booktastic

I think, as a reader, I would have to say that the worst part of moving is moving my books.

Not that I’m terribly anal about them or worried they’re going to get battered on the trip… Well, maybe there’s a touch of that. Just a touch. But that’s not the worst thing. The Worst Thing is that they take up so much space and are so freaking heavy once they’re packed. I mean, look at my collection here…

Granted, it’s only four or five boxes. Not a big deal… if each of them didn’t way somewhere in the area of TWO HUNDRED POUNDS.

Someone please remind us to rent a dolly with the truck. Either that or someone recommend a good physical therapist who can help us rehabilitate from the injuries we are going to suffer trying to move these things…  — Mrs. Hall

I made a mistake tonight. This is the third time that I have babysat Miss A.V.S. Each time I have babysat, I brought a book. The first time, although I brought a book, I didn’t have an opportunity to open it because she was a baby proper - I was watching her constantly. The second time I babysat her, I brought a book. It looked like I was going to get to read it after she fell asleep. However, she didn’t fall asleep - she got over-tired and I had to hold her and carry her around the house for a half an hour while she threw an over-tired tantrum.

This is the book I was going to bring tonight. I’m supposed to be reading it so that I can review it for the publisher. (Isn’t it pretty?)

However, as I was getting ready to leave and throwing things into my tote bag, I thought to myself, “Who am I kidding? I’m not going to have an opportunity to read.” So, I left the book at home.

You know where this is going, don’t you? At nine o’clock sharp, my charge fell sound asleep. Her parents don’t get home until eleven, so I’ve got two absolutely empty hours to myself. The one time I would have got a chance to read is the one time I didn’t bring a book!!!

Oh well. As you can see, it gave me a chance to catch up on my blogging. (Thank goodness Miss A.V.S.’s parents have an internet connection or I would be totally out of luck. I might have been forced to watch television - shudder). And I should have plenty of time to read this book, since the only thing I’m doing in the next few weeks is packing up boxes (my temp job ended on Thursday and now I’m moving).

But trust me not to bring a book the ONE time that I would actually have had an opportunity to read it. And, of course, the next time I babysit I suspect I will bring a book - and have no opportunity to read. Because that is how These Things Work. — Mrs. Hall

By the way, I just wanted to go on record: I did not switch my blog’s visual theme to make it look like this. Inexplicably, my blog provider’s company decided that ALL its blogs are going to be formatted this way.

I am against it personally as I think it looks very awkward and ugly the way it is organized now… but what to do. – Mrs. Hall

I was harassing Mr. Hall a few minutes ago about getting behind on his blogging (he maintains the Toys 365 blog) when it suddenly struck me that I’ve let mine get away from me, too.

Of course, life has been rather interesting this past week or so. Our lease is up at the end of this month and we’re moving to a different state. This is a rather big change of course, and my mind is not unlike a several-years-old computer… You start up a new program, and then suddenly the whole thing sloooowwsss dowwwwnnnn.

So I haven’t been reading. I haven’t even been listening to books. Well, I have, but I’ve been doing it with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

I’ve been listening to The Camelot Caper by Elizabeth Peters. None of the Agatha Christie novels I wanted were available for download, so I clicked through the “If you liked ___, you will also like…” buttons (past dozens of Agatha Christie novels, I might add. So, Computer, so you think that if I enjoyed Agatha Christie I might like MORE Agatha Christie? What a deduction!!) until I came across this book. It’s apparently a parody of Gothic romance novels tied together with a mystery, which is not an unpromising combo. (I’ve only read one Gothic romance, Wuthering Heights, but I did enjoy it.) So, despite its rather crappy title, I downloaded The Camelot Caper.

The Plot: The heroine, whatshername, has been invited from America by her estranged grandfather to come to jolly old England and visit him before he dies. And bring the family heirloom ring, he adds. So she goes and almost as soon as getting off the plane she finds herself accosted by a mysterious man who seems to want to rob her or accost her in some way. He follows her around town until revealing his motive: he wants the ring. Well, she meets up with a skinny, big-nosed author of Gothic novels and they chase across England, avoiding and getting into scrapes and trying to figure out the significance of the ring.

Oh, it’s been light and enjoyable so far (I’m over 3/4 of the way through), but my heart just hasn’t been in it for the past few chapters. I don’t know why - maybe I’ve just been too distracted to really get into the book. I know that’s the problem I’ve been having with Dying for Chocolate - which, yes, I am still reading, one or two pages at a time. I got to a section in the book where not much was happening and got stuck.

I think our move is going to go relatively smoothly, so hopefully my brain will speed up again soon and I’ll be able to blog regularly on my bountiful reading. I had such a good momentum at the beginning of this year - I don’t want to lose it! — Mrs. Hall

P.S. Come to think of it, I really need to get back on track as far as reading goes - the mail yesterday brought not one but TWO books that I have to review in this blog. Not just for fun, mind you, but because I’m actually professionally employed to do so. Hooray for being a professional writer!

Yesterday evening, Mr. Hall turns to me and goes, “Say, did you hear Terry Pratchett is going to be knighted?”

I’m something of a fan of Mr. Pratchett, so this was good news. It’s always nice to hear that an author you like is getting the acclaim he deserves. (Well, sometimes. Sometimes I’d rather that nobody but me knew about a certain author… but that situation probably wouldn’t be very good for the author in question. Anyway, I’m badly digressing here.) Terry Pratchett, in case you don’t know, is a British author of humorous fantasy. He’s also one of the few (well, the only, really) authors who once sat on my “favorite author” list who I have also met in person! Charming, charming man. Wonderful sense of humor. I asked him to sign my copy of Maskerade; he signed it, “Unmasked! Terry Pratchett.”

Then John went on, “He also announced that he’s got Alzheimer’s.”

Talk about a change of direction.

What terribly sad news. Click here to read the speech he gave to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust UK. It has all his characteristic wit and good humor. Although he is, of course, not happy with the situation and would much rather (as he put it) “die like my father did - of cancer, at 86″ - this 60-year old author seems to be approaching it with a good attitude and a fighting spirit, which is of course the best possible way to approach an illness.

And, of course, he just got knighted (December 31st! Hot off the presses!) which seems to have perked him up a bit. “I’m having difficulty fitting it into my head. I’m very pleased indeed. It cheers me up no end,” he said in an article called Knighthood Stuns Pratchett from The Independent (from which I also got the photo I used in this post).

So now he’s Sir Terry Pratchett! I know extremely little about how the British knighthood system works - I don’t know if this means that he’ll be credited on his books now as “Sir Terry Pratchett” or as “Terry Pratchett, OBE”, or if it even effects that at all… I rather hope he does use it on his books. Could look a little pretentious, I suppose, but in my opinion this is definitely a case of if you’ve got it - flaunt it!

But it’s just nice that a nice person got a little pick-me-up after receiving such bad news last year. — Mrs. Hall

As some of you may know, I spent three hours last New Year’s Eve reading Visions of Sugar Plums while locked in a women’s toilet and waiting for my husband to get off work. Well, I can’t top that for a New Year’s Eve reading adventure this year, but I did have one, if minor and disguised as a misadventure…

Yesterday, New Year’s Eve, I got off work early. I wasn’t even scheduled to work yesterday, but they said we could come in to pick up extra hours (and that we didn’t have to worry about the dress code, and I was that eager to pick up the “Nostalgia City” t-shirt I bought over break) so I went in and worked until three-thirty. Then I ran by Trader Joe’s and picked up a couple groceries (including a bottle of Moscato for the evening’s celebrations) and called my husband to see if he needed me to drop anything by the Zoo where he currently works. He would be working until nine, you see, but he didn’t need anything, so he told me to just head on home. We would be spending New Year’s Eve quietly, together, with that bottle of Moscato and a lovely ball of fresh mozzarella cheese from Trader Joe’s.

It takes me about an hour to get home from my temp job. I ride one bus for twenty minutes, then wait ten minutes for my transfer bus, and ride that for another thirty minutes. I did so, and got home at about five-thirty; cold, and ready to put down my heavy grocery bag and put up my feet. I regretted not wearing my gloves on the walk from the bus to my door as it was colder outside than I thought, and my hands had gotten quite chilled. At the door, I paused, put down the grocery bag, and opened up my purse. I reached into the small, inner pocket where I usually clip my house key.

It wasn’t there.

Sometimes it falls out into the bottom of the purse, so I reached in and hunted around for a while. It still wasn’t there.

So I took everything out of my purse and looked through every nook and cranny, looked inside my wallet and inside gnarled twists of old receipts, and still nothing. That was when it finally struck me that the last time I’d actually used my key was when I let my in-laws into the house two days before, when I was wearing my old winter coat.

I was wearing my NEW winter coat.

I sighed. My feet had gotten very cold: I was only wearing canvas shoes and one pair of socks, as I hadn’t expected it to be very cold out that day - and my hands were getting colder every minute. For just a second I contemplated waiting on the porch until my husband got home - but five hours in fifteen degree weather? Without proper winter boots? Not even to mention the bananas I had bought would go black. I dismissed that thought pretty quick.

I walked around the house shaking the windows to see if any of them were loose - a futile gesture, as I know I keep the windows locked tight. I checked the back door to see if the neighbors had left it open - no such luck. For just a few moments I contemplated phoning our landlord, Mr. Komarek, and asking him to let me in… but I couldn’t see doing that to him on a cold winter night, especially as he’d recently been kind enough to pick up our mail for us while we were away for Christmas. And the thing that I used to do when I was locked out of the house - go and hang out at my almost-next-door friend Georgia’s until Mr. Hall got off work - wasn’t going to happen. My friend Georgia moved to England earlier this year, and I don’t have any other friends in the neighborhood.

I was left with only one option.

I sighed, picked up my grocery bag and trudged back out into the night and down to the bus stop. I had no other alternative but to ride the bus to Mr. Hall’s workplace, get his keys, and ride back again. I would ride the bus there (forty minutes), chat with Mr. Hall for a moment or two explaining where my keys had gone (ten minutes at least), wait for the returning bus (ten to fifteen minutes) and then ride it home again (thirty to forty minutes). At least an hour and forty minutes of wasted time before I could relax for the evening, all because I’d forgotten to put my keys back in my purse.

There was naught to be done about it, so I decided not to fret about it. I experienced a few moments of anxiety that Mr. Hall might get sent home early from his job and I would have spent the bus-ride in vain, but I didn’t worry about that too much since I had no other options and riding the bus was better than being out in the cold anyway. And I could read!

As soon as my bus came (which was a relief, as my feet were getting really cold by that time) I whipped out the book I happened to have with me, A Monstrous Regiment of Women. I had just gotten to a rather interesting spot when the bus dropped me off near Mr. Hall’s workplace, so I really didn’t notice that half of the bus ride at all. I had no problem with motion-sickness as (oddly!) since I started wearing my New Winter Coat it simply hasn’t been an issue.  I suspect it is because my new winter coat is more breathable and I don’t get as stiflingly hot.

I chatted with Mr. Hall for a few minutes at the Zoo as expected - it was a slow night at the Zoo, and I was actually able to do him a favor; he had gotten a Christmas present from the Zoo (a Zoo mug and a book about the Zoo) and I agreed to tote them home for him. I pocketed his keys as well, shook his hand (no overt displays of affection at work) and trudged back to the bus stop to wait.

This was probably the worst part of this excursion, as it is always extremely cold at that particular bus stop, and my feet hadn’t quite recovered from their previous chill - and it was too dark to read. I kicked my feet on the ground, trying to get the blood flowing to them, and trying not to be annoyed with the odd hoard of children who kept frolicking around me (who seemed unaffected by the cold). It was forever before my bus finally came. Actually about fifteen minutes, but it seemed like forever.

But it did, and I whipped my book out again. It got more interesting and I barely even noticed the time passing. I was a little worried that I’d get so “into” the book that I would miss my stop and ride all the way out to Cicero… but I didn’t. (Thank goodness). My feet warmed up again, and at long last I got off my bus at the corner and made the short, chilly walk up to the block to our apartment, and let myself in again. It was seven-thirty when I got home, so it had been exactly two hours since I first realized my keys were missing.

However, I’d read a hundred pages of my book, I can’t say the time was wasted! And once again, I had an odd New Year’s Eve reading adventure. — Mrs. Hall

P.S. Happy New Year! Mr. Hall and I had a quiet, pleasant, and even romantic New Year’s Eve and beginning to 2009. We turned the lights down low, drank our wine, listened to George Harrison and gazed at the lights on our Christmas tree. All and all, a lovely evening.

Know what doesn’t make sense to me? The fact that the Chicago public library doesn’t allow you to renew your books when they’re overdue. Of all the times that a person would need to renew books, it seems like that’s a rather important one!

I am also annoyed with their policy of not accepting credit cards. I mean, the library in SPRINGFIELD MISSOURI accepts credit cards - and Chicago doesn’t?

I don’t know why I’m ragging on the ChiPubLib today, except that I’m annoyed that my books are a further day overdue today and I have no way of renewing them (and I won’t have an opportunity of returning them until tomorrow). I must owe like five bucks by now.

Well, it’s the last day of the crappy year that was 2008. I don’t know about you, but I’m rather excited to put it behind me and see what the new year brings.

There’s a possibility that I may be going to graduate school this coming year. I’ve been accepted by a school in my home state; it comes down to a question of whether we want to move back to my home state or not. I’d be going to grad school for an M.A. in English, which has been one of my goals for a long, long time; I seemed to fare well in an academic environment, unlike a business/data entry environment (and here’s a place for me to share an appropriate quote: “Once humans spent most of their days doing useful things with their hands, and I realized that we were designed to get a deep satisfaction from this. As Hughes put it, ‘You have the feeling people were supposed to do this kind of work, rather than data entry, which is amazingly horrible.’” - Emily Yoffe).

So I feel somewhat inclined to do that, because I think it would suit me as a profession better than being an office flunky. Of course, I’ve been worrying that maybe it would be better for me to do something like an M.A. in Library Science - because people with that degree are surprisingly well paid.  It wouldn’t be SO BAD to actually get trained for a position where I would be making a decent salary for once in my life, would it? (Except that I think that I’m just tempermentally more suited to teaching than to something like library science which - at its heart - is mostly clerical, data-entry type stuff. *sigh*)

Well, it’s something to contemplate in this 2009. Well, not really, since I’ve been accepted to the English program and not the Library Science program. And money’s not everything, after all - but everything costs money, which always unecessarily complicates life. — Mrs. Hall

I had a stroke of book-related good luck day before yesterday. On my way down the hallway to my office, I happened to notice signs up in the hallway indicating that there would be a book sale in the building at some point that day. I’m not entirely clear on my way around the building so I thought no more of it until my office mate pointed out that it was at the conference room right across from our office, and would I like to head over there with her during lunch?

I have no objection to book sales (even though money is tight right now) although I had no idea what sort of books they might be; I have wide-ranging inerests, but I do have my limits.  But regardless I headed over with her at noon and we perused the tables.

Well, this is where it took a turn for the delightful. For one thing, the prices were exceedingly reasonable: if the original cover price were up to $10, the price of the book was $1; if the original cover price up to $20 the book was $2 and so on. For another thing - the tables were covered and overflowing with brand new books. Well, perhaps not brand-new - some were a year or two old - but most were within the first year and a half since publication. And for another thing - there was a pretty decent selection!

Turns out that the book critics at the newspaper (I’m purposefully not saying which Chicago newspaper to avoid being stalked - and because they’ve been in the news for other reasons lately and I don’t want to give them any more trouble) receive any number of free books from publishing companies every year for review purposes - but they feel it’s not in their journalistic integrity to actually keep the books (as it smacks a little of bribery in their opinion; not in mine but that’s neither here nor there) so every year they have this big book sale and donate the money to charity. (Let’s not even discuss whether selling books that are labeled “Not To Be Sold” is better than keeping a book that a publisher sent you to keep. I guess since it goes to charity it’s okay.)

Perhaps the best (and worst) thing about the sale was… this sale isn’t  open to the public, not really. It’s on an upper floor of the building and you can’t just walk in here - you need a special pass to get past the security guys. So it was really only employees who got to pick over the tables.

If only I had more time and a bigger budget! I could have spent hours there - and spent considerably more than the $21 dollars I wound up spending. (And I only had $20 in birthday money on me - I had to borrow that last dollar from my office mate.)

It strikes me suddenly that it may seem like I’m gloating - “I got to go to the super secret book sale and you didn’t!” kind of thing. That was not intended: I simply offer this as an interesting book-related story (and let you know so that if you happen to be in the area - and have a pass to get into a certain Chicago newspaper building - at this time next year, you should totally come to this sale). I also did want to share what it was that I picked up - as you are some of the few people who will appreciate my finds, as they are rather eclectic. I found:

Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon

Genius and Heroin by Michael Largo

Stop Whining and Start Living by Dr. Laura Schlessinger

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Sandiford

Foyle’s Philavery by Christopher Foyle

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar … by Thomas Cathcart

Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder by Gyles Brandreth

I also picked up a couple other books, but I’m not talking about them because they are going to be finding their ways under my Christmas tree this year. (No, I’m not giving them to myself, in case you were wondering.) — Mrs. Hall

Sorry that I haven’t been posting much this past week… It’s been snowing, which means that I’ve been staring out of the bus at snow rather than reading.

It’s my birthday today. I am officially almost not a kid anymore. Next year is the big three-oh… I’m not sure how I feel about that. I wax and wane between excited, confused and bewildered.

I went to Borders on Friday to try and do a little more Christmas shopping and just finish off a couple of people… with no luck. I wound up purchasing myself a book (as per usual, only this time I justified it as a “to myself” birthday gift) - but, really, it’s not much of a book: it’s called I’m Just Here For the Food: Cook’s Notes and claims to be “brought to you by Alton Brown“. It was on the clearance rack for $2.99, if you’re interested.

Thing of it is - this is a empty book. It’s ruled with lines so that you can put your own recipes and cooking notes into it; it doesn’t even have, like, funny quotes from him or anything. It’s not “brought to you by Alton Brown” any more than your math homework is brought to you by Pikachu. However, I didn’t buy it for the Alton Brown-ness; I’m copying all my random recipes into it so that they won’t be floating around the kitchen on random bits of paper and sticky notes anymore, which is a Good Thing. No more will I have to hunt through the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook for the back of an envelope that I wrote my recipe for meatloaf on: now it is safely ensconced in a bound book of Mrs. Hall’s foods. Tra-la.

I am, however, thinking of putting Gremlin stickers all over the place where it says “Brought to you by Alton Brown”, because it kind of irritates me to have Alton Brown claiming credit for all of my recipes.  — Mrs. Hall

Very odd: this morning when I got on the bus, the girl sitting in front of me whipped a book out of her bag in a surreptitious manner and started to read it. She even glanced over her shoulder as if she didn’t want people looking at her book.

However, totally not meaning to, I caught sight of the cover of her book as she opened it. It was called “The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey” and had a rather interesting cover. It was intriguing enough that I very nearly asked the girl about the book… but, well, the look she had given me indicated she didn’t want to be bothered about her book, and I’m not really all that together first thing in the morning, so before about five minutes had passed I had forgotten about it entirely.

Imagine my surprise when I got home and was looking for something totally unrelated (a particular 50’s rock compendium CD) on Amazon.com, and found, among my recommendations, The Mysterious Benedict Society . I’ve never even heard about this book before, and yet had it mysteriously brought to my attention twice today.

… Okay, that’s not exactly a harmonic convergence, but I thought it was interesting. I think I should check this book out.

In other news, I was at Borders today doing a rather weak attempt at Christmas shopping, and saw a book that looked quite interesting: My Lobotomy, a guy writing about the odd circumstance behind his being given a lobotomy at age 12, and how his life has turned out. (I didn’t buy it because it was new, and anyway, I wasn’t really supposed to be buying books for myself.) Incidentally, Bookmooch doesn’t have either of these books right now, which is hardly surprising: the number of books on Bookmooch drops drastically after “Christmas shopping” time comes around. Things should pick up again in January after everybody tries to unload unwanted presents.