Monday, April 09, 2018

Monday Malarkey



Recent arrivals:


  • The Lost Family by Jenna Blum and 
  • Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi - both from Harper for review
  • How to Forget a Duke - from Avon for review


Variety is clearly my watchword. I'm excited about all three of these books. The Lost Family is my #1 Most Wanted summer title (release date is in June) and Vivienne Lorret wrote one of the stories in the Christmas romance anthology I read in December. I remembered her name when I saw How to Forget a Duke on offer and jumped at the opportunity to request it.  I don't read romance often, but I do enjoy it for the change of pace.


Books finished since last Malarkey:


  • Princesses Behaving Badly by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie
  • The Not-So-Boring Letters of Private Nobody by Matthew Landis 
  • Look for Her by Emily Winslow

I finished the latter two books this weekend, thanks the fact that I had such an awful reading week that I told my husband I was going to read until my eyes crossed. I ended up only reading between chores, but I still managed to finish the two books and get all of our intended weekend tasks finished, so I'm declaring the weekend a success.



Currently reading:


  • Rocket Men by Robert Kurson
  • If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  • Don Quixote by Cervantes


Oh, man. I am getting so tired of typing "Don Quixote" every week, at this point. And, I didn't read a single page, last week. This week, I'm going to shoot for 200 pages. Wish me luck. We're now about 10 days away from F2F group discussion, so I'll focus on Lincoln in the Bardo as soon as I finish Rocket Men. Rocket Men is about the Apollo 8 mission, the first to orbit the moon, and it is written in a way that makes your heart literally beat faster. I was alive during that Apollo moonshot, although young enough I was unlikely aware of it, but even in spite of the fact that I know it was a success, the reading is stunningly exciting. I will likely finish reading it tonight (mostly because I can barely stand to set it down). If You Come Softly is very short (YA, I think) so I'm sure I'll finish that pretty quickly, too. I'm enjoying it but it's a bit slower paced than I expected.


Last week's posts:




I almost had myself convinced I wasn't going to get around to reviewing anything at all, last week, and then I finished Princesses Behaving Badly and felt like writing. And, I just continued to sit at the desk till I'd finished writing about Good Behavior, as well. If not for that one day, I probably would have only posted a cat photo because I had a few sleepless nights, last week, and was just not in the mood to read or write much.


In other news:

Because I had a bad blogging week, I didn't get around to posting my drawing for the cat book I Am the Boss of this Chair. I'll try to get that up, tomorrow. I've never used Rafflecopter, so I have to read up on it to see if that's what I want to use. TV-wise, we hardly watched anything because we were too busy emptying cabinets and replacing old drinking glasses and dishes with new ones (same dish design, although they're more off-white than the originals). I know, so exciting. But, actually, it was kind of fun clearing out all the old stuff -- dishes with cracks and chips that were no longer microwave safe -- with fresh replacements. And, the drinking glasses we had left were just a hodge-podge of leftovers from various sets in which most had been broken, over the years. With the exception of a few one-offs that we're attached to, all of those partial sets of glasses are going to be donated or passed on to Kiddo if he wants any of them. It's nice to start out fresh.


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4 comments:

  1. My reading hasn’t been going great either. I’m just not in the mood. Then of course my blogging slumps too. Sigh!

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    1. They seem to go hand in hand, don't they? I didn't feel much like reading or blogging, last week. Over the weekend, though, things improved. I warned Le Husband that I was going to read at every opportunity because I needed it after a bad reading week and he just shrugged. We still got all of our intended chores done, so everyone was happy. Hope you emerge from your slump, soon.

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  2. Another great post. I have to ask--do you have a system for your reading and then reviews? You seem to read a lot of books--it would take me ages to get through all that you posted here! Any tips for us slower readers? :)

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    Replies
    1. I don't have a system at all. I just read at bedtime and I'm a bad sleeper so that can mean several hours of reading in bed or a couple pages - depends on how sleepy I am. I also like to keep my reading varied so I don't get tired of any particular type of book. As to reviewing, I keep an open blog post of everything I've read (a draft). When I finish a book, I add the title and author to that post and then I refer back to it to remind myself what I need to review. I also add each finished book to a monthly stack, which I keep on the same shelf every month. So, at the end of the month I have my stack of finished books all in one place and a list of every book I've read. When I review a book, I add a link to whatever title I've just reviewed in the draft post. So, at the end of the year I've already got a post ready, as soon as I've reviewed everything, complete with links. Then, I just publish it and create a link in my "Books Read in Years Past" column in the sidebar.

      Huh, I do sound pretty organized, don't I? Lately, I've also written a list of the books I plan to read in a particular month - in the same little notebook I use for my weekly Do List. That gives me things to check off. I love the sense of accomplishment when I get to put a little checkmark by something. If I start to get slumpish, I'll just let anything at all call to me and I don't always manage to read everything I hope to read, but writing lists has helped me focus a little on reading the ARCs that arrive on my doorstep. I also mix up lengths of books for the same reason. I have this burning need to feel like I've accomplished something, so mixing children's books with novels and nonfiction or poetry and shorter novels so that I actually finish some titles is something I usually do to keep myself feeling accomplished. I'm a moody reader so that's another great thing about reading a variety. If one book doesn't fit my mood, there's bound to be another one around here that hollers at me.

      I hope that helped because it sure was a long-winded answer. LOL

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