you up to this fine Sunday? 

Leafing Lessons #2: Embracing Your New E-reader

After the success of last week's "class" on more purposeless reading, I've decided I might just as well keep preaching my various and arcane bookish lessons at you.  It's far more easy and entertaining than doing the practical work of, you know, reviewing books I've read.  This week we'll delve into how to love your new e-reader, the gadget that maybe you thought you'd never have much less actually enjoy having.

Disclaimer:  It is possible, nay, highly likely that you will find little to no useful advice in this post, but with any luck, you will be mildly entertained.

Further disclaiming:  Once again we're enjoying frenetic changes of point of view in which the words "I" and "you" both pretty much refer to me as I give sage advice make excuses for my odd bookish behavior.  But maybe also actually you, too!  Carry on being perplexed. It's all part of the fun.

• Buy Cheap Ebooks.  Download free ones.  It's fun, it's easy, and very often, I've found, you can come by unexpectedly excellent reads on the cheap.  Deals abound - I heart Daily Cheap Reads and also when April at Good Books and Good Wine writes up her Fill Your Kindle posts.  Also, you can get lots of classics for free and then read them in a font size that won't cripple your eyesight forever. 

• Um, then read some of those books.  Sure the little cover pictures are fun to look at, but once in awhile it might befit you to read some of those excellent and exciting books taking up residence on that book buying device of yours.  Ask me how I know.

• Let not your conscience trouble you about your fresh ebook obsession.  Do you feel like a poop for holding out so long on getting an ereader only to quickly dismiss all your objections to abandoning the paper books of your youth for their e-cousins?  Fret not, just open your wallet a little wider and buy all the books, paper and plastic (?) alike!  Extra points for buying the e-book version of the paper book you already have, and vice versa, of course.  Is your obsessive tracking of the Kindle Daily Deal and the monthly $3.99 and under specials making you feel like a nutcase because you actually wake up early on the first of the month to see what new treasures await?  Additionally, do you feel occasional guilt for feeding the Amazon machine? Fear not, any money spent on books and any excitement felt about books is never wasted.  Also, everybody knows you're a nutcase already.  Just go with it.

• Slurp up a few "Read It Now" selections on NetGalley.  All the fun of reading and reviewing e-galleys before they're available to the public without that unpleasant fear of rejection or that vaguely disgusting feeling of selling yourself to publishers by talking about how you are universally loved (or, uh, not) across sixteen types of social media where you post insightful content (or, ummm, not) with stunning, nearing on robotic regularity (or...well...not). Maybe you can work up to requesting books later,  when your self-esteem has increased, and after you're caught up with all the paper ones.  Quit laughing.  I can catch up any time I want.  If I quit my job...and sleeping...and eating...  Wait, I can read and eat at the same time.  Put eating back on the menu.

• Revel in being able to turn pages with no more than your pinkie knuckle.  Do you have a serious need to peel and eat an orange but can't bear to put your book down long enough to do it?  Now you can! Just make sure you don't get any juice on your pinkie knuckle or you might find yourself trying to "turn pages" with your markedly less dexterous elbow which is mildly more challenging.

• Get in the Cloud.  And welcome to the 21st century where you can sync your reading across six different devices (or whatever) that are about 74.5555% smarter than even you can contemplate.  I mean, I've got no great love of reading books on my iPhone, but it feels good knowing that if I'm stuck waiting somewhere without a book with me (horrors!), my trusty Kindle App can save my foolish @$$ from certain boredom unless I've fallen into a scary 3G dead zone. 

• Find excuses to travel.  Then when you say things like, "I only got this thing so when I travel I don't have to lug around my weight in books just so I'll have an appropriate amount of reading options while away from home," it will no longer be total crap.  And you get to travel.  Without any lasting damage to your spinal cord.

• E-books?  Ebooks?   Are you bewildered by whether you need to use that pesky dash between your "e" and books or reader?  Me too.  You should probably use a mixture of the two and hope no one notices.  Extra points for then drawing attention to the already obvious fact that you are a dolt. 

This post brought to you by my Christmas Kindle Paperwhite, an obsession I never thought I'd have.

Now, if you wanted to recommend a few more sites where I might find decent ebooks on the cheap, that would totally not be enabling me.  That would just be a really nice thing for you to do.  Just saying.

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: The Lost Hour

 

Ah, the time change has flickered by us once again, sprinkling bonus hours on whom it will, but I am still thinking about my lost hour.  Something about the time change makes the truth of my hour that may well be lost forever come crashing home to roost again.  What?  I haven't told you the story of the lost hour?  Surely, you must be the only one I haven't told. 

You see, once upon a time when I was but a college student, which I would like to think was recently but is growing ever further distant, I went to England for spring break.  Spring break in England, you say?  I know, it's not very tropical and not very stereotypically spring break, but I've never been super crazy about the beach, and the party scene is not for me, so what better time to visit my studying abroad best friend than spring break?

I toured some of London and some of Scotland and had the time of my life little knowing that an hour of my life would soon be robbed from me.  You see, apparently, and much to my surprise for some reason, the whole daylight savings time switch doesn't always happen concurrently between countries.  As it so happened, when I was in the UK the time changed, and the next weekend when I'd gotten home again, we sprang forward again.  Normally, you can console yourself with the loss of your springtime hour with the promise of getting said hour back again in the fall, not so with the extra hour you lost while springing ahead twice. 

And can I just say how great it is to deal with jet lag and the loss of an hour?  Not to mention, the pain of sitting squashed up in your middle seat between strangers on the plane ride home (where the time change has not yet occurred) not knowing what in the heck time it really is anywhere so having no way to gauge whether you'll have to play Dr. Mario on your Virgin Atlantic seat screen for only two more hours or whether it will be a whole three before your plane cruises into the gate at Newark.  Not that there's anything wrong with Dr. Mario, I find Dr. Mario to be an extremely enjoyable way to fritter away hours and was delighted to discover it available on my flight.  In fact, I find Dr. Mario so enjoyable and diverting that I almost feel sad for those of you who are thinking, at this moment, "What is she talking about?  Is something wrong with her?"  "Her" of course meaning me, but I digress. 

Most people in my neck of the woods are happy and grateful for that glorious extra hour of sleep this weekend afforded, and I'll admit to some passing joy in it, too.  I'm still a glass half empty kind of a girl, though, and every time we change the clocks I'm reminded of that silly hour that I misplaced between countries that I'll never get back in the fall.

Anybody else ever been a victim from this sneaky thief of time?  And just exactly how obvious is it that I am just now avoiding the pile of books beside me that wants reviewing?  ;-)

Loose Leafing: All Good Things

Hola, everyone!  I have bad news, and I have good news.  The bad news, my wrists have been hurting me something fierce and making it hard to both work and blog.  Since my blog doesn't pay the bills, I've unfortunately forced to give most of my wrist endurance to my job, hence my missing the BBAW festivities of yesterweek and other assorted blogging.  The good news is, my poor, afflicted wrists seem to be getting their groove back, and I have returned to my oft neglected blog again.  (Hi, blog!)  The other bad news is I have to work more hours than normal this week, which doesn't leave an awful lot of time for my triumphant return to blogging, but I'm working with the time I've got, and I'm happy to say I've been making lemonade of my lemons lately and mostly enjoying life despite the working and the wrist problems.

For example, I've been reading and really enjoying it.  I liked The Stand, but I've gotta say, reading it all summer really started to feel like work.  It's been nice to actually start and finish a few books.  First, I read Glass Boys by Nicole Lundrigan for a blog tour.  I was a little nervous about it at first, but I'm pretty sure that for the moment, it's my favorite book of the year!  (P.S. There's still a little time to enter my giveaway for the book if you haven't yet.  Have I mentioned how great it is?).  Then I read The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia Harman and really enjoyed that one, too.  Review to come.  For my current read, I randomly chose a book from my shelves (my shelves!  I remember them, there are various and sundry great books there that are even more neglected than my blog!  Horrors!) and ended up with Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg which is the type of memoir Augusten Burroughs made famous.  A train wreck memoir, if you will, wherein you are frankly disturbed by the things you're reading, but it's well-written and you can't seem to look away.  After that, I think I'll be ready to tackle Broken Harbor by Tana French which has been patiently waiting for me. 

In between all the reading, I have been enjoying an annual trip to Hersheypark with my younger cousin.  We are the only children of our respective families, and he's kind of like my fake little brother that I don't spend quite enough time with for him to be annoying to me like a real little brother, so I've been pleased to make our Hershey trip an annual tradition so neither of us have to be the "single riders" that have to load in the middle of the roller coaster trains.  ;-)  Yesterday we even (accidentally) dressed alike in bright yellow/green shirts, shorts/pants with many pockets, and grey shoes.  We rode almost all the roller coasters, him being much more daring than I was at his age (thankfully), and purchased an outlandish amount of chocolate, and I plan to be irritated for only a little while longer that I had to pay $12 simply to park my car.  Twelve dollars!  That new roller coaster must have cost them a fortune (which was totally worth it - we rode it twice!) for them to be going in for this kind of highway robbery.  Ah, but don't they know that if they charge me like four fewer dollars to park, I will then buy that much more chocolate and they still get all my money anyway, without my having to tell everyone I know how I've been so wronged.  Less parking, more chocolate!  Do you think I could get people to picket with me?  Make Kisses, not dollars!  (Um, I'll keep my day job.)

While not reading/riding roller coasters/complaining about things I have no control over, I've been pleased to watch the Bloomsburg fairgrounds being populated with all sorts of rides and food stands and awesomeness.  The last week of the month our little town plays host to the biggest fair (I'm told) in Pennsylvania.  Last year, our town played host to the biggest flood of the Susquehanna River in a century, causing the cancellation of the fair, so I am looking forward to it twice as much which is a really really really lot.  I am super-stoked that next week at this time I could very well be stuffing my face with the many delicious deep-fried things (if I am not already full of delicious deep-fried things and sitting at home contemplating my clogging arteries), ogling the largest pumpkin in the tri-county area, and hopefully winning the candy game or a gold fish or a big stuffed animal or something.  People around here live for the fair, and so do I! 

So, how's life in your neck of the woods?  Have I been missing anything exciting (excepting the obvious) during my temporary vacation from the blogosphere?

Loose Leafing: Vampire Batty

Funny story.  I set out at the beginning of this year to stay up on my reviews, and I, um, actually have.  In theory, this is a really great thing.  It's a good goal and one I'm surprised I'm staying on top of so far despite the chaos of life.  *knocks on wood*  I feel oddly insecure, though, because I'm now faced with the prospect of not having a review for next week of a book that I've read any time in the recent past.  Ah, the nerve-wracking quandaries of the slow reader.  What's a girl to do?  I'm reading Lorna Landvik's Oh My Stars as fast as I can, which, of course, is not terribly fast, because I am me, aren't I?  It seems my only option, and one I'm reluctant to pursue is to review one of the ones that fell by the wayside last year that I only sort of remember but should really review anyway.  Or I could write a really random Loose Leafing post on totally unbookish things that really irritate me, like, for example, Wal-Mart.  It should be obvious by now what I've chosen, so consider yourself fairly warned.

I hate Wal-Mart.  Loathe it.  If I didn't live in West Nowhere, where Wal-Mart is one of only a few shopping options I would never go there.  Everything from the dementedly chaotic parking lot to the way both normal and abnormal people act when they shop there makes me nutty.  One time I went to Wal-Mart because it was on my way home and it's right by Panera which is convenient when you need a food reward for forcing yourself to go to Wal-Mart, and I got maybe three things.  Let's say, a box of crackers, a pack of gum, and a twelve pack of bottled water.  Okay, I'm not sure about the other two things, but there was definitely the pack of bottled water, which, you know, is kind of heavy.  Then I headed for the checkout where, because I have a problem being distracted by shiny things and chocolate, I paused for a moment to inspect some Cadbury Creme Eggs not quite up to the end of the line, but I was definitely present there and looking at the eggs while I waited for the checkout.  And some lady.  SOME LADY!  *ahem, excuse me* Some lady walks past me, and turns around, and I'm right there obviously waiting in line even though I wasn't right on top of the person in front of me.  So she's looking past me, and I'm staring back at her and thinking "What the heck is going on here?" when she ushers somebody with a full cart of stuff AROUND me and my 3 items without even so much as blinking while I clutched my Cadbury Creme Egg all agape-like.  A short line scout!  I stomped off loudly muttering things that probably shouldn't be said by a person running an errand on the way home from church to go to the self checkouts, which I also loathe, I mean, don't I pay more for stuff at your store so a person earning a paycheck can ring up my purchases?  I have a job, I don't want to do yours, too.  But I digress, the self checkout wouldn't scan my Cadbury Egg (Mmmm, chocolate shiny things!), so I left it behind in a fury, and that is pretty much an accurate representation of my entire Wal-Mart experience.

This brings me to the ultimate reason for this tirade. Being that Wal-Mart is what it is, on my daily commute home I often wonder why on earth are people willing to risk your life and theirs to cut you off across two lanes of traffic where you clearly have the right of way to get there?  It's Wal-Mart for pete's sake.  I might cut off people across FOUR lanes of traffic when I don't have the right of way to get AWAY from Wal-Mart, but to get IN?  This is a perpetual source rage frustration for me as I daily pass through the dread intersection and wonder why rational thought deserts people in the presence of Wal-Mart. 

As you may be able to tell, I'm having kind of an angry week.  So much so that one of my co-workers referred to me as a fragile butterfly, to which another replied, "more like a vampire bat" to uproarious laughter. 

That's not so bad right? Look, it's kind of cute!

Are you kidding?  Vampire bats are no laughing matter! 

Anyhow, I hope you don't mind my going on.  Really, I should be reading or else senseless diatribes like this might become the norm.  Horrors! 

I'm done ranting, but I have an important question for you before I ride off into the sunset. ;-) Do you have a smart phone or tablet or whatever upon which you play any of the "With Friends" games?  Words with Friends?  Hanging with Friends?  Scramble with Friends?  If you do, please look me up and play with me.  I'm tired of playing with the same old people, and I swear I won't afflict you with random rantings unless you like that sort of thing.  I'm Toadacious1 on all 3 if you want to find me, or you could leave your With Friends username in the comments and I'll find you!  (Dun dun dunnnnn.)

I'll be back soon with more bookish content, but until then, perhaps you have something you'd like to get off your chest about Wal-Mart?  Or anything that irritates you?  Like maybe this post?  Just kidding.  I hope.... 

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?

Pre-Thanksgiving Loose Leafing

Here it is, Loose Leafing take two, wherein I write about whatever I darn well feel like. Look for it to become a regular thing, because, well, I kind of like it. I've got pictures this time. Are we excited?


Choco-Turkey is ready for Thanksgiving. Are you?

It's hard to believe, I mean, really hard to believe that Thanksgiving is only days away and the holiday season is pretty much upon us. As far as I can tell, I've never been less ready. I'm usually a total Christmas nut, but I'm having a hard time wrangling myself into the mood for it despite the fact that I'm busy cramming my schedule full of Christmas-y activities. I got out my Christmas music this week when my new Glee Christmas Album came, but where I'm usually chomping at the bit for Christmas music, this year I'm kind of meh about even that. Here's hoping for some Christmas spirit, pronto!

In follow up from last time's Loose Leafing post, not only is the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree indeed taken from somebody's yard in a town across the river from where I live (10 minutes away tops), it also happens to have belonged to my mom's great aunt, which apparently I probably shouldn't admit to because in the interviews the family's done, they've made us all look like a pack of bumpkins. But, whatever, I'm totally famous by proxy now. You can have my autograph. For a small fee, of course. ;-)

I am getting excited about Thanksgiving though, especially with the arrival of Choco-Turkey. Choco-Turkey is, by far, the best of my family's newer holiday traditions. A couple years ago my parents and I were window shopping in a small local town and wandered into a Purity Candy store where we discovered that they make chocolate turkeys in all sizes. Obviously, when one sees a large chocolate turkey, one must have it, so we got one that year and have gotten one every year since. It drives my younger cousins crazy having to wait for someone to liberate Choco-Turkey from his wrap and chop him up into reasonably sized pieces, and with good reason, because Choco-Turkey is delicious.

Here's a sad, sad story. I can't wait for re-runs on TV. You see, I love TV too much, or at least my parents do, and since I live with them and am a sheep, I love it by default. During the summer months my mom mourns the loss of new TV episodes while I can barely contain my glee because, at last, I've got free time for other things, you know, like this reading and blogging stuff that I love so much. Each year, I am determined to add fewer shows to my TV watching plate which, this year in particular, has been a dismal failure. You see, there are too many good new shows that I just had to add to my already overflowing crop of old favorites. Now I'm hooked on Pan Am, Once Upon a Time, Revenge, and The New Girl in addition to all the old favorites - Castle, Criminal Minds, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, The Big Bang Theory, The Mentalist and more(!!). Yikes! So, yeah, I need a few holiday season re-runs to get my life back on track and my Christmas shopping done. What excellent TV shows are you into this season?



In reading news - I am actually managing to fit in some of that too (thank goodness for lunch breaks!) - I finished The Legacy by Katherine Webb which I think I actually appreciated more for my being a slow reader (for a change). I'm near to finishing Cameron Stracher's The Water Wars which is entertaining with a few drawbacks. In between, I've been shuffling in a story or two by various authors from The Chronicles of Harris Burdick based on Chris Van Allsburg's mysterious illustrations. The stories are deliciously fantastical and not to mention slightly off-center, and I'm much enjoying my brief interludes with them.

Now, I'll leave you with a picture of my cat because that's what all the cool bloggers do, right? It's not a particularly good picture, I swear my house isn't that sickening shade of yellow, though I'm sad to admit that the carpet unfortunately is. I took this picture through the banister rungs on the stairs where Merlin tries to attract some love and attention and (now) photo-ops from unwitting passers-by.


Here's Merlin. That's his "fat, dark, and catty (not to mention legless)" look.

Hope you all have a great week and a happy holiday (if you're celebrating on Thursday)!

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...?

BEA, Book Blogger Con, and Other Bad Excuses

Greetings, Blogosphere! Oh how I have been missing you!

You see, all winter, I did pretty much nothing but stay home and read and blog and read blogs. I even managed to form myself into a fairly consistent poster, if not a frequent one. Then April came, and I started doing things and making travel plans and the pace of life started to pick up. Then May came and the pace of life spun out of control and will probably continue to do so.

I finally decided that BEA and Book Blogger Con are indeed in the cards for me this year. I'm all registered up and ready to go. Okay, maybe not ready to go. Maybe in a planning fervor attempting to be ready to go. It's really not long now. I managed to totally luck out and now have two great roommates with a possible third to come.

Ironically, registering for BEA/BBC and all the plans that need making and the logistics that need working out make me into a terrible blogger. I've been so busy figuring what to do and who to see and when to see them and how to get there that I haven't had much time left for actual blogging. I'm sure I'll get back on my blogging horse. If not this week, then the week after, and if not that week then definitely after BEA. But trust me, I have not forgotten you, dear blogosphere, and I shall be back right after I finish dogsitting, planning travel to NYC and Boston, making caramel apples (ARGH!), trying to get a new job, having ginormous yard sales to raise a few extra bucks to pay for my travel extravaganza and so on.

That all said, if you're going to BEA and want to meet up for lunch or dinner or to wander the show floor together or some other enticing activity, please send me an e-mail at toadacious1 at yahoo dot com. I'm planning to be in NYC from around noon on Tuesday May 24th until around 1 on Friday the 27th, and I'd love to put some more faces with names. I fully intend to e-mail some people to twist their arms until they agree to hang out with me, but it seems the harder I try the more things are getting left until the last minute, so if you want a BEA buddy please don't hesitate to send me an e-mail, and we can skip the whole late in the game arm-twisting thing. ;-)

In other news, the book keeping me company this week that was from hell (the week, not the book!) has been Tabloid City by Pete Hamill. I'd heard that Hamill writes New York so well, and now I see that it's absolutely true. From what I've read so far, I'm eager to dig into Hamill's other books, many of which are languishing on my shelves. In terms of subject matter Tabloid City isn't exactly happy, but it's still probably been one of the best things about my week and a book that's getting me in that New York state of mind. Perfect timing!

I'm off to take my mom to the movies for Mother's Day shortly. Hope all you mommies are having a great Mother's Day!

Have a lovely day, all, and happy reading!

Readathon and Randomness

So, I guess all the plates I was juggling finally dropped and smashed. We all knew I couldn't maintain this guise of the consistent blogger forever, right? I'm that person who has the best of intentions to write one of those "be back soon" messages when I go on short vacations because I'm not the sort of person who has a nice backlog of schedule-able posts to regale you with while I'm driving about the nation. Unfortunately, I'm also the sort of person with a job and a penchant for leaving everything until the last minute and trying to frantically pack and prepare while still fitting in that musical episode of Grey's Anatomy. And the person who throws their wrist totally out of whack playing Wii table tennis causing an unexpected moratorium on extra-curricular typing.

So yeah, went on a wildly dysfunctional long weekend to DC with my family. Am back, having reflected (darkly) on the mud pit of the currently under renovation reflecting pool. The weekend was riddled with kicks in the head such as the hop on hop off bus tour that picked up at the wrong spot and never actually delivered you to the places where cherry blossoms were to be seen like it said it would, freak hail storms, and the above mentioned Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool mud pit. In moments of weakness, I was brought to texting and tweeting angry messages from the Lincoln Memorial steps like a sulky teenager, even though it's usually one of my favorite places. Nonetheless, my vacation for better or for worse has come to an uneventful end. My wrist has healed sufficiently that the sight of a computer keyboard doesn't give me the shakes anymore. That can only mean one thing. It's time to get back up on my blogging horse.



Luckily, while I have been crap at blogging, I've been fairly successful at reading fairly good books, so there will be reviews once I organize the massive pit of untamed reading material currently vomited all over my desk. In the meantime, you may have heard of this little thing called the 24 Hour Readathon that's coming up this Saturday. It's been a long time since I've even been home for a Readathon making it difficult to participate in the event I have such a soft spot for, so I figured I better not let the opportunity pass me by, and I finally signed up. I am A) not making a plan B) not buying special snacks, C) taking a mid-Readathon intermission for a Zumbathon (it's a day of "athons." What can I say?) after which I may or may not continue to read depending on the way the wind is blowing. I will however be reading and blogging and hopefully having tons of fun out and about in the blogosphere with the time I do have.

Hopefully my wrist holds up and I can get organized and back on track with some haste. I'll see ya during the Readathon, if not before. You are signed up, aren't you? ;-)

Saying Goodbye, Turning Over a New Leaf, and Other Bookish Randomness

It's Sunday, and I've been stocking up on some bookish randomness all week long. A blogger who, you know, stays home once in a while and writes some posts would perhaps divide this all up and write lots of little posts, but you know me, and I'm going to combine it all into one big one. You get a lot of bang for your buck here at Leafing Through Life. It's okay, you can thank me later.

First off, I was really saddened to hear of Brian Jacques' passing this week. Oftentimes when an author passes, their name is familiar to me, but their work is not, but I grew up with Jacques' Redwall series. They were among the first books I ever tried to get my parents to read because I was so taken with the stories of Redwall Abbey and it's characters. These books are brimful of action, adventure, love, valor, and a treasure trove of unforgettable animal characters not to mention epic feasts of the most delicious-sounding foods. Thankfully I fell behind in the series, so I've got a good many still left to read, but the world has lost a great storyteller in Brian Jacques. Matt London says it way better than I can in his Personal Reflection on Brian Jacques on Tor.com.


Consider yourself duly forewarned. I've done a goofy thing that I'm pretty sure I don't regret. I accepted a children's picture book for review. I wasn't going to. I didn't even mean to. I intended to politely refuse, but when I took a look at the cover photo of Peachtree Publishing's Three Hens and a Peacock I got all mushy inside and began whining to myself, "Aw, but I like picture books. I miss them, and it looks really pretty, and it will probably be all kinds of nostalgic fun even though people that read my blog will probably be all like wha??" So I took Emily from Peachtree up on her generous offer of a review copy and will (probably temporarily) be turning over a new leaf (a new leaf? Get it? LOL!) and reviewing it here. I'll post the review other places, too, so that it'll get more mileage than my likely limited children's book reading following here. But come on, look at it. Who could refuse a face like this?





Last but not least in my treasure chest of bookish randomness, are you using Edelweiss? If not and you're the kind of blogger/reader who's interested in finding out what's forthcoming from your favorite publishers, whyever not? A few weeks ago after a serendipitous moment on Twitter, I requested a demo of this online collection of publisher's catalogs. Joe Foster spent a half an hour or so showing me the ins and outs of using the site's many features to scope out forthcoming books, tag them for later reference, filtering the ones of interest, and so on (Thanks again, Joe!). Ever since, I've been gleefully perusing many publishers' spring/summer offerings, tagging books for Waiting on Wednesday posts, adding to my unwieldy wishlist, and using it as a reference point whenever I hear any stirrings of a new book by an author I like. I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg, though. If you're interested in what's upcoming, you should definitely be checking out Edelweiss. Need a little help figuring out how to use it? Check out Joe's excellent guest post at The Book Lady's Blog for the nuts and bolts and you'll be ogling exciting new books in no time.

That's all in bookish randomness for today. Hope your week is full of great books and many hours of great reading!

A Dose of Random Randomness #7

* Yesterday morning, instead of quickly cobbling together a Waiting on Wednesday post, I actually worked on writing a review. This is a step in the right direction, but uhm, yeah, another day slipped past with no post! I can't seem to shake my review writing funk. What do *you* do when you need to psych yourself up to write some reviews that have been waiting too long?

* Weirdness at work has been putting me into a funk and stealing my Christmas spirit. I've done a better job of shaking off the bad worky feelings this week, but jeez I have a lot of Christmas prep still to do that I was ignoring while sulking about my job situation for no especially good reason. We don't even have a tree yet! The good news is, I already bought a bunch of books for the holidays (for other people, not for me of course....LOL). The bad news is, that still leaves the hard task of thinking of less obvious Christmas gifts. ;-) What books are you giving this holiday season? I'd tell you mine, but then I might have to eat this post...

* I've set myself a goal to catch up with my backlogged LibraryThing Early Reviewer books. I've been very bad and let them pile up while I got distracted by newer and shinier things. I'm reading them shortest to longest thinking that should maximize results faster thus restoring me ever so quickly to LibraryThing good standing, but these things always backfire on me and tiny, short books mock me by not being fast reads. Oh well, I have the best of intentions...

* I won a #FridayReads giveaway on Twitter - definitely a fun surprise. If you're on Twitter and aren't tweeting what you're reading on Friday with the hash tag #fridayreads....why not? You get to tell the "world" what you're reading, and hey, who knows, maybe you'll win something, too.

* Series books with major cliffhangers make me crazy, especially considering I usually only have the first book of a series on hand until I read the first and decide if I like it. Let's just say, there's a few books I'm hoping to get for Christmas, too, but I wish it were sooner. On that note, I asked for The Hunger Games series, too, so I can stop being the last person on the earth (or at least the blogosphere) that hasn't read it. If someone gets them for me, that is.

* Why does the good, loyal dog always die (tragically) in stories? For that matter, why, in war movies especially, does that guy who dashes onto the battlefield to carry his wounded buddy back to safety always seem to die a terrible death? Whenever I see that guy dashing to the battlefield, I can't help but think, "Oh, there's another goner!" Loyalty and goodness don't really seem to come with the best rewards. Life lesson? Ugh, I hope not.

Sunday (Un)Salon: Bloggy McSlacker

This is the post where I warn you that I'll probably be indulging my inner (outer?) flaky, inconsistent blogger even more than usual for, well, probably the next month and some. I'm recovering from one of those weeks that I knew was going to be busy and was which was rapidly followed by one of those busy weeks that catches you totally by surprise. Which then segues into...Thanksgiving week? Thanksgiving already? Once I realized that, it dawned on me that my last non-busy week for the year had probably gone by without my even noticing.

The good news is, I'm still managing to read books at my same slow but steady pace resulting in my already reading the book that will make official my surpassing of last year's reading totals, which I am quite thrilled about last year's reading totals having been horribly (horribly!!) dismal. The bad news is that the time and energy for review writing has been considerably lacking and I've grown very behind again. I'm hoping that this week will offer up an opportunity or two to pick up the pieces, what with all the TV shows mostly going to reruns, but I promise nothing, given that the desire to sit down at the computer for any length of time after sitting at one all day is often absent. Plus, with the coming holiday, I'm sure this week is going to be busier than I'm expecting in my current optimistic view. Then come Christmas trees and shopping and assorted other holiday activities that will keep me (and you, too, I imagine) from having any of those delicious weekends where I can park myself in front of the laptop and churn out a few reviews at a time.

Now since I've regaled you with all my guilty excuses, how about the news in books? Last weekend I finished Gayle Forman's If I Stay, which, I was warned, would make me cry... a lot. I did cry, but not as much as I was expecting. I think all the warnings had me steeling myself a little for it, so my hardened heart wouldn't let me cry more than a time or two, thought I can see how there would have been many more opportunities for weeping had I not thus prepared myself. This week I'm reading, and hopefully finishing, Starting From Scratch by Susan Gilbert-Collins. I found it a little rough going at first, but it grew on me. I'm enjoying it, but I have the sense that it's only scratching the surface of things that could easily go much deeper. I feel like I end up saying that about a lot of the "family drama" set of books. I often think that maybe I should stop requesting or agreeing to review books that fall into that sort of niche, but then, when it's done well, I have the potential to like them so much.

In other news, my effort to stem the tide of incoming books is failing with flying colors. I'm not really buying books for myself (though I'm sure I'll be buying them as gifts!), but I haven't been able to resist requesting a few. Plus, now, of all times, I've gotten a few unsolicited copies to add to the burgeoning TBR pile. I've got it in my head now that I desperately need to finish off my backlog of LibraryThing Early Reviewer books that are none too early anymore, but that I am nonetheless obligated to read and review. I keep thinking that maybe if I get those done, everything won't seem so overwhelming. But who am I kidding?

This afternoon, I'm excited to be going to see the new Harry Potter movie. Have you seen it yet? Is it good?

What are you up to this weekend? Are the upcoming holidays getting you frazzled yet? ;-)

A Dose of Random Randomness #6

- I am within one book review of being caught up with the review backlog that's been dogging me, yet for some reason, I'm writing this instead. I mean, jeez, if I finished that one review, I'd have to find something else to feel inexplicably guilty about, and we can't have that now can we?

- You know what I hate that other people seem to love? Choosing my next book to read. There's nothing I loathe more than finishing a book on the weekend, when I do the bulk of my reading, only to be left wasting valuable minutes trying to choose the next book and get into the meat of the story before my precious reading time gets eaten up by the work week. Instead of being enthralled by the possibilities, I'm paralyzed by the choice. This may be one reason why I don't read that many books in a year, or well, really get anything much accomplished....

- I got a letter in the mail from the New Yorker customer service center a few weeks ago that kindly refers to me as a "preferred New Yorker subscriber," and then oh-so-helpfully assures me that my subscription will be automatically renewed, and I will shortly receive my invoice for $49.95. Apparently, being "preferred" translates to having your subscription renewed automatically without your permission at a rate of approximately $10 more than is offered on their website for new subscribers. Jeez, New Yorker, don't do me any favors. I think I'll just go back to being a lame, un-preferred subscriber...or perhaps not a subscriber at all.

- I suck at quitting book acquisition cold turkey, and not for lack of trying. Despite my efforts to keep books from darkening my door so I can try to get the ones I have under control, they continue to arrive. And then, I, um, lose control and request one or two or, um, three. But that's still okay because I could have easily requested ten or twenty, right? See, yeah. I suck. No wonder the TBR is beyond out of control.

- I have a problem with collecting books by authors who I think I'll like without ever reading one to make sure that I'll like it. Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Pete Hamill, the list goes on....and on. I've encountered a few other nuts like me who do this lately, but how about you? Do you follow this bizarre pattern of insanity? What authors are you just collecting? ;-)

A Dose of Random Randomness #6: The Post-Vacation Edition

- Yes, I went on a little vacation. I meant to tell you about it, but then I ran out of time what with all the packing and the preparing and my dog being sick and broken. Er, sorry. I was here...



- We rode the Metro, but we never changed lines at Metro Center *grumble, grumble.* We saw monuments and memorials, browsed museums, and watched the Yankees game at McGinty's (which is not really what people do there on a Saturday night while there is live entertainment, but hey, we really wanted to see the game). We even paid a visit to Kramerbooks where we browsed at length (my friend actually appreciates my book nerdy-ness!). (Un)Fortunately, I was able to behave myself and did not buy a book. It's an awesome place, though, and a place where I would eagerly buy lots of books if I were allowing myself to acquire books. (See below)

- That's because I've been contemplating one of those all-out book acquisition bans that I've never been able to bring myself to try before. My physical TBR is wildly out of control, and it's time I took some decisive action, and it may have to be to go off book acquiring cold turkey for a while. Maybe til the end of the year. Maybe longer. It definitely *should* be longer, but I don't know if I can force myself to do it longer. Getting books makes me happy, so not getting books could plunge me into a deep depression by Christmas, or uh, Thanksgiving. *sigh*

- This is the first time this year that I've been reading more than one book at a time. I'm about halfway through Deb Caletti's The Nature of Jade compliments of my BBC swag bag. I'm loving the animal behavior facts at the beginning of each chapter. But then when Operating Room Confidential by Paul Whang showed up in my mailbox for the Green Books Campaign a paragraph or two became a chapter and a chapter became half the book, and so I'm in the middle of that, too!

- I've only been to D.C. twice this year, but both (unintentionally) were during the 24 hour readathon. So bummed I missed it, but not bummed enough to miss out on a little vacation! I think I need to have my own lonely readathon and get some more books read. (See above about reducing the physical TBR)

- I have less than no interest in all those Pride and Prejudice sequels written by modern day authors, even the ones that everyone seems to love. Are there any types of books that even the most glowing reviews couldn't convince you to read?