Cuppa

One of the many things that stuck with me through all the incarnations of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series is Arthur's constant search for tea. A lot of people would argue, and possibly rightly so, that it was just Douglas poking fun at a very British trait. But I think that if after traveling literally to the end of the universe and back, he still only ever found a decent cup of tea on our little blue marble, then that alone is a pretty good reason to keep us from getting destroyed. Maybe it's not just British. Maybe a good cup of tea is the one thing us humans really got right. 

Book madness

Book madness of the best variety.

I mentioned before that I'd arbitrarily decided to read ten books in a month. I had just finished a book that took me longer to finish than it should have, not to mention the count of books I own but haven't read yet was nearing 100. (Yes, I keep track. My Librarything is very carefully cataloged.) It's still not far off from that number, because even while reading those ten books, I still bought more. But you know.

I read ten books in a month.

I'm not talking Ulysses, here. Just some of the lighter novels hanging around, some short stories, a couple young adult novels. Even a self help book. But still. One month. Ten books. I did it.

The thing I found most interesting is that I wasn't any less busy than I'd been before. While reading, I still went to a play, and to the movies, and watched stuff on Netflix. I volunteered at the university's graduation ceremony, went camping for my birthday, rode roller coasters at Cliff's Amusement Park, and saw Mumford and Sons in Taos last week. (It was awesome, in spite of the rain and hail.)

So even though I don't plan to keep trying to finish a book every three days, I do plan to keep reading harder than I have been.

Even though the first book I plan to read now is A Storm of Swords. Once I finish Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey. Man, that guy is verbose.

I will never run out of characters to mourn

With every story I've ever encountered- whether it was a book, a movie, a TV show, anything- I've always loved character first. They have to have great characters. Without them, I might appreciate a story, and even respect it, but I will never love that story if I don't truly adore at least one of them. Even if it's one that I love to hate, or wish I didn't love.

The problem with getting into the Song of Ice and Fire books, and watching A Game of Thrones, is that I can't help but love a lot of these characters, and there are a lot of them to love. But with this story, I know it will only end in tears.

A bookish weekend

I feel like it has to be a very good sign when you walk up to the register with a book, and the guy behind the counter says, "No! I wanted to read that! Now I'll have to order it again!"

To which I replied, "Tough! I'm buying it!"

Yesterday I went up to Taos for the wool festival. I managed to restrain myself to just one skein of very pretty sock yarn. But I also bought a book at Moby Dickens, the little indie bookshop there. I've bought a book there almost every time I've gone to Taos, because I like supporting indie bookshops. Also I like new books.

This one was one of five new books I got this week. I got The Casual Vacancy and John Hodgman's boxed set (both from Amazon. I like supporting indie bookshops, but I also like free shipping, and that I can buy books and odd-sized knitting needles at the same time). And the one from Moby Dickens is called My Mother She Killed Me and my Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales. Which I couldn't resist buying, because it's exactly the sort of things I keep writing. Plus, it includes about a dozen authors I adore.

So I look forward to hopefully reading those sometime in the near future, after I finish the big, fat book I'm already reading, and the other ones in my pile to read as well.

The pile has gotten very large lately. I'm reading just as fast as I can. With breaks for knitting and Doctor Who.

Oh, and movies. I'm going to go see The Perks of Being a Wallflower later, based on yet another book I re-read recently. It's been a good couple of weeks for books, is what I'm saying.

Booklove: now with arts and crafts

I think all the extra-strange dreams I've had in the last week are because of the book I've been reading. I have strange dreams all the time. Pretty much every time I dream. I've decided it's because there's just a lot going on in my head all the time, because I tend to free associate and skip from one thing to another to another, until I have to backtrack just to figure out how I got to the thought that's currently rattling around in there. But this last week, they've been even weirder than normal.

Last night I finished Patrick Somerville's short story collection, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, and every single story in it was very odd, and very sad. There was so much sadness inherent in every story that it took me longer to read than I expected, just because I couldn't take it all at once. But they were very good. Especially the last one. While a lot of the stories did have some note of hope buried in there somewhere, the last one, entitled The Machine of Understanding Other People, was wonderful. Thank god they put it last, or I'd have been even sadder. And I loved Confused Aliens. It was very Douglas Adams.

Plus, the book cover (inside and out) had this fantastic design that included instructions for making the book into a mobile, with little planets you could cut out and tie on and then hang the whole thing from your ceiling. The best part was that the last step of the instructions said to call the publishers and demand a refund when you're done making a mobile, since these instructions will have thus rendered the book impossible to actually read. It's a good think I was three-quarters of the way through the book before I noticed those instructions. Other than all the sadness, which wasn't really so bad, since it was all written so well, I had no trouble reading it at all. Not that I'm the kind of person that would cut up one of my books, anyway.

Moving on...

I FINALLY FINISHED THE BILL BRYSON!

Spending plenty of time this weekend in airports, waiting to board two planes that were both delayed, meant I zoomed through those last fifty pages. Plus, I had my car worked on, and spent some time in that waiting room, too.

It's been a long week.

Yeah, I know, it's still not Sunday.

Oy. It has been a crazy couple of weeks. But the good news is that I actually got a good bit of reading done.

I finished the Michael Chabon, and it was very good. Plus, I was right about who the main character was. He never says in the book, but there are some pretty clear clues, and I was right! I love being right. But that aside, it was a good book. Which is why I'm looking forward to reading the other Chabon I bought recently, even if that one isn't fiction.

So last weekend we were in Taos, and there's a little, independent bookstore there that I love. Partly because it's a really good store, and partly because they keep cats there. I love a bookstore with cats. So, because I like to support little, independent bookstores that I love, I bought yet another book. It's called Light Boxes, written by Shane Jones. And it was strange, and wonderful, and I liked it a lot. I love strange books. It was like an Aimee Bender short story, but novella-length.

And otherwise, I'm still working my way through the Bryson. Last night, I read myself to sleep to the tune of all the microbes and viruses that should have killed us all by now. It's amazing I didn't have scary dreams. But I just had weird ones. Like usual.

I can't help myself

If I keep up this habit, booklove Sunday is eventually going to move through the whole week and wind up back at Sunday again. But I'm still here, and still reading. I'm just really busy again in the times I'm not reading. There was a weekend trip, which is why Sunday passed by, and then today is the Boy-Creature's birthday, so I was making cupcakes last night. The good news is that the busy should really only last for about another week. So here goes booklove Tuesday morning.

Still meandering my way through the Bill Bryson, and surprisingly, still reading The Encyclopedia of the Exquisite as well. I get distracted easily. That's my only excuse.

Plus, I've added a third book. I can't help myself. It's a sickness.

Because of that weekend trip I mentioned, I grabbed one of the new books I'd bought recently. And since said trip consisted of twelve of us crammed in a van, I was trying to pack light, so I literally just grabbed the smallest of the stack. Which, luckily, turned out to be marvelous reading. It's Michael Chabon's The Final Solution, and even though I only started on Friday night, I'm already about six pages from the end. Really, I should have just finished it last night, but my eyes kept dropping shut, and I wasn't retaining anything. Plus, this book is good enough that I really want to actually read what I'm reading. It really is wonderful. I've said before that The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, his most well-known book, is one of the best I've ever read, and this one is just as enjoyable. If you haven't read any of his books, go do it. They're some of the best, most interesting books I've read in ages, and the language is completely lovely.

So after tonight it'll be back down to two. Of course, after that, who knows.

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.

The other ones

I do realize that I didn't do my booklove post. I pretty much counted the whole day as a loss. It was lost to daylight savings time, and the birthday party the night before, where we suddenly realized that it was two thirty in the morning, and we were still playing cards. Which was actually three thirty in the morning. So when I woke up at ten something, it was actually eleven something. So we called it a lazy day and spent it in our PJs, watching Doctor Who and whatnot.

But I did have books to talk about. Last week I mentioned that I managed to limit it to two- sort of. I didn't get around to explaining the sort of.

I'm still working my way through the Bryson. It's fascinating, even though I'm up the part where he's telling all about how easily we could all die when a huge volcano explodes, or when a massive meteor smashes into the planet, or something else dramatic and unpreventable like that. I'm really enjoying it. And I have since finished The Lost Art of Reading, so now it's actually down to one- sort of.

So here are two that I'm sort of reading now, plus some bonus tangentially related booklove.

I did start reading A Novel in a Year, and Heather Sellers' Chapter After Chapter. Heather Sellers' other related book, Page After Page, is probably my favorite book on creative writing that I own. It's the one I always go back to when I'm feeling stuck, or when I feel like I need to kick my own butt to get back to writing. Chapter After Chapter is focused on novel writing.

See the pattern?

I say I'm sort of reading them, because I'm reading them each one little section at a time. While I work on my own little bits of fiction, which I hope will add up to a novel. I doubt that'll happen in a year. Novels take lots of time, especially when you've never really written one. But I hope that at the end of a year, I'll at least have a pile of raw material that could be worked into a novel.

Wish me luck.

Adventures in nonfiction

There were years and years when I had a really hard time getting interested in non-fiction. Those days are most definitely gone, as I seem to be in yet another stretch where it's all I'm reading. At the moment, I've managed to limit it to just two. Sort of.

The two I'm reading fit into my plan for the sorts of things I wanted to read after I finished school. I figured the books I'd read would be my way of continuing my own education. So far I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of it.

First of all, I'm finally reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I bought it nearly three years ago, right after we graduated college, and I was in San Diego for a short visit with the Boy Creature. Somehow, even though I was the one that had just bought the book, he convinced me to leave it in San Diego with him, so he could read it.

That took him a year. He's not even that slow of a reader, he just only reads every so often. Not every single night, and for several more hours on the weekends (usually), like me. So he finally finished it and gave it back, and for some reason I'm only getting around to it now.

And it's great. Go read it. It's full of really fascinating science and history, and not remotely boring, ever, because Bryson is such a great writer.

The other book I started is not Views from the Loft, like I expected. Although it'll probably be next up. Instead, I'm reading The Lost Art of Reading, and I'll be done with it in no time. It's a very slender volume, as they say, and I zoomed through about a quarter of it today, before I fell asleep. Afternoon reading naps are my favorite kind of naps. Still, I'll probably already be done with it by tomorrow. And then on to the Loft! I think. We'll see how I feel when it's actually time. I never know if I feel like starting a new book until it's just time to start. But it's worked so far.

Their loss is my gain

The Borders in my neighborhood is closing. Of course, I say "the Borders" like there isn't another one on the south side of town. It's just that the south side one isn't as big, is in a crowded shopping center, and isn't right next to a World Market.

At least I will still have the one Borders. But still, the big one is closing, which means there are lots and lots of discounted books to be had. And after today, I do have several of them.

I'd been thinking a lot this week about how infrequently I'd been blogging lately, and what I could do about that. So I decided I'd bring back booklove Sundays. And dropping over a hundred dollars at Borders seems like a good way to go about that. I could talk about the book I'm actually reading right now, but as it's going a little bit slowly, there's a very good chance I'll still be reading it next weekend. So I'll talk about that then. For now, lookit all the stuff I got!

I did get a couple of non-book things. A cute apron with cupcakes on it, which just happens to match the cute pencil bag with cupcakes on it, which I plan to use as a notions bag for knitting things. Stitch markers and a tape measure and stuff like that. And four knitting magazines. And a journal with typewriters on it. I like all those things. I've already broken in the apron, while I was making some of these.

But all the rest was books. And mostly books about books. Either writing them, or loving them, because I can't seem to get enough of both of those kinds of books. Looking at the stack on the floor by my feet (because my bookshelves are already crammed, and I'm not sure where I'm going to put them), at the top of the stack is The Lost Art of Reading, by David Ulin. It's subtitled "Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time." As someone who both recently signed up for Netflix, and is knitting a stripey cashmere sweater with a really interesting construction that I can't seem to put down, I am certainly distracted. And as it's a short book, I figured it couldn't hurt for easing myself back into reading more. I'd kill to get my attention span back to where it used to be, when I could lie still for hours just reading one book after another.

Next is The 4 A.M Breakthrough from Brian Kitely. I already had the book that came before it, The 3 A.M. Epiphany. Both are about writing, which is the other thing I'd like to be doing a lot more of these days. They're both a collection of prompts and ideas to (hopefully) jump-start writing. This has been on my mind a lot lately. I have one friend who's doing a Master's program in creative writing, and she just turned in her novel to her advisor. I have another friend who is currently editing her novel, and plans to start sending it out to publishers this year. And I have yet another friend enjoying her full ride to Emerson's fantastic Master's program, also in creative writing. I'm feeling lazy. So it's time to get back to work. And more creative writing books won't necessarily help, but they certainly can't hurt.

So I got that one, and another called A Novel in a Year, which is a writing book that's pretty much what it sounds like, and one called Views From the Loft, which I kind of can't wait to start reading. It's essays and interviews and observations and advice from a slew of writers from the famed writers' workshop, the Loft. This ties for the book I bought today that I'm most excited about.

The other I'm thrilled with is Melissa Clark's In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite. I've only glanced through it, but I can't wait both to read it and start cooking lots of recipes that sound amazing. I made myself stop looking at it, because I didn't have any post-its handy, and I refuse to dog-ear the pages. There are a lot of things I'm going to want to cook. But I like that there's a lot of her just writing about food, and eating food, and loving food. I already love the part where she talks about how her parents tricked her into eating so many strange foods as a kid by telling her it was chicken. Rabbit, horse steak, frog, squid. Stuff like that, which any kid would have second thoughts about trying. It was hilarious.

It's enough to make me wish the Oscars weren't on tonight, because a big part of me would like to be reading. But instead, I'm going to go back to knitting and watching. It's time for more stripes on my sweater.

It's starting to feel more home-y...

Happy cat:


Happy Kat:


It's been an eventful week.

On Wednesday we got the kitten. She's about five months old, and we can't figure out what to name her. Her foster mother was calling her Maya, but we don't like that. The names that have come up so far are Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth the First, and Bagheera. I suggested that last one, although I've since learned that I'm remembering my Kipling wrong. I thought Bagheera was female for some reason. So I guess that one will get pulled off the table. Our kitten is very sleek and velvety and panther-like, though. Just on a much smaller, more timid scale. She's very, very timid. I'm hoping she grows out of that, although not out of the part where she's too timid to use her claws.

The kitten is currently curled up in the Boy Creature's lap, and the Boy Creature is asleep. It's rather adorable.

Today I got the bookshelf. It was free. One of my office mates was standing in the empty office across the hall with the facilities manager talking about what furniture to keep and what to get rid of for the person who's moving into said office. So I called out, "Are you giving furniture away?" Ten minutes later, they delivered the bookshelf to my office door. Apparently it used to be in the registrar's office, because people kept coming by to drop off files or ask a question, and they'd go, "Hey, that looks awfully familiar. What's it doing here?"

Sadly, said bookshelf did not fit into my wee little Honda Civic at the end of the day. It got about halfway in and wouldn't go any further. If we'd had some rope, we could have tied it down and it would have been fine, but we had no rope. Luckily, we had a friend with an SUV who was kind enough to come help us out. So even though I still have four boxes of books yet to unpack, I'm happy.

Even though it won't help the fact that I was already reading two books at once, and I just put a third on hold at the library.

Unseasonable snow + books = booklove

It's March. I have no words.


Luckily, I have books, as I don't plan on going outside anytime soon.

It's been an eventful week, book-wise. Especially what with the boring temp job I had. I both started and finished this book called The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor. It was a retelling of the Alice in Wonderland books that was really interesting. It went really fast, though I kind of expected that as it was a young adult book. I haven't read any of those lately, so it made for a nice change to get through a book that fast. I liked the book, though. It did some very interesting things with the story, and I very much liked the characters. The book series has a website, if you're interested.

I also started reading Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings. I know it's shocking, but I've never read them. And since I had to entertain myself all week long while stuck at a desk, I wanted something engaging that would last me until Friday, in between bouts of knitting. So I'm maybe two thirds of the way through now. I believe when I left off, they were at the Council of Elrond. I have to admit, though, it's going a little slower than I expected, or at least the first half did. There was an awful lot of describing every bit of land surrounding the hobbits, and specifically what direction they were walking, and how the road curved. I'm hoping that things will start picking up now. Still enjoying it, though.

I also got to make a trip to the big Half Price Books in Dallas yesterday. I got a They Might Be Giants CD, and a couple of other little fun things, but the book I was really excited to find was Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman. I actually managed to find a hardcover edition for only eight bucks! Score! I win.

Also? I'd just like to point out that the high for tomorrow is seventy one degrees. This place is nuts.

The hidden joys of temping

While you wouldn't necessarily think a roller coaster of a week would be a good thing for reading, it actually turned out that way. That job I was suddenly called to on Wednesday turned out to be a sit-by-the-phone job, so I not only did the crosswords and sudoku from the newspaper in the breakroom on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, but I also got a lot of reading done. Including the comics from said newspaper, and a few restaurant reviews.

For example, I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass this week. All of it. They're pretty quick, even when you are being interrupted every paragraph or so to answer the phone. I'd wanted to re-read them before I saw the movie, which I accomplished. We saw it on Saturday. I have mixed feelings about it, but I'm glad I finished the book first, and I'm still glad I saw the movie.

I also read a lot more of Reading Like a Writer. I realized, reading it, that I haven't done much reading on fiction theory since I got out of school. It feels good to be reading it again. I borrowed the copy machine at the office and xeroxed the suggested reading list out of the back (marvelously titled "Books to be read immediately"), and added a few more to it as well. So there will most likely be much to report in the coming months.

Right before I graduated from college, I'd asked my favorite teacher to make me a reading list, which he said he'd be happy to do. I remember telling him that it was my plan for continuing my education, once I left. Unfortunately, in the rush that was our graduation ceremony, I forgot to get it from him, and he had to leave early to take the guest speaker to the airport. I emailed him once or twice afterward, but never did get that list. So I'm sort of hoping that whatever suggested readings I can cobble together from books like Reading Like a Writer will stand in for the things he might have come up with.

Since the work week ended, though, I haven't read any more of it. I've mostly been reading Sherlock Holmes this weekend, which is getting very close to the end. Less than a hundred pages to go. I also started yet another book I got from the library (total count of books I've now borrowed: four, and four DVDs, which will go back tomorrow and be replaced by four more DVDs). It's a retelling of Alice in Wonderland (are you sensing a theme in my life of late? That's not even all of it, either) called The Looking Glass Wars. So far it's very good, if a little violent. The Boy-Creature was kind enough to point out that it has "war" right in the title. I stopped talking and went back to reading at that point. Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting farther into it. Maybe the next office job I have lined up for this week will let me get some reading done as well.

Rainy weekend reading

I'm completely choosing to blame the Boy-Creature for the late hour of today's post. I had no intention of watching the Oscars tonight, but he came in and turned them on, and that was it for the night. Suddenly it's closing in on eleven. Oh well.

Never mind that I spent most of the day doing not much at all. It rained all day, and I acted like it. It was a very lazy day. Not a bad day, just lazy. At least we finally went to the grocery. We'd put it off all week, and we were to the point that there was nothing real left to eat. I scrambled the last of the eggs today, and that was it. So at least we got that done.

Yesterday was a similar day. For some reason, I woke up in a bad mood for no particular reason, so I spent the day as if it rained all day. I made a pot of tea, and got some cookies and Nutella and crawled into bed with Sherlock Holmes and read and read and read. So I'm that much closer to finishing the first volume. I was thinking of reading something else before I moved on to the second, but I've been enjoying it so much, it'll probably come down to whatever I feel like after I finish that last page. So we'll see what mood I'm in that day.

Distractions and diversions

I've been thinking about why I skipped doing a booklove post for the last two weeks, and I think I figured it out. I'm blaming sports.

I've never liked sports. Any of them. Even the ones like gymnastics and figure skating that are similar in some elements to dancing, the one thing I love most in the world. I can't even explain why ice dancing is weird to me. It just is.

But first the Saints are in the super bowl the weekend my mom (born and raised in New Orleans) is in town. So we went to a party and watched. Well. They watched, I sat in a corner and knit. And now it's the winter Olympics. I've never really watched the Olympics. Yes, they're big and exciting, but they're still sports, so I still don't really care.

But now I live with this boy, who not only really likes television, but loves the Olympics. I feel like the television has been on constantly for the last week and a half. And this is a very small house. It's hard to avoid. So not much reading has been getting done. But I'm trying.

I started reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes a couple of weeks ago, and as slow as it's going, I'm really enjoying it. I never doubted that I would, but there's still been some surprises. I don't know how I never knew that all the stories are from Watson's point of view. Especially since I know I read one of the stories in school, years and years ago, and I completely forgot that. The really nice surprise is that I love Watson as a character. He's not what I expected, from what I had seen from all the pop culture references that have come down through the years. I always had this vague feeling that he would always kinda bug me, but I'm finding him delightful. So even if it takes me much longer than I expected, I'm looking forward to making my way through the rest.

I made it to the library again yesterday, too. It was one of those days when I couldn't find what I was actually looking for, but in hunting for it, I came across other books I wanted to read even more. One is Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer. One of my best friends in college had a copy of this book, and I kept meaning to get a copy and read it myself. And for those reasons that always come up with that kind of thing, I never got around to it. So when I stumbled on it, I figured it's time, and grabbed it without any hesitation.

The other book I grabbed is called Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West. I found this book awhile back at Anthropologie (my favorite store, which once again I can't afford), and I always like the idea of it. It's another one of those books that's been on my Amazon wish list for months. I started reading it yesterday, and so far it's just ok. The whole first section is short little blurbs on historical sites, and it kind of reads like a tourist guidebook. Which I guess it is, but it wasn't what I was hoping for. So I'm thinking I'll probably end up sort of skimming this first section, and I'll read the rest more in depth. But I'll still make a note of any new places I desperately want to visit someday. I'll add them to the already sizable list.

A growing addiction

Yesterday was a weird day. Just kind of off, from beginning to end. Which is why I forgot to do a booklove post. I'm not sure why I forgot last week. I think unemployment is getting to me. But no more.

I said I wanted to work more on this blog, and I meant it, so I'm here today. Not exactly with a booklove post, but a little-bit-of-everything post.

There has been booklove, though. I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This morning. It was the special edition hardcover edition, with 30% more zombie action, and full color illustrations, which Best Friend gave me for Christmas. And it was interesting. Best Friend's mom is an English teacher, and she mentioned she wanted to hear what I thought of it, as someone who not only reads a lot of books, but spent four years in college doing almost nothing but talking about books.

I'm going to have a lot to say when we have that conversation. I get the impression she is in the camp of wondering why the heck someone would want to ruin one of the greatest works in English literature with zombie nonsense. But I don't think it ruins it at all. Pride and Prejudice is a book about young women trying to get married because they have no other choice. A woman's role in that time was to get married, keep house, and have children. That's about it. Everything they do and say is dictated by what is considered polite and proper. But if you give these women actual skills, even if they're nonsensical ninja skills, it changes the entire social and economic dynamic. Suddenly they're worth more than their wombs and embroidery talents, and that gives them license to do and say things they couldn't have said in real life. Elizabeth Bennet becomes even more outspoken and opiniated, and I like her for it.

I've also started reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I'm already through A Study in Scarlet and loving it. I've been meaning to read these books for awhile (not just because the movie came out- and the movie was great). So I'm really liking them so far, and I can't wait to read more.

In other areas of reading, I've been gobbling up blogs like crazy the past couple of weeks. It started with finding A Beautiful Mess. Then she announced that she got nominated for the Bloggies, and I started checking out some of the other nominees- . And now I find myself completely obsessed with the blogosphere. I've started following several, in addition to the decent-sized list I already checked on a daily basis. I downloaded an RSS feed reader, to make it a wee bit easier on myself. And I've started coming up with all sorts of ideas for things I want to change about my own.

My next post will be my 100th post. While I was thinking about doing a redesign and launching it for the 100th post, I don't think that will happen. There's something weird going on in my code (which is why my blog title has been so boring-looking for so long. It's stuck that way), and I don't know enough about coding to fix it. So I'm looking into it. But there will be some changes soon. Because I have definitely been bit by the blog bug. Again.

Of finishings and startings

It's been a decent week, as far as getting things done go. I finished and sent off the first of my grad school applications, finished three knitting projects- weaving in ends and sewing on buttons and everything, sent out plenty of resumes and job applications (though it won't feel like enough until I've gotten a job), and cooked a lot.

But I only finished one book.

I got through the last of Reading the OED yesterday, and it seemed like it got more and more fun, the closer it got to the end. The writer's anecdotes and comments and reflections on reading that monstrous tome got a little bit more mad, and even more interesting, so that by the time I got to the end, I must admit, part of me really did want to go read (at least some of) the OED myself. Not the way he did, straight through A to Z, but in a more relaxed (less insane) way.

In other news, I'm almost done with Four Letter Word, which means it'll be going back to the library soon. I had been idly thinking I'd browse around and get more books when I go, but maybe not. I cleared out space to make a desk for myself this week, and I put all the books I've been meaning to read there, and now they're all looking at me, silently waiting for me to read them. I have been craving some fiction, and there are several greats there. Maybe it'll be Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. Or maybe Sense and Sensibility. But there's also Price and Prejudice and Zombies, my Christmas present from my best friend.

I wonder which it'll be, when the time comes to start.

The triumphant return of...

Booklove! Finally. And there is much to report.

So. Since my last post (before Christmas, seriously? It felt like it was just a couple of days ago), there has been a flurry of reading.

I finished Lost in a Good Book, which was great. Jasper Fforde has an incredible imagination, and what seems like a pretty deep working knowledge of great literature. I can't help but wonder if he is truly that knowledgeable on these things, or if he has to look them up as he goes along. To be honest, it results in fun, funny books, so I'm happy either way. Even if you haven't read any of his books, you should go check out his website, Fforde Grand Central. Most of it does tie into the Thursday Next series, so if you think you might be interested, take a look.

After I finished that, I re-read a book from my youth (she said, as if she were in fact much older and wiser than her actual age of twenty-three), Patricia Wrede's Talking to Dragons. It's the fourth and last of her Enchanted Forest series, and for reasons I couldn't explain even if I tried, it's my favorite of the four. I've always loved the way she plays with the fairy tale conceits and cliches in these books. Every time Boy-Creature tries to call me a princess, I get this urge to make him sit down and read them immediately, so he can see just what kind of princess I am. Cimorene is a fantastic female role-model, as are Morwen and Kazul, for that matter. One of these days I will make him read those.

The reason I read that, though, instead of finishing The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is because it was usurped by my mother. She stole my book and started reading it, and then wouldn't give it back the whole time I was visiting her. Sadly, though, she didn't have time to finish it before we came back to Texas, and I wasn't about to leave it with her when I hadn't finished it either. And I was reading it first! So there!

So I've finished it since coming back. And it was incredible. Boy-Creature just kept asking me if it deserved the Pulitzer, and I think I can safely say it did. I mentioned before how the history and pop-culture were so skillfully twined together. It only got better and better. It's an absolutely stunning story. This is one of those books I'll still be telling people to read years from now, I can tell. Go read it, even if you're not particularly interested in comic books, or WWII history. I'm not, and I loved it. Go read it.

And now that that's done, I went back to the library. I got Four Letter Word: Invented Correspondence from the Edge of Modern Romance, which is a book I heard about awhile ago on Neil Gaiman's blog, and I had been meaning to track it down ever since. When I just happened upon it at the library, I grabbed it without a second's thought. I'm only a little ways into it, but I'm enjoying it so far. It's amazing how many things "love letter" can mean. So much more than just "How do I love thee?"

The other thing I got was a collection of short stories by Julie Orringer called How to Breathe Underwater. Boy-Creature immediately approved of my choice, because the cover photo shows three young girls swimming in a river in their underwear, and he says one of them looks like me. She kinda does (which I did not admit to him), but that's not really the point. The stories are the point, and the stories were very, very good. From the very first, very gripping story, I was enrapt. I finished them all within two days. My favorite was the story from which the book takes it's name, "The Isabel Fish."

So that's where I stand now, reading Four Letter Word while Happy Alchemy and Reading the OED are still trailing behind as well. Maybe by next week I'll be onto something entirely new. What a lovely thought. I wonder what I'll read next?