Reading and Listening Remember when I was contemplating a free-range-reading summer? The book stack I made in anticipation of that is still assembled, and I actually did read one book out of it…and then my August and September packages from Shelf Awareness showed up. They brought me so many interesting options that I may exceed my review quota for those two months (but since I didn’t get any reviews to them for July, going over […]
I declared my intention to do it over a month ago. It’s been nagging at me for far longer, but as it approached, I became ever more excited about undertaking it. I took last week off from work to get it done. The Big Book Purge of 2015 is now history, and so are nearly 400 books that have left both my house and my LibraryThing catalog. That’s a good-guesstimate number–I didn’t do a physical […]
It’s early afternoon. The windows are open and it’s really nice out, but we’re not feeling terribly ambitious today. Lately, I’ve actually remembered that my laptop is portable, and I’m tucked into a corner of the sectional sofa in our living room while Paul and Spencer watch The Bourne Supremacy on DVD. (The Bourne Identity was our Saturday-night viewing, so we could end up doing the whole trilogy this weekend.) I like that we actually […]
I don’t mean to keep doing disappearing acts from the blog, but since I’m not pushing myself to have content ready to roll on a set schedule these days, I’m afraid sometimes that’s exactly what happens. However, I really think these little breaks, planned or not, are probably healthy for both the blog and me. I’ve been almost as busy at work since I got back from my vacation as I was before I left. […]
It’s the first day of summer! It’s Father’s Day! And it’s a great weekend to do this thing: I spent some time flash-reading yesterday afternoon, finishing one of my books-in-progress and making some headway on another. Today really should be a review-a-thon for me–I can’t join the one next weekend, because I’ll be away, and I’m a good three or four reviews behind right now–but I think I might rather just do more reading. I […]
I feel like I don’t need to read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up for myself–I’ve come across so many people who have read it and shared what they got from it that it’s been distilled pretty well, and I think there’s been some osmosis. And what I’ve absorbed has me pretty certain that I’m not about to go all-out on the KonMari Method, but I can see some merit in the concept. […]
I have not dropped off the face of the earth, but after several weeks during which my work ate me alive, I did go on vacation for a week. We’ve just returned from our sorely-needed escape to Seattle and neighboring areas of the Evergreen State (with a day trip across the border to British Columbia). We’re still sorting and editing photos, but I thought y’all might want to see the bookish ones first. You might […]
I posted this on Facebook on May 11: County auditor arrives this morning for a fiscal review. Back-and-forth with the CPAs to wrap up the 2014 financial audit ASAP. Month-end internal financial reports due in a few days. This is my very own Hell Week. Please send good thoughts! It’s been more like Hell Fortnight. (I even worked last Sunday, which is why I wasn’t here–a “slowdown” just wasn’t a good idea,) But this is […]
“Richer than I you can never be — I had a Mother who read to me.” —from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan I actually did not have a mother who read to me. In our house, the parent who did the reading aloud was my dad. And once I learned to read for myself, before I entered kindergarten, I really didn’t want anyone to read to me. My mother’s eyesight was so poor […]
I didn’t plan on disappearing for a week, y’all, I swear. OK, I did spend two weekends in the Middle Ages… The book in the photo on the right is hollow, for carrying things. …but that’s the most playtime I expect to have for a few weeks. I am reading, and at a pretty good clip, but my pacing is a little out of whack, and I’m officially several reviews behind, which drives me crazy. I’ve […]
If you follow me on Instagram, and/or Twitter, and/or Facebook, you’ll most likely see what I’m doing instead of blogging this Sunday. Paul and I will be costumed up and making the rounds at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, and I expect we’ll both be taking and posting photos along the way. I’ve gotten some decent reading done this week, but not much writing. I finished reading Being Mortal on audio and am reading three other […]
I’ve seen Ti, Jen, and Bryan tackle this “20 Questions About Me” thing recently, and I thought I’d play along today. I rarely do this meme-type stuff here any more, and it was a fun change of pace. Feel free to take these questions with you and answer them for yourself—I’d love to know what you have to say about them! HOW TALL ARE YOU? My driver’s license says I’m 4’9”. This is an exaggeration, […]
