booktastic

I made the mistake of trying to do Christmas shopping today. Well, I guess in spirit it wasn’t a mistake: after all, if I wait much longer, Christmas will be upon me and I’ll be out of luck and probably out of money. No, it was a good idea to try to shop today.

I guess the mistake was that I tried to go to places that I like to shop, because I mainly find things for myself. On my lunch break, I ran down Michigan Avenue and went into the Borders next to the Water Tower. I saw lots of books that I would like, and a whole lot of books that I could potentially have bought for my sister-in-law (she’s easy to shop for… but fortunately or unfortunately, I’ve already finished picking out her gifts) but nothing for the person on my list who is the hardest to shop for: my father in law. He has intensely simple needs - and whenever the man wants something, he buys it himself! Gift shopping for him is enough to drive a person to distraction.

Oh, in book-related news: if you’re at all a fan of Jan Karon’s Mitford series, you’ll find a couple jems in Borders’s bargain book isle. They’ve got both In This Mountain and Shepherds Abide - both, I believe, either $4.99 or $5.99. I would have picked them up myself but I already have both!

I wound up coming out with a potential gift for my mother-in-law, something for my siblings and a surprise for Mr. Hall (a book he has admired in the past, Postcards from the Boys by Ringo Starr. It’s a rather interesting book of… you guessed it… postcards from the other Beatles. And get this - it was only $4.99 on the bargain book rack!) but nothing for my father-in-law. Bah!

My trip to Kohl’s this evening after work was similarly uninspiring, and I came away very disgusted at their insufficient supply of men’s thermal underwear. I also came out of Kohl’s exhausted, and promptly missed a bus. Lately when I’m tired I’ve been rather fragile about the most minuscule things, so missing that bus almost drove me to tears… But I comforted myself, thought about the good confession I’d had last night; thought about the lovely way my church had set up for the Eucharistic adoration and the amazing hum of energy in church whenever the blessed sacrament is displayed; thought about the shirt I had bought at Kohl’s (uh… for myself) and waited, and sure enough another bus came past less than ten minutes later. Thank God for small miracles. The bus ride home was brief, quiet, and I was able to read without any motion-sickness problems. Again, thank God.

I had stuff to do upon getting home (like writing this blog, doing dishes, taking a shower, doing laundry), but I was just too tired… it’s been a long day and a long week. So I heated up some left-over meatloaf and macaroni, settled down on the couch an opened up the book that I’ve been reading. On a spur-of-the-moment whim this week I decided that, although I have a lot of other books I should be working on, it was time to pick up the next book in the Mitford series, In This Mountain. It’s the seventh book.

I don’t think I’ve read one of the Mitford books since June or July. Maybe even before that, I don’t recall. But anyway, I opened up this book at the beginning of the week; I had a bit of trouble getting into the first few pages, and I actually began to think that this was going to be the first of the Mitford books that I didn’t get totally wrapped up in…

I was wrong, of course. Jan Karon wins again. After getting home I spent the remainder of the evening reading it, and am almost half way through now. I think that Shepherds Abide, the eighth book, may be the last, so maybe I ought to be dragging my feet a little more… Ah well, no time to worry about it now. I’ve taken my shower and written my blog, so now I have some dishes to do. — Mrs. Hall

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