My Reading Obsession

Honestly, I feel as if I don’t do anything else. Even I, the reading obsessed feel a bit tired of books….I know! Shocking.

With the nook, I have a book with me at all times. I carry it in my purse and pull it out anywhere-doctors office, line at the store, whatever.  Then I have books I’m reading at home.  Plus the 2 hours commuting every day. I’ve had a book I couldn’t put down and that took up hours and hours and hours…it’s been like reading gluttony around here.

For my birthday my mom gave me a bag of books. One of those big new bags that replace wrapping paper, right? Full of books.  All that I have wanted to read too!

I finally finished all the Harry Potter series again. I took it to work the last day because I just could not put it down. Ended up finishing about 10 minutes before we got home.  The thing is, it’s very hard to hide tears streaming down your face when you are on a small van filled with 8 people! And I hadn’t even gotten the back seat that day! It was embarrassing!  Oh well, right?  I am ready for the movie though, so that’s all good.

Other than that, I took a quick trip to Oregon to take B home, visited with Char and Billy, then came home. We went boating with friends and are going again on Saturday, so I’ve got some sun…not much else.

So our YE closing is almost over and I seem to be accepted pretty much in my new management position. I like it. A bit more stressful, but I think that’s because I don’t know how to do anything.  I just got some positive feedback from those above me, which is good.

I’m reading a new book, ‘The Passage’ by Justin Cronin.  It’s sort of like ‘The Stand’ only instead of a killer disease cooked up by our government and accidentally let loose on the world, we are stuck with government engineered vampires.  Awesome. Anyway, it’s a huge book. I mean, it’s on my nook (of course!!!!) so I’m not holding a big thing, but it’s 800 something pages, so it’s lasting me a few weeks.  I love to see how people think upsets to society would affect people and how the group would survive.  Always interesting of course, and this is fun in that way.  A little depressing maybe.  I get now, more than halfway through that there may be hope, but up to this point it’s just been death, dismemberment and dismay.

I’m also on Harry Potter 6, which feels a bit weird because I’ve so recently seen the movie. These later books though…there is so much in the books that is not in the movie. Of course that’s why I’m excited K is reading them.

The cookies this week were good, but gone before I could take a picture.  They were Espresso Chocolate Orange type things. They tasted like the chocolate oranges you buy at Christmas but were a crisp little cookie. The family evidently liked them, since, again, they were gone.

I’ve just been enjoying my nook lately, and reading a lot. Very fun, for a bookworm of course.  I am working on Harry Potter 5.  I want to finish the set before the movie comes out in November, so I have 2.75 to go….I was talking to K last night. He said he enjoys HP, but just reads a bit at a time and never wants to find out what happens next.  Meanwhile I am dying to read it more, and I’ve probably read it 4-5 times already.  It’s sick.  I am re-reading Mansfield Park.  Fanny is my least favorite Austen girl, but I’m trying to be less judgmental.  I am still working on The Namesake, and a book from the 70’s, Final Diagnosis. It’s one lent to me, and it seems outdated, so I’m having a hard time with it.

I bought a new book, Doodle Stitching, and it is beautiful.  Makes me want to do a bunch of embroidery, which is the plan of course.

So every morning in my new office, one of my coworkers across the hall comes in a few minutes after me.  She sighs and huffs and pouts…you can tell from minute one she is irritated and annoyed and wants to be anywhere else. I mean, I know the majority of people feel that way about work, but honestly, starting out the day that way is just asking for a horrendous time.  Sigh.  I try to ignore it but honestly, it’s loud enough to come across the hall. Is she trying to convince me just how lousy her life is?  It isn’t working. All I’m convinced of is her bad attitude!

Well, Jude comes home Wednesday with will be awesome, and I may work overtime on Friday, which is nice actually. Time and a half to take at some future point.  Love it.  Other than that, no plans at all….

For the last 3 or 4 days, I have been thinking I really have a lot to say. We’ve been busy with guests, outings, and happenings for a couple of weeks.   In addition, I’ve been getting several projects and books going, which I am excited about. At the same time, I’ve been reading a book Hamlet’s Blackberry, about how all this stuff we say may be a bunch over unnecessary overkill and wondering if I really even need/want a blog.  LOL. Just because I have it to say, doesn’t necessarily make it interesting to anyone else.

I’ve let my family down on the cookie front.  Two weeks have passed without cookies.  I’ve had other things going and just haven’t felt like it.  Fortunately, I did not give myself some deadline, so I don’t have to make anything up. But I do need to get started again this week.

Books.  K finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and is on to Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix, which means I am on to it as well. I love the later books.  The first four seemed more formulaic to me, while the last three were more tied together. Oh they still have the big ending, but they are so much darker, important, suspenseful in an ongoing way I love them. I hope to read the rest by November when the first of the last movies comes out.

Finished The Probable Future and thought it was pretty good. Light reading, but fun.  What I liked was that the wrong choice for the mother did not necessarily teach what the right choice should be for the daughter.  I also liked the love between the widow and her doctor.  Such a different kind of love, but important, you know?

Also started reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  Am reading it for free in the store though, so that will be a slow go. Yesterday we went to the storage unit and I lost the lock–while I waited for Chantel to go get a new one, I picked up The Mother Tongue, a book I bought when I was an English major about the English language. Went ahead and took it home because I couldn’t put it down.

Am reading Northfield and some free Romance Novel on the nook.  Gosh, romance novels have changed quite a bit. It’s pretty pornographic, really. Okay, I wouldn’t read it if it was that bad, but some of the covers themselves are a bit like looking at the cover of a porn movie! Am I just old or is it changing up a bit?  And it’s like you can’t avoid them if you have a nook.  70% of the books are Romance Novels.  Funny, they compartmentalize them in the store, so you don’t really have to see them, but I have read it is the only growing book market and they are all over the store.

What else? Hmmm. I’ll think.

Sewed two cute skirts with Kiki this weekend.  She came over and we went shopping for material and a pattern. Then we stopped at B&N for a reading session in the cafe.  (Are she and I kindred spirits or what?) Then we went home and sewed.  Luckily I bought a pattern that said something about a 1 hour finish time and they weren’t kidding. They turned out so cute.  Channi didn’t send me pics, though, totally breaking her promise, so I have none.  Sigh.

Anyway, I’m back to work and looking forward to the 4 day weekend coming up. More sewing, reading, playing, etc.  Have a good one.

I’d heard there was an unpublished Jane Austen book, but had never really tried to find it.  Evidently it was published long after her death by an Austen.  Well, as I mentioned the first book I downloaded to my nook was her complete works and this was included.  Loved it.   It’s entirely composed of letters among a group of people  about Lady Susan.   This woman was awful and I love that you get the back story and the character completely from the retelling of events by a myriad of people.  It was just so much fun I could not put it down. Why has this not been made into a movie? Or has it?

I am now reading Northfield, a retelling of the James/Younger gangs last deadly score. It’sinteresting but very hard to keep each character straight.  Okay, a big hard.  The author introduces them all in the first couple of chapters, but some of them have two names, and it just gets a bit confusing.  The title of each of the chapters I’ve read though, is a character, and from that point of view, so hopefully, I will come to terms with my irritation.

My nook is the best thing ever. I went back and traded the cover I’d picked for a different one. This folds back over the top and when in this position can be used sort of like an easel to hold the nook up. I like it much, much better. The other one did not fold back. Well, I guess you could, but it wasn’t made for it.  Did I mention this is the best thing ever? Even K is using it!  He downloaded some forex book on Monday.

Ever remember how you’d get a new pair of sneakers and feel like you could run so fast and jump so high?  They simply made you happy.  But this time it’s a Nook. Yes, I finally got my ereader and I am in love.  Funny how some object can just make you so happy!  Jude went with me to get it and pick out the cover.  It was so fun.  Then I had to let it charge fully, for over 3 hours. Can you imagine what it’s like to sit around all excited and unable to do anything with your new toy?  Aargh!

So first of course I downloaded Jane Austen’s complete works.  Then a compilation of all the writings of all the Brontes.  Sigh.  How nice is that? I spent all weekend shopping and searching and am getting a little collection already.  Very fun.  Very!  No cookies tonight.  Just having too much fun reading, etc.  I guess with all the family reunion activities for the last 10 days I am activitied out (2 family reunions).  I just want to do nothing.  But catch up on laundry, dishes…yadda yadda.

K’s cracked ribs have been complicated somewhat.  He sneezed the other day and separated the cartilage from his sternum somehow and is in extreme pain.  At least the ER gave him better drugs and the swelling seems to be going down and he is getting a bit of sleep. I am making him take it easy. Not a simple thing to do!

Can’t wait to read my Nook on the way to work tomorrow.

So I finished one of the books my the guy that works next to me loaned me. Ken Follett, Hornet Flight. It was pretty good. I think I mentioned before it was just a shallow little action piece about WWII.  Sometimes the detailed descriptions of what was happening (say, the work it took to get the glider back into action) was a bit tedious and brought down the tension if you ask me. It was fun, but not super great. Even the way the villain was written was strangely level-headed. I mean, he did mean things, but it never really made me feel like he was evil, or the devil or anything, you know?  What’s strange is when older men, particularly religious men, people you work with recommend books and there is sex in them. I mean, it’s just odd. I’m reading going….what?  I mean, around here there are  a lot of religious people and the main religion, which both of these men belong to, advocates not reading books with sex, or seeing rated R movies, or that sort of thing. Myself, I am pretty careful when recommending something that if the person is religious, the book or movie is ‘clean’.  So I think it’s odd that they would give me a book with this stuff in it. Is it just me? Wouldn’t you be more careful if you were in their position?  I would?  I’m not offended, it wasn’t that bad, its just puzzling I guess.

We went up to Idaho Falls this weekend for a pre-reunion reunion.  K wanted me to make the Lemon Madelines again, so I did.  They seemed pretty popular. The two youngest kids wouldn’t eat them because they had lemon in them, but there were 16 of us, and the 48 cookies went very fast. I didn’t even get one from the first batch. Mother made copies of the recipe for all parties.  The Martha Stewart Cookie book was also a favorite. I think I sold at least 2 more books for her!

Back to work tomorrow, but the reunion is going on through Saturday and it turns out we’ll have house-guests through the 19th, so it is going to be hopping around here.

The very best thing about my new job is my walking buddies.  A couple of days in Cathy asked if I wanted to walk with the group.  There are five of them, and I make six. I may have mentioned the campus we have with a walking path following the river, beautiful bridges, and shady lanes through multiple parks.  Once and sometimes twice a day we all get out together and it is so nice. I never really cared about breaks before, except as a short reading session, but this is different. Getting out  in the air, seeing the little animals and insects, getting away from the noise and the cramped office and everything is wonderful.  It makes the rest of the day easy! .  I highly recommend it.

Monday morning.  The sun is streaming in my window, and all is right with the world–for a Monday morning, that is. You know the feeling.  The weekly countdown to freedom has begun. I remember that I am luckier than many of course.  I have a nice desk job with fun people to work with, nothing too taxing or that I hate to do. I’m home at an early enough hour to enjoy the evening, and I still get Friday’s off. Fun weekend with the 4th ahead of me.  So there.  It’s nice not to dread Monday mornings, but there is still that part waiting for the weekend to begin, eh?

Do I use it wisely though?  Do I enjoy it as it happens? These are the questions I really need to keep in mind of my weekends. I read once that part of Buddhism is being in the moment, thinking of one thing at a time and enjoying it.  We don’t really do that. If I have to wash dishes, I want the stereo on with music to distract me, or the television going as I’m quilting.  Why not enjoy washing dishes-the love I’m showing my family by keeping the house clean, the warm water, the moment of quiet.  Hmmmm.  I don’t want to be Buddhist, or practice any religion really, but I do think of it as my responsibility to make my life happy.  How?  By enjoying things, by being positive, by reminding myself that I really am in a good way whatever I am doing.   Gratefulness, I think is the key.  Remembering that there are always good things in my life.  Okay, off the box, I’m going to try to remember this more though.

Sunday already?  Wow. That went fast.  Not exactly dreading work, but would really like some down time.  With 4th of July next weekend and the reunions the next week and weekend, I don’t see any in sight!

I am reading everything mentioned last week, plus an Arthur Hailey book loaned by a colleague and The Alchemist, recommended by Kimball.  Am also still studying for the CPA and telling myself I need to kick that up a notch.

Wednesday night went to a book signing with the Cake Wrecks couple. If you haven’t heard me recommend this blog before, google it and be knocked out. They were very fun in person as well.  Thursday night went to Fab Fibers.  Friday my Dad and I took Kiki and Walker fishing, which was fun and hot, hot, hot.  The kids and I went swimming after. Then K and I watched ‘She’s Out of Your Legue’, which we have been waiting to see at Redbox forever! Loved it.  Even better than expected.  Saturday ran around like crazy, and visited my mom with lunch.  Today did a lot of shopping, clothes, food, etc. with K and then with the kids. That’s fun of course. Tonight, cookies and quilting.  Almost time to get ready for work though.  Boohoo.  Madelines tonight.  They are just these crispy edged little cakes of lemon we all loved.  Ended up cooking them about twice as long as recommended.  When we went to buy the Madeline pans, the guy at Williams & Sonoma told us how Julie and Julia has started all sorts of people into cooking through whole cookbooks.  Wow. I now feel completely unoriginal!