A New Toni Morrison Novel!

Toni Morrison is one of my favorite authors (Margaret Atwood is my other fav). I love Morrison's novels, especially The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. Tonight, I was cleaning out my NPR Books feeds, and I was completely surprised to learn that Morrison has a new book coming out on November 11. I should have already known this since I listen to NPR almost every day on my way to work and back, but this week is the second week of the local NPR stations fundraising drive. I am a sustaining member, so I do believe in NPR and don't mind contributing, but the necessary fundraising talk during Morning Edition and All Things Considered is still annoying. So I have been listening to my iPod and, of course, talking when I carpool.

Back to Morrison's new work, it's called A Mercy, a slave narrative set in the late 17th century. It's too late now to expound on the things that Morrison says she was trying to do in this novel, but I am completed intrigued by the story that she presents. Listening to her read an excerpt, I was reminded of what a good reader she is. As a teacher, I used a small portion of an audio of her reading of Beloved so that students could hear how the book should sound in their brains, and I always enjoyed listening to her read even that small portion. I have downloaded the 4 excerpts available on NPR and will definitely spend some time tomorrow listening to it at work.

Links to an audio interview, a video interview, and the four excerpts can be found here.

I never thought that I would say this but...

I might want to read a Stephen King novel. And not just any King novel, The Stand, an apocalyptic novel of over 1000 pages. What's the big deal? Well, I am truly not a horror fiction or horror movie fan. I don't do scary! However, after reading a Salon interview with King today, I decided that this is a book that I might like. It is an apocalyptic novel that the interviewer believes will resonate as much with today's readers as it did with it's original audience. I do like apocalyptic novels and movies, and if this novel has "Fundamentalist religion, biological weapons, monster viruses, nuclear destruction, ecological havoc, mistrust of government, the breakdown of democracy" and is well-written, I think I might like it. Plus I still haven't read The Road but plan to very soon, and interviewer seems to think The Road was influenced by The Stand.

The interview celebrates the 30th anniversary of the publication of The Stand. I read it at work between book fair customers and made some notes about some of the specific interview points, but I forgot to bring the notes home, so I can't say more now. Well, I could say more if I wasn't so tired and lazy. I could reread the interview online and remind myself of things that I wanted to say, but I am tired and lazy. Now, I think I'll get even lazier now and watch some DVR'd shows before I go to bed. Later.

Book club book and cake - Updated

A while back, I read about a blogger (can't remember the blog and am too lazy just now to search for it) who bakes an appropriate cake for each of the books read by her book club. I decided that since the next meeting for my book club was scheduled to meet at a member's home, which we don't do much, that I would offer to bring dessert instead of the easier option of a bottle of wine. So today I will bake a Coconut Cream Cake to go with our most recent book, Babylon Rolling. One of the characters makes a coconut cream cake early in the novel. I didn't enjoy the book much at all, so I hope the cake is good. I have never made this cake and found the recipe on the Internet. There were several variations on AllRecipes.com, and I found one by Emeril on the Food Network. I started to choose the one by Emeril because the book is set in New Orleans and that is where he is, right? However, I decided to go with one of the variations on AllRecipes.com because they weren't completely from scratch and seemed a bit less work intensive. I decided that, although I normally like to bake things from scratch, today I want to have some time to read and watch the Cowboys for a while this afternoon.

Okay, I'm off to the store now. When I get the cake made, I will snap a photo and post it. Hopefully, I will also be able to report that it was a success with the other book club members.

UPDATE - Here's a photo that I took with my phone. The cake doesn't look special, but it tastes so good.

A new fortune

I got this fortune a couple of nights ago: Character cannot be purchased, bargained for, inherited, rented or imported from afar.

This may be true, but I'm not sure character is very important to most people any more. In theory, I think most people would agree with this fortune. In reality, people without character get ahead all the time, and we accept it.

Book buying and an idea for the new year

This morning, Valerie and I went to one of our fave breakfast spots. She read the paper while I flipped through the latest issue of VOYA. As I perused the book reviews, I commented on some of them. At some point, Valerie said that I was making her want to go to the bookstore. I said that I had been thinking about going to Half-Priced Books to look for a book that I had not been able to find at Bookstop last week. The decision was made immediately; we would stop at Half-Priced on the way home. Being book addicted, we both purchased more than one book.

I bought three books:

• A $3.00 copy of Infinite Jest in paperback. I've never read any Wallace, but I have read much about his writing since his recent suicide, and I think that I will enjoy his work. For $3.00 I just couldn't pass this up.
  
• A like-new hardback of Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. I really enjoyed Midnight's Children and Fury.
  
• A like-new Modern Library paperback of Middlemarch. After I finish W&P, I think this will be my next big read.
  

Valerie bought two biographies, John Adams and Einstein: His Life and Universe, which she has been lusting after for a long time now. She was so excited, and so cute in her excitement, when she found the Einstein book in hardback for only $8.00, showing barely any use. I'm excited too because I will learn so much when she reads these books. She loves to share, and I like it when she shares with me!

Now for the idea: I have a reading plan/resolution idea for the new year, but I will write about it later. Now, I think I will get off the computer and watch a show or two that we DVR'd this week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

My Fortune

A while back I thought that I should blog my fortune cookie fortunes. I thought it would be fun to pontificate on their meaning or, most likely, lack of meaning.

I got this one tonight: You[r] critical insights can provide the stimulus for change.

I don't know about you, but I think that's a damn good fortune. It sounds like I should be something more powerful than a junior high school librarian. Any suggestions?

Ike-Induced Vacation Day 9 (The last one!)

I didn't hear until 8:00 last night that I wouldn't be going back to work today, but I am going back tomorrow--no students tomorrow and no definite word that students will be there on Friday. As I said yesterday, I am ready to get back to normal life, which means working.

I'm also ready for the local TV stations to stop the all-Ike, all the time news broadcasting. There are only so many ways that you can tell a story, and now they are just fueling controversy so they can advertise later that they were the station to ask the toughest questions and refute the most myths. They spend less than 5 minutes on a round-up of the national and world news at the end of each hour-long night-time broadcast--it's disgusting!

Really, our economy is failing and our so-called leaders want us to hand over $700 billion to save the greedy bastards who have run our economy into the ground. People need to hear about this news more than about how bad CenterPoint is doing in restoring electricity. Pre-Ike, they said it could take 2-3 weeks to get power fully restored, and it has been less than two weeks. Yes, I'm sure if I was one of the unlucky ones who still didn't have power I might feel differently, but the mostly media created controversy still wouldn't help me get my power back or make me feel less frustrated.

Now, to the $700 billion bailout: I say NO! I don't buy the fear being sold with this story. I do believe that times could get hard, but I don't believe it would be another great depression. (Damn, I had something really pithy to say here, and I totally lost my train of thought. I hate it when that happens!)

Well, I should get up and do something to commemorate my last day of my Ike-induced vacation. Valerie didn't leave me a to-do list or send me a reminder email this morning, but I'm sure there is something I can do today besides sit and read. Of course, sitting and reading is very enticing. :-)

Happy Wednesday! (Btw, I just realized that I said "Happy Monday!" yesterday--see what happens when you don't go to work for 8 days.)

Ike-Induced Vacation Day 8

I am so ready to go back to work! My school district still has 7 of its 22 schools without power. Yesterday, 8 schools were still without power. I just hope they get more than one school up and running today because, if not, I might be off work for another week. I don't need to be off work after only about 4 weeks back to work (wait a minute, librarians start back a week before teachers who start a week before students so I had been back to work almost 5 weeks--still not enough time to need a vacation especially not one of this duration). I enjoyed my summer vacation, but I was ready to return to work last month.

I do have a short to-do list today and will have lunch with Valerie later, but I'm still basically just reading and watching TV most of the day. Today, though, I will be reading more because I have decided that today is War & Peace day. I will finish this book by the end of the year, but I want to be 200 pages in by the end of the day. I'm stopped on page 143 before I got on the computer. Now after killing some time reading emails, news, and blogs, it's almost time to get ready for lunch. After lunch, I will complete the items on the to-do list and settle in to read some more W&P. Too bad it warmed up again this week. I would love to sit on the patio and read all afternoon, but I will have to settle for sitting by our wall of windows that faces the patio with the a/c keeping me cool. :-)

Happy Monday!

Some post-Ike rambling

I am a lucky person. I have experienced no significant adverse effects from Hurrican Ike or its aftermath. I realize that it will be a long time before normality returns for many people, but I'm ready for my life to return to normal. As I was at the end of summer vacation, I'm ready to go back to work. I love free days just as much as the next person, but a week of free days this time of year is too much. Hopefully, faculty and staff in my district will be allowed to go back on Monday with students returning on Tuesday. I'm so glad that I am a librarian now instead of a teacher. If I were still a teacher, I know I would be very stressed about instructional time missed.

I have started and stopped several posts since the storm hit almost a week ago. Here are some of the things I started to post:

• From Monday evening, 9/15: Some thoughts triggered by the constant local news coverage: 1) ABC 13's Art Rascon saying 50 times how he covered the tsunami. Why does he keep reminding us of that? 2) Also on ABC 13, Melanie Lawson is being downright bitchy to the FEMA guy. (I know FEMA is not perfect, but FEMA-bashing should not commence until it has, once again, failed to do well.) 3) On ABC 13's website, included with the photos of storm damage is still clips of their reporters out in the storm. I hate it when reporters try to be the news instead of just reporting it. It's bad enough that we have to watch them constantly trying to make drama out of nothing on the TV but to post photos of your reporters with photos of the very REAL results of the storm is the kind of disgusting self-promotion that makes television news almost too difficult to watch these days. 4) Why do people need gas on Monday? If hardly anyone is working and if people had gassed up before the storm, I can't imagine that many people really needing gas today. 5) Speaking of excessive FEMA bashing - I heard this on the news today: a man called FEMA to report that his house in Galveston was destroyed. He couldn't understand why FEMA hung up on him, but I might have hung up on him too since he had not see the house yet--he evacuated--and didn't own the house but rented it.
  
• From Tuesday, 9/16: Although I have lived in a coastal community since the fall of 1992, I have really never been here during a hurricane or even a strong tropical storm. I was in Europe for TS Allison and Rita ended up coming in well to the east of here. I did evacuate in advance of Rita, something I swore that I would never do again. My post-Ike experience has not been so bad that I would change my mind except, perhaps, in the case of a Category 4 or 5. Ike was the strongest Category 2, and it was very widespread, so it might as well have been a Category 3. I could brave a Category 3, but I might have to get in the hallway or a closet instead of sleeping through much of it in my own bed, which is how I rode out most of Ike's worst. :-)
  
  We got electricity back yesterday morning. We had gone out to look for coffee and a hot breakfast. Instead we stumbled onto a line forming at Whole Foods. The sign said they would open in 1 hour and would sell 2 bags of ice to each customer. The cool temperature and the relatively short line made standing in line much more palatable. By the time the store opened, the line had wrapped around the back of the store. To our delight, the store not only sold us ice but gave us free coffee too. Getting free coffee and our power back was like waking up to the best Christmas morning ever! Ahhh!
  

I have spent my free days mostly reading and being lazy. I did go volunteer for one afternoon, and I am ashamed to admit that it depressed me so much that I couldn't make myself go back for more. I don't know what I expected, and maybe I'm just too selfish/self-involved to help people.

I finished two books this week, Babylon Rolling, which I might post about later, and Twilight, which I will definitely post a review of on my school library site. For me, neither book was a great read, but I have decided that bad books serve a good purpose for me. They make me want to read something really good and make me appreciate good writing even more.

I guess that's enough rambling for now. I'm going to read while I wait for working people to get off work and meet for Mexican food and margaritas. Hooray for normal Friday evening fun!

Some Sunday Stuff

Don't you just love alliteration! :-)

Wonderful Weekend Weather (More alliteration!)
The weather has been particularly nice this weekend in Houston. Last night, Valerie and I walked with a couple of friends to the park to watch a free modern ballet performance of Sleeping Beauty. I can't remember who said it, but someone said the pleasant temperatures and low humidity did not signify the beginning of fall but the beginning of the end of summer. A perfect description for this time of year in southeast Texas--unfortunately, it could take summer two or three months to end.

The ballet in the park was nice except for the young children who were behind us playing loudly and the drunk women behind us who couldn't control their children or their little dog or their own laughter. I'm not sure why they were there. They certainly were not watching the ballet. All things one must contend with if one wants to take advantage of a free performance on such a nice night. Our friend made a really nice, simple picnic: yummy egg sandwiches, grapes and cantaloupe, cheese, and homemade brownies.

One more thing about the ballet, as I said, it was Sleeping Beauty. Before we arrived at the park, I was trying to recall the story, and I realized that I sometimes confuse it with Snow White. Knowing that Snow White is the beauty who befriends the dwarfs helps me to keep them straight, but I really don't know the story of Sleeping Beauty very well. During the performance, I told Valerie of my lack of knowledge and she said she had the same problem. Later, our friend's husband leaned over and jokingly asked when the dwarfs were coming on. I told him that I didn't know this story that well either. During intermission, it became apparent from our conversations as well as others that I eavesdropped on. Using my phone, I looked up the story on Wikipedia and all of our inferences from the action on stage were accurate to the original story despite it being a modern retelling. Once the second act got underway, Valerie's earlier prediction that an overdose would put her in a coma proved to be right on. We are a very smart group of people indeed. ;-)

I can't emphasize enough how nice the weather has been here this weekend. This morning, Valerie and I sat on our patio and read the paper and books while we drank a pot of coffee. Then we went out for brunch and actually sat outside, two things we haven't done for several months. We really love our patio!

Speaking of Reading
War & Peace is really growing on me. I have finished only Part 1 of Volume 1. I want to read it all the time, but it is just too big to read when I go to bed or to take places with me. It is difficult to remember who all the characters are and what their relationships are, but I have decided that it is only necessary to understand the present of what's happening for now. I trust that eventually I will know enough the characters and their relationships so that I don't have this problem anymore.

I have read almost 200 pages of Twilight, which is essentially a work-read for me. I don't usually read the most popular books because I am an admitted literature snob and tend to find bestsellers to be lacking in depth and good writing. But I decided that as a junior high librarian I should read at least the first book of this series. Before I started reading it, I had read some really negative criticism, especially from the feminist perspective. I decided to read the book anyway and so far, I don't see the things that most of those feminist critics pointed out, but I do see how the main character could become what those critics decried. Still, I am enjoying the book and can definitely see how some readers, especially young girls and women, would be drawn to this book.

Then there's the book club book: Babylon Rolling. All I can say about this book is that it is okay. One thing that I am very confused by is the author's choice of using a first person narrator to tell one character's story while all the other characters' stories are told with a third-person narrator. The choice doesn't make sense to me yet, and I'm beginning to feel like it won't. I feel like the white, female author was attempting to show off her ability or her willingness to write in the voice of an African American drug-dealing teenager. I don't find the voice to be effective or necessary to the story. When I'm finished, I might do some review reading and see what critics think about it. Maybe I'm missing something, but I mostly find the change to be distracting, and I'm not usually bothered by narrator changes. Some of my favorite books utilize this very postmodern convention.

Well, the Astros and the Cowboys are on--both winning at the moment, and I need to do some work, so I guess that's enough stuff for this Sunday. Later.

Hillary and I Move On

I didn't watch Hillary's speech last night, the second speech this week that I wish I had watched. My brain and body were too tired last night--brain from a busy second day of school and body from walking 4.9 miles. Also, I think that I got kind of burned out on politics during the primaries and haven't completely re-engaged, but I am getting there.

Sitting here this morning watching the CBS morning show, I have seen a former FBI agent criticize Hillary's body language, which according to him didn't show enough emotion about Obama, and some Hillary supporters who were there last night and had reactions from still on the fence to gung-ho Obama supporter now. None of the coverage really spoke to what I think about the whole situation, and I don't have time to write what I think this morning. Luckily, I looked at my feeds on Google Reader and saw that Dorothy Surrenders had a new post. I think that the second paragraph of her post speaks to my feelings about Hillary and why I have to support Obama now.

Now, I am officially moving on and will be contributing some funds to the Obama-Biden campaign when I get paid this week. (Valerie, don't let me forget.)


Obama - Biden '08!!!!!!

BBC 100

I don't usually do memes, but I really like best books lists. It makes me feel good to see how many I have read. If I haven't read many, the list will give me titles of books that I want to read. I got this from Danielle at A Work in Progress.

The instructions:

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you love.
   
4. Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5. Reprint this list in your own blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling (I have read the first book in the series.)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I have read many of the plays and not just the popular ones, but I have not read them all. I will read Comedy of Errors soon.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (Valerie is very impatient for me to read this; she has been waiting for me to read it for a long time now.)
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I started this during the summer, but I haven't made much progress yet.)
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma- Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Really?!? Who put this book on the list?)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (I might have read this in school, but I'm not sure. I do know the story very well, but my knowledge could be from lit crit and curriculum materials that I have read over the years.)
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt (Another book that Valerie recommends to me.)
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (I really do intend to read this, but I will probably take Edward Albee's advice and read along with an audiobook.)
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (I just can't help but think of this book as touchy-feely dribble, and I just can't believe it belongs on a list like this.)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables– Victor Hugo

Reading Interrupted

I started back to work last week, and I have been watching too much Olympics at night to get much reading done. Twilight, my bedside table read right now, is good but not good enough to keep me awake into the wee hours, and I have wanted to keep reading more than once.

Even though I didn't make much progress in War & Peace, I felt pretty good about reading 13 books this summer. Then I read that Danielle at A Work in Progress has almost completed 1000 pages of Les Miserables, and I realized that I have a lot of reading to do if I am going to complete the Russian Reading Challenge by the end of the year. The problem with War & Peace is that it is too big to read when I'm lying in bed and too big to tote places with me. I wish that I was awake enough when I first come down stairs in the morning, then maybe I could make it a habit to read for a certain amount of time each morning. Reading would be more productive than lying on the couch watching the Weather Channel and dozing while my first cup of coffee cools and I get ready to get ready for work. And yes, I do realize that I could just come down stairs, get my coffee, go back up stairs immediately, and get ready earlier, thus giving myself some time to read before I leave for work. Yeah, I don't see myself making that a habit because I'm not enough of a morning person (read: I'm too lazy). I think my best bet will be to try to make it a habit to read some each afternoon when I get home from work. Of course, I'll to wait on that plan until Valerie's work schedule switches back to the one where she gets off work at 5:00. If she's home when I get here, I won't be able to concentrate on reading. ;-)

Now I'm going to get off the computer. I promised myself that I would not play any games tonight while I watched the Olympics. Maybe I can read some during the commericials, right?

Back to work

I start back to work today, and I am surprisingly ready to go. I would already be there except I have to go to pinkie therapy first. Even though I am not going in to work until late, I got up early this morning and did a bit of Internet surfing and discovered that what I already thought was going to be a great season of Inprint readings is going to be even better. I am so excited!!! I can't wait for the readings to begin. I am going to try very hard to post about each reading here. Actually, I have enough free time now that I could/should be posting regularly here, but for some reason, I haven't been. I'm going to try to post here more regularly.

Over the weekend, I finished The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, number thirteen for my summer reading, and started Twilight, finally. I have been putting off reading Twilight for over a year now. I just am not the kind of person who wants to read what everyone else is reading. Yes, I'm snobby like that. I'm the same way with movies. I figure that if a broad spectrum of people like something that it's probably too mainstream for me. I have been this way since I was a teenager--a very long time ago. I distinctly remember when Kramer vs. Kramer hit the theaters. All my friends told me that I had to see; it was the best movie ever. I saw it and didn't like it at all. When I went to college and grad school as an English major, I developed into a literature snob--sad but true. Of course, I am sometimes surprised by mainstream hits, both books and movies, and I hope to be surprised by Twilight. I've only read about 50 pages so far.

Wow, look at the time. I have to go to pinkie therapy now. Later.

Something quick and fun

Hat tip to Valerie.

The end of my summer

This is my last week of summer vacation. Next week, I go back for my second year as a junior high librarian. I had planned to read a bunch of YA books this summer, but I only read a couple so far. I might read one or two more before students return to school two weeks from Monday. I have read several books this summer. I need to blog about them and post reviews of the two that are Early Reviewer books at LibraryThing. For now, though, I will just list what I've read this summer.

1. Hero by Perry Moore
2. Eleven Minutes by Paul Coehlo
3. Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking by Aiobhean Sweeney
4. Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
5. Skim by Mariko Tamiki and Jillian Tamiki
6. Love Marriage by V.V. Ganeshananthan
7. The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper
8. Drown by Junot Diaz
9. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
10. The Murder Room by P.D. James

Wow! Ten books in just over two months. Pretty good for a slow reader like me. I will finish at least one more this week, Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum. Plus, I have read about 100 pages of War & Peace. I need to set aside 30 minutes to an hour each day to read some of it because I want to finish it before the end of the year.

Now, I need to go beat Valerie at Rummikub. :-)

Summer is going too fast!

I can't believe July is almost half over already! I haven't done many of the things that I intended to do this summer. I have read several books but not as many as I had hoped. The office is still not done. I haven't done any writing except for a couple of journal entries and a few short blog posts. I haven't walked for exercise since returning from vacation. I haven't been in the swimming pool once this summer.

So what have I been doing to waste my summer? I have spent way too much time playing computer games while I half-watch television. So I have decided to re-instate my game-playing fast that served me very well during Lent. I will not play games for the rest of this month. Instead, I will spend my time reading and writing and even working a little, and I will walk every day and work on the office. Hell, I might even do the housework that I had intended to do once a week. (But that's not a promise, Valerie.)

Tomorrow I will try to post about some of the reading that I have done this summer. Until then, I'll say good night.

Happy 4th!

Since I have the whole summer off, today really seems like just another day of summer to me. However, tonight I will watch the biggest fireworks show in the country (or at least that's how it's billed) from a friend's rooftop patio. Until then, I will probably just be lazy and read some. As a matter of fact, I think I will go some place and read while I have lunch, some place cool. Too bad, it's so damn hot and humid here. I would love to just stay here and move to the patio for a while this afternoon. I could just sit inside and be cool and lazy and save money, but the past couple of days, I have felt the need to get out of the house. Not sure why.

Unfortunately, deciding where to go is a problem. My favorite sit and read place has been closed down for a while now. :-( I need to find a new go-to spot for days like today. But first, I have to get off the computer and get dressed. If I don't do it now, I will still be sitting here when Valerie returns and then I won't go anywhere. So, enjoy your 4th. Later.

I'm bored :-(

and i'm lazy. Yesterday, I told myself that I would do some housekeeping today, but today, I just don't feel like it--LAZY! I feel like I need to get out of the house and see what's happening in Houston. So, I think I will go to a couple of independent bookstores, Brazos Bookstore and Domy, unless I find what I want, Junot Diaz's Drown at Borders where I have a coupon for 25% off. Actually, I will probably go to at least one of the other bookstores whether I find the book at Borders or not. Sorry, I'm too poor to be a good supporter of independents.

Then maybe I will go to a museum. I have been feeling very art needy since I returned from vacation. Valerie and I went to the Georgia O'Keefe museum and the art museum as well as a couple of galleries in Santa Fe. In Albuquerque, we went to a gallery exhibit for Trappings, which asks women to identify clothing that makes them feel powerful. All interesting and enjoyable. But I still feel like I need more art and I feel like I need to be artistic, but I haven't been feeling very artistic of late. Maybe a museum visit will inspire me, but I won't hold my breath.

Later.

Ouch! and two books

Yesterday, I stayed on the computer so long that it got too hot and actually burned my leg. I knew that I was staying on the computer too long, but I just kept getting sucked in by things on the Internet. Today, I got my chill pad out, but I don't plan to stay on the computer all day--notice that I said plan. ;-)

After I realized that my leg was really burned, I got off the computer with the intention to be productive around the house. Instead, I finished reading Garden of Eden and started reading Skim, a graphic novel, which I finished last night before I went to bed. Before I went to sleep, after doing three NYT crosswords, one with Valerie's help, I read the intro to Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, thinking that I might read it today, but I have yet to do any reading.

Garden of Eden
I bought this book a while back because I saw something on AfterEllen.com about a movie version being in the works, and it is a Hemingway novel that I have never read. Actually, I had only read a one of his novels and some of his short stories. I taught Old Man and the Sea for several years, and I read his short stories as a student and as a teacher.

In the beginning, I liked the two main characters Catherine and David Bourne, even though I felt the dialogue was mostly inane and completely unbelievable. As the story progressed, though, I just got tired of them and wished that Hemingway would have written explicitly about all the sex they were having with each other and eventually with another woman, with whom both of them had fallen in love. Of course, it's Hemingway, so the latter part of the book focuses on the heterosexual and merely alludes to the homosexual. Plus, of course, Catherine is tormented by her desire for another woman and by her adultery with the other woman while David feels only love toward the other woman--no adulterous guilt at all. Not surprising for Heminway, I don't think. At least Catherine didn't off herself after committing adultery or a perhaps even more despicable farewell act.

I am going to do some research and see what others thought/think about this novel and maybe I will write more about it later.

Skim
I am learning to like graphic novels. They make me feel like I can read faster. :-) This one is about typical teenage angst. While the dialogue leaves much to be desired and the plot is not very original, the graphics are wonderful.

Now, I'm going to get off the computer, have some lunch, and do something besides sit on the couch and surf the Internet. Maybe I'll work on organizing my stuff in the office or maybe I will go some place. Later.