Loose Leafing: Currently

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Day in the Life

Can you believe it?  I almost forgot that today Trish from Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity is throwing a blog event where we all see get to share a day in our lives with each other.  I'll admit, upon seeing her introductory post for the event, I thought, "That's so much fun!"  Followed shortly thereafter by, "Oh crap, a day in my life is soul crushingly boring!" 

That said, I don't want to be a "taker."  If I'm going to be a creepy voyeur into the other bloggers' days, the very least I can do is offer up one of my own.  I wish that I could think of a clever way to do this that would make my life seem, less, you know, soul-crushingly monotonous, but I cannot.  Alas, I am left to pick one soul-crusher among many. 

I guess I could pick this past Monday when my day started at 1 AM because I was still on call for work.  My department supports lab computer systems for rather a large rural Pennsylvania health system.  My job function is a step below IT, and it's a good job with great co-workers, but it definitely is as boring as it sounds.  Except for when you're on call and awake at 1 A.M. trying to solve a problem that could probably have waited until a decent hour, then you kind of wish it was more boring. 

So, on Monday, I rose but I did not shine at 1 AM, then went back to bed, then rose again around 4 AM, and then went back to bed again, and then rose yet once more to the sound of my pager's song (Say, are you doctor?  Why no, I'm actually a time traveling 90s drug dealer, thanks for asking.).  So by 7 AM I was already up for the day.  The end of my tenure on call was in sight (Hello 8 AM!), which was obviously like a siren call for all the unsolvable problems of the lab technology world.  I kept working until 10 AM trying to solve the unsolvable, even though my actual workday doesn't start until 1 PM, so that 8 to 10 AM window is really when I should be (and usually am) reading The Martian (or some other bookish equivalent) over a delicious and nutritious breakfast of either lower sugar oatmeal or cold cereal with chocolate in it (depending on just how healthy I think I can force myself to be on the given day).

Having sacrificed my reading hours to the cause, I shuffled my weary bones off to work with some disgruntlement. Especially, after witnessing my adorable little cat doing what cats do so well.  She's doing the same thing now.  Jerk.

Aww, so cute.  Still a jerk.

Working from work is way better than working from home, if you don't count the travel time, the ridiculous parking situation, and, you know, having to wear socially respectable clothing.  I mean, at work, I have two monitors instead of my tiny laptop screen, and there are also co-workers there who amuse me and take me for walks before I get the chance to inflict grievous head injuries upon myself while dealing with the support structure of a certain major lab information system.  What more could a person ask for, right?  So, there's the 8 or so hours of monotonous working punctuated by random emotional outbursts and profound disappointment when that thing you totally thought would fix somebody's problem totally doesn't, meaning you pretty much wasted a good half of your workday only to call someone up and disappoint them by admitting that, at the end of day, you haven't the foggiest clue about why they're getting that obstructive computer error. 

There it is, the workplace, about 15 construction projects ago.

Then, with all the satisfaction a starving person feels after gnawing a tree branch, the first post on-call workday draws to a close (not with a bang but a whimper), and I report home for...you guessed it...TV time!  Monday's feature of choice was Downton Abbey, of which I've recently become a fan (Behold the grammatical correctitude!  Punctuated with sentence fragments full of made up words in a badly placed parenthetical expression!  English teachers continue to spin in their graves with only the briefest of pauses!).  We're working our way through season two of Downton with the help of our newly purchased Amazon Fire TV stick which is, indeed, way better for TV reception/general entertainment than a seashell (thank you Fire Stick commercial!). 

After the token moment of TV, it's off to get ready for bed.  I, being a great multi-tasker (bwahahahaha!) use Monday night's getting ready for bed time to continue memorizing 1 Peter 2 for my Tuesday morning prayer group/Bible study.  Actually, I think the descriptor I was looking for above was "great procrastinator."  It's not like I didn't have a week to memorize.  It's just way more fun to memorize things while you're brushing your teeth and partly in a coma.  So, with Bible verses freshly committed to memory (hopefully), I stumble off to bed where I manage to read barely a page of the poor neglected Martian before the lost sleep of the night before returns to claim me and another day in the life is complete.

Ergo, so is this post.  Sorry there aren't more pictures, but master procrastinator that I am, I totally forgot to even write this until about noon yesterday.  Now you'd better hurry on over to Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity to have your soul re-inflated with some other blogger's day that is actually interesting. Thanks for tuning in!

Loose Leafing: Lately

Time/ 10:16 AM (Saturday, this is totally a scheduled post)

The Scene/ My book cluttered desk, flooded with sunlight that hasn't been making much of a regular appearance lately.

Awaiting/ My chiropractor appointment.  I'm starting to feel like my spine is curling inward like in all those reverse evolution photos with the monkey/man hunched over his computer, but it's probably more of a result of yesterday's brief bout of snow shoveling.

 
Foolishly hoping for/  A "real" snow storm.  Here in Northeast PA we keep getting glancing blows from nuisance snowstorms that clip us and then go on to dump real inches of snow elsewhere.  My crazed inner child, for some reason, cannot be dissuaded from craving at least one major snowstorm a winter, even if my outer adult (who works in a place that's in no danger of ever declaring a snow day) dreads having to deal with the snowy consequences.  Sounds like I might get my wish with the snow coming in tomorrow (er...today?), but it could totally still be a major bust.

Rooting/ For the Seahawks good commercials in the Super Bowl.  Okay, if I have to root for a team, it'll have to be the Seahawks, the lesser of two evils in my opinion, but I don't like either Super Bowl contender this year, especially not the Patriots who squashed my dad's beloved Colts.  Mostly, I'll be eating yummy food at my aunt's party and hoping to get some laughs out of the infamous Super Bowl commercials.

Grateful for/  Great books!  It's so refreshing to start out the year reading really good books.  Everybody, including myself, talks a big game about hitting the ground running in the New Year, reading more books, buying fewer books, writing about the books, enjoying the books, but I've had a hard time doing that the past few years because the books I kicked off my year with were, at best, mediocre.  Starting off your bright, shiny new year with a massive reading slump is hideously discouraging.

I'm happy to report that for the first time in a few years, I didn't ride into the New Year on a tide of fictional mediocrity.  As a result, it would seem, I've read double the amount of books I would read in a typical January, and it feels so good.  (Even if that double amount of books hardly puts a dent in the overwhelming book problem that exists at my house)

Reading/ Just finished Hillary Jordan's "dystopia for grown-ups," When She Woke, and loved it.  Now I'm getting started on Tom Cooper's tale of a collection of bayou miscreants on the hunt for lost pirate's treasure, The Marauders.  I'm closing in on the 50 page mark, but I'm still on the fence about this one.

Watching/ Just finished watching the History Channel's Sons of Liberty miniseries.  Sure, it's rife with historical inaccuracies and dialogue that would never have passed between the lips of the patriots.  That said, I liked the series.  If you're looking for a fact based documentary, look elsewhere, but if you're looking for an exciting re-telling of history (with a little more action and sexier patriots *ahem*) with enough truth about it to actually inspire people to be curious about the real story, Sons of Liberty is a good watch.

Dreading/ The bookshelf cull that will inevitably have to take place this year.  The books are overtaking everything.  It's time to say goodbye to some old friends that will probably never get read (by me), but oh how it pains me to send them off unread...

Eating/  Crispy M&Ms!  They're back!  Now if I could just have a nice snowstorm with a bag of Crispy M&Ms in hand, my inner child would have a total field day.

Failing/ To blog regularly.  Honestly, I've been busy reading.  Also, having a computer based job definitely does nothing to make you run gleefully to your computer after eight hours of computing.  That said, I've got a few great books to review this weekend, so hopefully I can turn this blogging ship around.

So, what have you been up to lately?  Kick the year off with any great books?

Currently: It's October?!?!?

It's too late on Sunday afternoon/evening for comfort, and I am coming to you more or less live from the wreckage of my overcluttered desk.

Listening\  To Train's new album, Bulletproof Picasso.  I became a colossal Train fan, like, two albums ago, and I continue to be.  The last track, Don't Grow Up So Fast, may or may not have made me cry.

Making\  Plans.  (Ha! No I haven't taken up knitting or cross-stitching or anything, and the world breathes a sigh of relief.)  I've been contemplating seeing Straight No Chaser on tour for a few years now.  Their a cappella awesomeness makes me smile.  They'll be in Hershey this year.  Maybe I will be, too?  I just need to find a some poor sucker to take with me.  In the meantime, I'll be serving as my dad's "poor sucker to take with me" as we make the journey to Pittsburgh to see the first NFL game I'll ever see in person, and his, too.  He's been an Indianapolis Colts fan for as long as I can remember and probably a lot longer than that.  So, we'll be a couple of Colts fans in hostile territory, but I'm looking forward to it anyway.

Hating\  Fall.  I know, I hate myself for hating fall, but I do.  You see crisp, colorful leaves.  You feel refreshing cooler temperatures.  Pumpkin spice lattes, bonfires, high school football games, hot cups of tea, reading books while wrapped in fuzzy blankets.  That stuff is all nice, don't get me wrong.  Unfortunately, I have to build a fort of distraction around myself to stop from fixating on the coming 6 months of undiagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder, not to mention cold and flu season which has already started at my house.  *sniffles*  All this potential misery amplified by my rapidly forthcoming shift change which will call for me to rearrange my life schedule right before the dreadful winter months set in.

Returning from\  The first of two October trips to Boston (see above re: Fort of Distraction).  My college BFF and I took Boston last weekend.  We stayed in a beautiful inn in Cambridge that served a full breakfast and afternoon tea everyday, wherein we were decidedly *not* the target demographic, which, okay, was awesome.  We stayed in a room with two twin beds like a 50s sitcom married couple and dined every morning in the presence of older couples from foreign countries with grown or semi-grown children living in the area.  We also rode the cool Greenway carousel and spent a rainy day observing penguins, seals, and sea turtles at the New England Aquarium to skew our age group back the other way.  We also, of course, ate lots of delicious food including the ubiquitous Mike's cannoli, went book shopping at Porter Square Books, paid a quick visit to my old neighborhood to enjoy some Indian food, and enjoyed the best entertainment the basement of a CVS has to offer at the Improv Asylum (hilarious!). 

Going to\  New York City for the day on a bus next Saturday.  It'll be my cousin's first time in said city, and I'm looking forward to showing him the sights, one of which will surely have to include The Strand, right?  I mean, you can only tolerate the top of the Empire State Building and Times Square for so long before you need to be soothed by vast amounts of books, am I right?

Missing\  Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon.  So sad to have booked something over it, but alas, I seem to be on tour this month.  I guess I'll have to read on the bus in honor of Dewey and all the dedicated participants. ;-)

Reading\  I just finished Allegiant thus wrapping up the Divergent series.  Roth definitely made an interesting choice about how to end her series.  I guess I didn't hate it with the vitriol that some people have, but, on the whole, I think the first book was the best and the series very slowly declined from there.  Nonetheless, I was kind of in a reading funk, so I'm satisfied to have simply finished a book that was moderately absorbing.  Now I'm on to The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood whose Wicked Girls I enjoyed earlier this year.  Lately, books written for grown-ups haven't really been working out for me, but I'm pretty sure The Killer will be the one to break that trend. 

Watching\  I finally saw The Fault in Our Stars movie.  It was good, but not as good as I wanted it to be.  Oddly, in text Green's main characters' precocious pretentiousness was the stuff dreams are made of, on screen, I'm afraid it all just irritated me the slightest bit.  Still good, still cried, but I don't know, something just wasn't quite right.  I also saw the movie version of This is Where I Leave You.  I haven't read the book because I'm seriously sucking at getting to the book before the movie lately, but the movie was great.  It was one of those that gets you laughing and crying at the same time (which is different from crying with laughter, if you must know), very well cast, and most satisfying. 

Blogging\  Wait...what's this blogging you speak of?  I haven't been, and I'm pretty sure I missed another blogiversary in there, too.  That means Leafing Through Life just (very unceromoniously) turned....7? Yeah, 7, I think.  I know this month has been kind of a bust because I've kind of been "on tour," but other than that I was happy to see my desire to blog come back for a lot of this year.  It's been fun being a part of things again, and I've pretty well sunk into the groove of blogging when I want, and not blogging when I don't feel like it, in a way that has been largely guilt free.  This, I'm pretty sure, is the mark of the mature B-list (okay, C-list) blogger. Expect more of this guilt-free slacker blogging to continue while I spend several more weekends away from my desk enjoying the last few weeks of passable weather before the SAD kicks in.

So, what have you been up to while I've been distracted?  Reading great books?  Having exciting adventures?  Blogging bookish content that isn't linked up to Top Ten Tuesday?  Tell me!

Loose Leafing: The Week That Sucked and Other Low Grade Horrors

Fair warning, this isn't going to be one of those warm, fuzzy gratitude posts.  You may have guessed this from the title.  Now, it's not a eulogy for a pet or a loved one or even my car, happily.  I mean, for sure, this week sucked, but it's sucking in a "you'll laugh about this later after you get a few good nights sleep and the extensive dental work you've been avoiding for years" kind of way.  It's sucking in such a way that may even be able to get you to laugh at me now despite my more less or less continuing low grade wretchedness.  So, here's the story of the week that was.  I mean, the week that sucked.  

 You look friendly enough, but I'm onto your game, Mr. Blood Drop

I let you drain my lifeblood, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt?   Okay, so.  I got this new job, and it so happens that one of my new co-workers is a somewhat crazed lunatic about getting people to donate their blood.  Working in a hospital, opportunities to be abducted by said co-worker and coerced into forfeiting my more valuable bodily fluids are numerous and unavoidable.  It seemed like a worthy, if vaguely terrifying thing to do, so I failed to "just say no" to this particular peer pressure.  Also, I'm thirty years old and have no idea what my blood type is, so what sane person wouldn't give up a pint of it to find out that little tidbit of information?  (I'm A+ if you were wondering.  Put that under your hat in case you might want to give me a kidney some day or something.  I'm kidding.  Or am I?) 

Anyhow, as was my great fear, I suck at giving blood.  All these fine folks dashing in on their lunch break, casting off a pint of blood, downing a cookie, and then off on their merry way just as right as rain?  I am not like those people.  I'm the sad sack that makes a scene by almost getting sick and almost passing out.  Sure everybody was really nice and nobody let me bonk my head on a sharp object and my co-worker, the closet "Donate life!" recruiter girl, kept me company for the overlong time I was there basking in my lightheadedness and vague sense of humiliation, but the experience was none too pleasant.  I hope those three people that can apparently benefit from my blood are enjoying it, because I'm kind of missing it, and the free t-shirt, comfy and oversized as it may be, is no pint of blood.

So, that Tuesday night I retired to my bed exhausted from the work of regenerating my lost pint of blood when along came my next adventure...

Close encounters of the bat kind.  Because who, when busy regenerating their lost vital bodily fluids, doesn't love to wake up at 2:30 AM to find a bat (!!) flying around their bedroom?  Okay, I'm generally not among the super easily frightened, but if the prospect of having a bat bodily collide with you while it's swooping unpredictably around your bedroom in the middle of the night doesn't drive you to scream and scramble into the bathroom where you slam the door and exhale as if you've just escaped being tortured by one of the sicker serial killers to grace Criminal Minds, what will?  (Actually escaping a sick serial killer, you say?  Oh pshaw).  So, here it is 2:30 in the morning...3:30 in the morning...bat has disappeared...but to where?  Three hours of sleep, combing every inch of my bedroom in search of the bat with the amount of tension usually reserved for turning the crank on one of those infernal jack-in-the-boxes, and no bat to be found = not a great way to recover from being a sucky blood donor.

Next night, repeat, only at 1:30 AM, and this time I figure I've discovered batty's entrance and exit point.  I jam the hole temporarily with old socks.  I take to Twitter at 2 AM to congratulate myself on a battle won and use up my stock of creative hash tags.  I am the winner!

 Don't look so smug, Twitter chump.

Next night.  Nope, I'm a big loser.  Discover the bat fluttering around my window before going to bed.  Feel bad about possibly killing him when he's probably really great at eating stupid bugs.  Pin him between inside window and outside screen, and talk my dad into pulling the screen up an inch so the bat can escape and do his batty thing in nature.  He does.  I find a creative use for rolls of pennies, which are decidedly more sturdy than old socks.  I may have won the bat battle, but I've lost the bat war.  Everything that moves startles me.  Awesome.

And in the meantime...

Oh HAAAIIILL no!   That's right, big freak hail storm decimates the expansive parking lots of my workplace.  This is even scarier when your employer ran out of real office space a few departments ago and you're gawking out the window of your office trailer during a tornado warning.  Golf ball to baseball sized hail fell from the sky for a frighteningly long time making my car look like this...

 When hailstones attack....

Thankfully, it didn't look like this (which a lot of people's did):

 ...they can be really big meanies.

But that doesn't mean I'll be spending any less time on the phone dealing with insurance claims.

In the mean meantime.   I have too many teeth.  And it's starting to become really, very unpleasant. The writing on the wall says, "Megan, you are about to become likethis with your dentist," and that is a prospect that frightens me (and my bank account) to no end. 

All that, and I just last evening finally committed the "meh" book I was reading to the DNF pile, and discovered (much too late) an e-mail about a giveaway win in my spam folder, so even books have not been able to suitably lift my spirits this week.

Anyhow, that's my week from hell.  How was your week?

Loose Leafing: Reviewing Books is Hard

Here we are on the first morning of the last month of the year, and despite the fact that I read at a glacial (Glacial, I tell you! But not as glacial as last year.  It must be the global warming.) pace, I am woefully behind on book reviews.  I have come to the conclusion that this is a result of a few things.  One, I work too much and too hard at my soul-sucking job (Did I say "soul-sucking"?  I mean busy, secure...okay, it's a mixed blessing).  Two, I never get any peace and quiet in which to assemble a few coherent thoughts and/or I am a big procrastinator that doesn't take adequate advantage of peace and quiet. 

And finally, three, book reviewing is just freaking hard.  Let me tell you why, in case you don't already know.  For starters, when you've been chipping away at your book blog for six years, everything you have to say starts to sound the same as everything you've already said...several times. (ETA: In case you were wondering, this is another one of those posts I like to write with the confused voice where "you" means me but maybe actually you too, and "I" is, well, also me...and still maybe you too?  Oh, well, you know what I mean or, um, I know what I mean. Huh.)  Also, you will find that not only do you feel like you've already described ten other books with the same words you're using to describe the current victim of your lack of writing prowess, you will find that you're tortured over how you're boring yourself and your readers by reviewing your books with the same overused format and even sentence structure of yesteryear (lots of lists and even more inexcusable parentheses!).  You will find that it's a struggle to change any of that too radically without violating your strong conviction about "what a book review is," which is impossible to define much less articulate.  You just know it when you go to cross-post your review to LibraryThing and find that it just doesn't...work. 

Secondly, there are, all told (at least in my perspective), only three "classes" of books when you sit down to review books, each of which is hard to review for its own special reasons.  I give you now the three classes of books and some excuses for why they're impossible to review:

The Sucky Book - This book was really just not that good.  It was good enough to finish, but only because you secretly hoped the end would redeem the rest of it.  It didn't.  Now you have to sit down and say something mean about some author's poor defenseless baby while trying to fair, balanced, and well, not...too mean.  So, you sit at your computer trying to divine the good points of a book you didn't like and trying to decide if your negative comments are snarkier than the book at hand deserves.  Because I'm a book reviewing freak of some kind, I find that the Sucky Book might well be the easiest to review. As it turns out, I can do a passable job of veiling my dislike in half-compliments without totally selling out and saying I liked books that I didn't.  Who ever said negative reviews were hard to write?  I mean, at least I did have a feeling about the book even if it was, well, not a very good feeling.  Not so the...

"Meh" Book -  This book was...well, it was okay.  It wasn't earth shatteringly wonderful nor did it irritate you or disappoint you enough to draw your ire.  It was passable entertainment for a few hours, but next year or maybe only a few months down the road, you will have forgotten it completely.  What does one say about a book which left you feeling little more than apathetic?  It had a beginning and an end.  It was interesting but not compelling.  Its characters were moderately sympathetic.  I vaguely cared about what happened to them but lasting impressions are not forthcoming.  Also, I lied about the categories as "Meh" Books can actually be sub-categorized into slightly less "meh" and slightly more "meh" books.  The slightly less "meh" books are reviewable, you can focus on good qualities and artistic elements quite easily instead of worrying about getting ensnared by the snark monster (see above) or devolving into a babbling buffoon (see below).  The slightly more "meh" are nearly impossible to review through the fog of apathy, but not so impossible to review as the...

 

Book You LOVED - This book is fairly self-explanatory.  You loved it.  No, I mean you really loved it with a fiery passion.  Surely this should be the easiest book to review, right?  I mean, come on, you loved it.  Now share your love with the world!  Easy peasy, right?  NO!  Not easy peasy.  Hard!  Here's the thing, when I LOVE a book, it's usually not for reasons that make sense that can be easily conveyed in writing.  It's not the fantastic plot, it's not the characters that leaped off the page and became my buddies, it's not the pacing, not the beautiful prose, not short chapters or long chapters or an authorial wisdom that reveals the truth in fiction.  Well, it's sort of those things but more than that it's my emotional connection to the book.  How do you review a book that you loved so much that it pried such a visceral emotional reaction out of you that you are reduced to a bumbling moron whose only explanation for loving said book is something about "feeling all the feels" punctuated by the occasional sob, sniffle, or irrational laughter? 

When I truly love a book it's becoming harder and harder for me to step back and talk about all the
good rational things like plot and characters and writing quality when all I'm thinking about is how the book is soggy with my tears or something because I was all like "sniffle, sob, sniffle, YES THAT!  EXACTLY! AUTHOR, I SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING...AND I LIKE IT!! sniffle, sob, sniffle."  How exactly does one break that down into something that is going to sell someone on a great book when they are not you and perhaps do not feel all the same feels exactly the way you do? 

This year my plan of attack for reviewing such books was to...wait.  Wait until that visceral reaction mellows out a little and then attempt it.  Except I waited so long that I then forgot half the book except for that troublesome visceral emotional reaction.  Fail.  So now, here I am as the year draws perilously close to its end and half of my favorite books of the year I haven't even reviewed!  You probably all think that I, like, hate books because the only books, with a few exceptions, that I'm reviewing are either Sucky or "Meh."  Not so!  As it turns out, it is I that am sucky at reviewing books I loved because when I love them I love them irrationally and it's hard to channel irrationality into a good book review.  I've tried, with decidedly mixed results.

So, as I scramble to get all my reviews in under the wire so that I can spam the internet all December with them while everybody's too busy with holiday stuff to read them (er...FAILx2!), tell me, do you share any of these struggles?  If so, how do you write good book reviews despite the challenges? Or am I just over-thinking or engaging in the time-honored tradition of productive procrastination in avoidance of all the reviews I have to write? You make the call. ;-)

A to Z Bookish Survey

Jamie over at The Perpetual Page-Turner cooked up this fantastic survey which I spotted the other day, or a few weeks ago, or whenever.  It looked like a fun way to mix things up around here in between sporadic book reviews, so voila!

Author you’ve read the most books from:

Almost certainly Stephen King.  I looooved Stephen King in high school, and I spent a lot of lazy summer days devouring his books.  Last summer I finally read The Stand, and the SK love continues! 

Best Sequel Ever:

Hmm, I don't know.  I'm good at starting series, bad at continuing them.

Currently Reading:

I let Random.org pick me a book just so I'd read something I've had for more than, like, 3 months, and it chose for me Rules of Civility by Amor Towles.  I was thinking I might blow off Random.org to read The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, but then Rules of Civility just sucked me right in.  You're next, Coldest Girl! 

Drink of Choice While Reading:

I've pretty much changed over to drinking mostly water whether I'm reading or not, so probably water!


E-reader or Physical Book?

Physical book forever.  I've recently grown to appreciate my e-reader and it's cousin the Kindle app, but nothing can replace the feeling of turning pages. Plus, what would I do if I couldn't go on used book buying sprees?

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:

Wes from The Truth About Forever. 

Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:

Angelfall by Susan Ee.  I saw this one for sale in the Kindle Daily Deal, and I had some reservations, but I read the sample and took a chance.  And I loved it.  And I can't wait for the sequel!

Hidden Gem Book:

There's a bunch, but how about one from this year?  The Grave of God's Daughter by Brett Ellen Block.  My parents bought this for me many moons ago at a used book sale thinking I might like it.  I tried my Random.org trick earlier this year and it plucked this one from the obscurity of my shelves, and jeez am I glad because it's so good and nobody seems to know about it!

Important Moment in your Reading Life:

Just before I started my blog, I was chosen to take part in Elle Readers' Prize several times, back when it was still in the magazine and not just web content.  They'd send you 3 books, you'd read them and write short reviews of them and they'd choose a few of those reviews to appear in the magazine, so my reviewlettes have appeared several times in the pages of Elle magazine.  It was the first time it dawned on me that writing about the books I was reading might be fun and maybe even prove valuable to someone other than me.  So, then I started a book blog and the rest is history.

Just Finished:

Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman by Minka Pradelski.  It's got the weirdest narrator and a different sort of story within a story structure, but I ended up liking it a lot. 

Kinds of Books You Won’t Read:

Erotica, (and on the totally other side of the spectrum) cheesy inspirational fiction, and books where I can't begin to guess at the pronounciation of the names of the major characters

Longest Book You’ve Read:

Not sure, but The Stand by Stephen King is by far the longest book I've read recently, clocking in at 1100 or so pages.

Major book hangover because of:

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Number of Bookcases You Own:

Er, 6.  More needed.

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:

I know this is two, but Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson and The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen may be the only books I've *ever* re-read willingly.  And that deserves a mention, right?  Plus, I think one day I would even re-read them again!

Preferred Place To Read:

The front porch when it's nice out.  My bed when it's not.  A cafeteria table at work in a pinch. :)

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:

"Today I am bothered by the story of King Canute. (...) The story is, of course, that he was so arrogant and despotic a leader that he believed he could control everything - even the tide. We see him on the beach, surrounded by subjects, sceptre in hand, ordering back the heedless waves; a laughing stock, in short. But what if we've got it all wrong? What if, in fact, he was so good and great a king that his people began to elevate him to the status of a god, and began to believe that he was capable of anything? In order to prove to them that he was a mere mortal, he took them down to the beach and ordered back the waves, which of course kept on rolling up the beach. How awful it would be if we had got it so wrong, if we had misunderstood his actions for so long." - From After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell

Reading Regret:

I regret that I don't read more and faster!

Series You Started And Need To Finish(all books are out in series):

The Chemical Garden Trilogy by Lauren DeStefano.  I loved Wither, but I suck at keeping up with series likes I should!

Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien, After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell, and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.  And three is so so so not enough.  I'm already rethinking these choices.  :-P

Unapologetic Fangirl For:

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen.  Also City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell. 

Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:

Cannot answer, too hard.  So many great authors coming out with new stuff this year that I can hardly conceive of an answer to this question!

Worst Bookish Habit:

Continuing to acquire them even though I'll probably be dead before I can read all the books I already have!

X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

That would be The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold.

Your latest book purchase:

What's Left of Me by Kat Zhang the e-book is on sale for $ 2.99 at the moment and what with how lots of bloggers are crazy for it, I couldn't very well not buy it, now could I?

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):

The Fault in Our Stars by John Greene.  I surely couldn't finish it at work, you know?  I mean, all the weeping would probably be a little awkward.


Have you done Jamie's survey?  If you have or if you do now, I'd love to see your answers so leave your link in the comments!  

Loose Leafing: The Books or the Reader?

I'm worried about myself.  You see, it's been months since I've really loved a book.  I feel that I'm firmly in the grip of a reading funk.  Even the books that I hope and expect to love are leaving me with a "meh" feeling, and I'm starting to worry that it's me and not the books at all.  Does this ever happen to you where you worry that no matter the quality of the book you read you won't really like it because something is wrong with you as a reader?

I mean, it's not that I'm not still totally in love with the idea of books.  I came back from this week's library book sale with an impressive selection of plunder.  It's not as much as I usually get (I tried to be very picky!), but it's still far more than I probably should have gotten (but look at the shiny books!).  Plus, ever since I got my sparkly new e-reader, I have been totally in the thrall of cheap e-books.  I've already blown an obscene amount of money on Kindle deals two and three bucks at a time to get books that I'm very excited about. 

My enthusiasm for books, in general, is totally untainted, but I'm kind of nervous that all these fantastic books that I'm super-excited about are going to fall flat with me, too, because I just haven't been able to get truly absorbed in and love any stories lately. 

Surely, there may be plenty of reasons for the reading funk and general malaise and my sucking at both living and blogging. 

Exhibit A:

 

 

Recently adopted kitten

 

This is Eenie, formally of Eenie, Meanie, and Mo of the lately adopted porch colony (see Exhibit A1).  Eenie, arguably the friendliest and most adorable of three kittens, is the one surviving member of her litter.  Poor Mo died of feline parvo virus (FPV), and Meanie was really sick with it, too, so we ended up putting her down.  That left Eenie who didn't seem so sick but was.  I vowed as we drove home from the emergency animal hospital that if Eenie lived (which seemed highly unlikely at the time), she would be my very own housecat.  She was sick, but with some medicine and a lot of time and effort, we saved the story of the little kittens from ending in complete tragedy.  She was quarantined to our bathroom for a month over the holidays, so I ended up spending a lot of time there when I was busy doing holiday-ish stuff, too.  Now she is well and getting big and wreaking unexpected havoc throughout our household.

 

Exhibit B:

 

 

Day Job

 

We are so busy at my day job these days that by the time I get home I have I hard time doing anything that requires conscious thought and even the television puts me right to sleep.  A side effect of this is that after I spend all day typing away on my work PC, I have next to no desire to turn on my computer at home and even less to write a blog post.  (PS, yes, I'm aware that the pictures are really terrible quality.  Alas, my choice was bad pictures or no pictures, and I made my decision.)

 

Exhibit C:

 

(Are you kidding?  There's no picture, only shame.)

 

The Dump

The House

 

It's a new year, right? And everybody has their thing they want to do better in the new year.  For me, I desperately wanted to be liberated from a lot of extraneous stuff that I have been too busy or too lazy to clean out for a long time.  Hence, when I'm not working or taking care of one or several members of our chaotic menagerie, I'm deep cleaning something that has been neglected for far, far too long.  I rooted out about two boxes and two trash bags full of stuff from just my bedroom alone, not to mention a pile of outdated electronics that require a bit more effort for disposal.  I've gone through my CD collection, my desk junk drawer, the surface of my desk, and, let me tell you, I've barely scratched the surface of what needs doing and what needs thrown or given away, and I feel like I won't feel good until it's done, now that it's been started.

 

All these things conspire to make it so I rarely open a book for more than ten minutes at a time, and that's no way to read.  I'm deathly afraid that reading this way is wrecking reading for me, but it's reading this way and or not reading at all, and that proposition is even worse.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Hopefully I'm wrong, and the books that I'm reading would have been "meh" for me even under better circumstances, and I'm just not finding the right book for me right now, and one will come along soon and knock me loose from this funk. 

Until then, well, I've got plenty of cleaning to do.  ;-)

Loose Leafing: The Spider Says I Love You (and some winners!)

Meet Herbert.

Herbert is my pet (fake) spider.  He hails from a toy store in London where, with the exchange rate at the time, he cost me the equivalent of around $12.  He was purchased for the purpose of frightening my best friend's then boyfriend who was so arachnophobic that when we placed Herbert on his pile of plates in the kitchen cabinet, he decided that plates were for chumps, and he didn't need one after all.  Herbert came back from London with me and has become a star of the household as my mom and I tuck him into hidden places in an effort to scare each other, or at least make each other laugh.  If you're not paying attention you may find him lurking in your box of instant oatmeal packets or in the bathroom cabinet embracing your deodorant...

Why, pray tell, am I writing you a blog post about a fake spider?  It may have something to do with the fact that I've spent most of the week away from the computer and so have no reviews written.  It's hard trying to nurse your piece of junk spine back to health while getting ready to spend most of the weekend away in NYC, so the spider's all I've got in the way of interesting things to tell you.  It may be because the spider has become a twisted way of showing love, and I think it's kind of sweet and worth writing about.  Do you have any weird ways of saying "I love you" or do you just, you know, say "I love you"? 

I don't have much to say about New York City except that I enjoyed walking the High Line which I never knew existed until I read Pete Hamill's book, Tabloid City.  I googled it and saved it up for a sunny day, which Saturday definitely was.  I navigated the subway without too much trouble, but we still walked blocks and blocks and blocks and blocks on purpose.  We visited the most ridiculously ornate CVS drug store I've ever seen and had a waiter in a restaurant that could, in my judgement, stunt double for Robert Pattinson in a crunch. 


And now for the winners of my blogiversary giveaway...

Sarah will be getting a copy of The Stolen Child

Vasilly won a copy of The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

Meg snagged a copy of After You'd Gone

I will be e-mailing each of you shortly for your addresses.  Please write back! 

Thanks to everybody who entered and everybody who wished me a happy blogiversary.  I appreciate each and every one of you and thank you for reading!  I wish I could give a great book to all of you.  Maybe someday.  Until then, you'll have to settle for the gift of random posts about fake spiders.  ;-)