More to add to the pile

The entire last week has been nuts, so sadly there has not been a lot of time for reading.

The high point was the Irish car bomb cupcakes I made for Saint Patrick's Day and brought to the office. They were incredibly delicious.

The low point is how awful my allergies have been. The only slight consolation is that everyone is suffering through them alongside me, even the Boy Creature, who tried to claim that he didn't have allergies, and his itchy eyes were just because they were dry. He stopped saying that when his nose started running as badly as mine has been.

So I've been a little bit crabby lately, cupcakes aside. Although the allergies actually have led to a bit more reading, since my sinuses seem to calm down a bit if I'm lying flat on my back. And there's not much else I can do in that position but read. So I have been. Which is good because I went back to that Borders that's closing and bought six more books and three CDs, all for less than the first trip.

I'm still meandering my way through the Bryson, which is still just as enjoyable. But the other thing I'm reading is called The Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins.

I tend to love books like this, that are either lists of interesting things, or sort of faux-anthropological studies, like Laren Stover's Bohemian Manifesto and The Bombshell Manual of Style. Those are two of my very favorite books, and always will be. These sorts of books make for pretty light reading, but they're so enjoyable. So far with The Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, I've read about the history of fanfares, and elephant-shaped buildings, and the one-time trend in Asia of keeping crickets in tiny, baroque cages as pets, among other things.

I started the book yesterday, and I'll probably be done with it by tomorrow or the next day, but at the moment, I am liking it very much.