I finally made a graphic for this Sunday post thing I’ve been doing. My one-week-at-a-time approach to NaBloPoMo November worked for a second week, and it looks like I may be on track to make it a third. Some of you may be wondering what’s happened to the books, though. Well, as so often happens when the emphasis shifts to blogging, this thing has reared its head again: However, I do have two book discussions slated […]
On November 8, 2014, we brought home an addition to the family. Today we’re celebrating our first year with Winchester! Since he’s only four years old, we look forward to many more with him…even though he’s turned out not to be the dog we thought he was. The day we brought him home, and the first of many hours chilling on the couch with his best friend. Our little captain is on the bridge! There’s […]
Welcome back to Standard Time, and I hope you were able to enjoy that extra hour of sleep that mysteriously visited you last night! Did you do anything special for Halloween? Some of us dressed up at work on Friday. And on Saturday, many more people were dressed up at Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo in downtown Los Angeles. Paul and I have gone to this event for the last few years, and it’s really growing– it occupied […]
Well, hello there! It’s nice to be back after a not-entirely-accidental week off that I didn’t tell you was coming. Mid-month tends to be the busiest time at my day job, and during October, it was compounded by a couple of staff departures, transistions, training, and a hiring process. Reading and blogging understandably fell behind with all of that going on, although I did get a couple of reviews for next month submitted to Shelf […]
I’m not doing all 31 days of #31bookpics and I’m a few days late getting started with it, so I’m taking this opportunity to do a little catching up! 1. Current Reads The Witches and Charned Particles sound like they could be related, don’t they? But they’re not. The “particles” referenced are quarks; one of the main characters in Chrissy Kolaya’s debut novel is a physicist. And we are fortunately mostly past attributing scientific wonders to witchcraft. That said, they do […]
My stepdaughter Kate celebrates her 21st birthday today, in remission from leukemia. Her dad made her a card. This week I did something I’ve never done in Los Angeles before–I rode the subway. (Did you know we have a subway?) I had a couple of meetings in another office, and found it much less stressful than driving–and figuring out the parking–there. This week’s reading has a couple of things in common with last week’s. The […]
I’m not feeling the writing groove so much this weekend, so I’m taking a different approach to this week’s Survey. It may be a keeper, or at least a recurring alternative version–it’s good to have options. And now, it’s time for Show and Tell, 3 R’s Blog style! These are the books–one ebook, one audiobook–I read this week, and will be drafting posts about after this post is done. These are the books I’m still […]
Reading I’m still making my way through The Witches: Salem, 1692 (galley, pub date October 27) in print; it’s interesting, but between the profusion of characters to keep straight and the book’s small font, it’s not going quickly. (Speaking of the challenges of tiny print, I’ll be getting my new contact lenses at the end of the week, and I hope they’ll make tiny print less challenging.) I don’t have any books out from the […]
When she sent me the text, she really didn’t think I’d take her up on it. My sister Teresa is the librarian at the elementary school both of my nephews attended. School started in mid-August, but the library didn’t open for the students right away. She’s been getting it ready for them to start using it this Tuesday, and one of the last tasks she had left was to prepare nearly 100 donated books for […]
I think it’s too early yet for Halloween decorations, but apparently not for Halloween-ish reading. That’s one of the hazards of freelance book reviewing, though. I need to get reviews for October releases submitted during September, and that’s why I started reading Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: Salem, 1692 (out October 27) this weekend. Between Gods: A Memoir by Alison Pick (pub date October 20) is the second of the two October ARCs I plan to review […]
It’s a lazy weekend around here. That seems totally appropriate for these hot late-August days, but by one important measure summer is already over–the new school year started a week ago. (There’s not much homework yet, though.) I’m here a few hours late and probably a few paragraphs short, because I don’t have a whole lot to tell this weekend. Reading I’m on a nonfiction streak right now. I was reading What Stands in a […]
In which a question posted in the Book Bloggers Do It Better Facebook group last week sent me hunting for a post I’d saved to my “Blognotes” notebook in Evernote almost two years ago The question was “When we have several books that are releasing around the same time to review- do we tend to try to read the debut first (knowing they are really counting on reviews to come in) or the more established […]
