seldnei | Entries tagged with reading is fundamental

Last night, we:

Went to the beach

Watched old episodes of The West Wing until 1am

Today we have:

Slept in (I slept until 10, what the hell?!)

Cleaned the house

Bought new underwear/t-shirts
- Scott got a shirt with the Periodic Table on it, captioned “I wear this shirt periodically” under it.

Gone to two libraries, where we got …
- a bunch of books for the boy (who isn’t even with us this weekend; we win parents of the year), including Hamster Princess by Ursula Vernon, which all three of us have been anxiously awaiting
- some graphic novels and a book on steampunk jewelry making for Scott
- two books from the library sale cart for me–one is Cinders, which my dash seems to recommend, and for $2, why not?

Napped

Finished cleaning while listening to Invisiblia and This American Life like a couple of intellectuals

Downloaded all the Neil Gaiman Humble Bundle books I bought onto the iPad

Plan for the rest of the evening:

Ordering books through Interlibrary loan

Reading on the couch while listening to random-ass 80s and 90s music on iTunes radio
- (I have a new chapter of BYL in my inbox, awaiting a first read, so …)

So last week we all took the Pottermore sorting quiz that was floating around the internet. Our results were:

Me: Slytherin
Scott: Slytherin
Z: Hufflepuff
Mom: Ravenclaw
The Younger Niece: Gryffindor

Today, I had a brilliant idea for a t-shirt:

I want a shirt that says “Proud Parent of a Hufflepuff,” in Slytherin colors. Maybe a cute Ursula Vernon-style cartoon of a snake snuggling a baby badger.

Think of it! T-shirts in each House color, with “Proud Parent of a [insert house name here]. Because Harry Potter is as multigenerational as Disney, y'all.

Current Music: brim full of ashes - cornershop

Just booked tickets to Universal, with particular plans to hit all the Harry Potter stuff. I am ridiculously excited to geek out with the Zweeb over, like, everything. We’ve already got plans to get wands, and a stuffed Pigwidgeon, and to hit the candy store. My mother wants to ride the Hogwarts Express and see Hagrid’s cottage.

In other Harry Potter-related silliness … so we’re on Book 5 with the boy, reading a chapter or two every night. Scott has seen all the movies, but didn’t read the books, but of course, he’s hearing them along with Z.

So last night, I’m halfway through the chapter—Harry’s just used the shield charm on Snape during Occlumency lessons—and Z falls asleep on the couch. I nudge him a little, but he’s not moving. So I go to shut the book, and Scott pokes me and says, “Keep reading.”

"But … Z’s asleep … ?"

"I want to know what happens!" I go to hand him the book. "No, keep reading.”

No, no, over there, at Penumbra's blog!

Why yes, that is a guest blog from your truly, talking about great writers--as in, like, Great Writers.

So while I try to figure out what the hell the point is in the Boxtrolls post I have saved in my drafts, head on over there and find out who I think are Great Writers. (At least one of them should not be a surprise to anyone who's read this blog for any length of time ...)

My husband apparently wants to read Gilgamesh. "Do we have a copy?” he asks.

Our house is basically made of books. It’s not big enough for all the books we have. I still have books from when I was five. I have books that I love, books that I think the kid might like to read eventually, I have books I’m keeping just because I hated them and ended up having to read them, like, two or three times, so at this point it’s like keeping the mummified head of my enemy on a pike.

Honestly? I don’t remember if we have a copy of Gilgamesh. I mean, the odds are pretty good, but who knows.

Anyway, now he’s critiquing the book shelves and complaining about our lack of organization. (Three or four years ago, we put everything together by series and author, but didn’t have time to alphabetize, so our ultimate organization is something like check where I have all the Eddas or I’d probably put that near the Neil Gaiman, go look on that shelf.)

(Did I mention the entire closet dedicated to comics boxes? Because that’s on him.)

This is an odd week—it’s a lot of waiting to see stuff. Mostly good stuff (like, my story goes live on Monday! THERE WILL BE LINKS AND MUCH EXCITEMENT AND PROBABLY CAPSLOCK); possibly good and, worst case scenario, not worse stuff; and not-good stuff that doesn’t affect me or mine directly, but I am waiting to find out how it will indirectly affect me.

I hate waiting. I hate the unknown. I am not good with these things. I would be the worst follower of Earthseed, like, ever.**

But I knew this going in, and so I’ve given myself a very light schedule of to-dos this week (it helps that I have four days off coming up, during which I can clean my damn house), and my mantra is be kind and drink water.

**Read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Prepare to cry. And for outrage. Because this is some seriously plausible near-future dystopian sci-fi, that probably deserves its own post.

1. The copy of Trying to Save Piggy Sneed that I ordered came in! (The joy of working at the library is processing my own Interlibrary loans.)

2. My mother-in-law called and left me a voice mail to let me know she’s ODing on Doctor Who, and it’s all my fault.

3. I got enough sleep for the first time in what seems like forever, so I’m not a zombie tonight.

4. The kiddo has to exercise every night as homework, so tonight we rode our bikes to the wooded lot in our neighborhood and went exploring. It was fun—he told me about the weird creatures that live in there, and asked me about what I thought lived in there (I created an artists’ colony of monsters—they only want to make art and help people! Well, I was amused by it).

5. Then we rode our bikes some more and he told me that of the deputy thing doesn’t work out, and if the Lego maker thing doesn’t work out, he thinks he wants to be a doctor. A child psychiatrist. Except when I actually defined the term, he said no, he wants to be a doctor who treats kids for, like, colds and stuff.

Yeah, he was confusing a child psychiatrist and a pediatrician. There are times when I don’t really know what to do with this kid. (Usually I hug him, but we were on bikes.)

(I’m actually going to be pretty surprised if he doesn’t become a writer of some kind, even if it’s just something he does for fun.)

6. I’m now on the couch, alert (woo!), and the boy and Scott are doing bath time, which is amusing to listen to.

I am also high as balls on allergy meds at the moment. (I wrote that specifically for my lovely friend, Erin.)

I have a bunch of projects I'm working on; I have no idea which of them, if any, will see the light of day, but I like being busy. However, this massive allergy attack has left me sort of reeling in place (and drugged). I've hit a goal on one thing, and am ahead on another, so I figured to hell with it, let's just take today off from writing.

Then I got bored.

So now I'm on the blog, and I have no actual idea what I want to write about. How long has it been since I've posted? (goes to look) Oh, not quite a week--it seems so much longer!

All right, then, what's going on around here ...

Well, the boyo is out of school for the summer, and I think we're settling into a groove. Sort of. He's reading his way through Dr Seuss's entire ouevre, never mind that he's read them all already. I had forgotten how complex Dr Seuss got, once you move past Hop On Pop (though that book has its moments).

I was really trying to push him toward actual chapter books, because he spent a lot of time with those during the school year (oh my god, the Magic Treehouse books ...), but I've backed off a lot because, you know, it's the summer and he should be able to read what he wants. And if I can go back and read all my old Betsy Byars books, or all the Little House books, or every Neil Gaiman picture book in the library (which I did, before I had a kid), then he should get to read No, David! again if he wants.

(He does not, in point of fact, want to read No, David! This actually makes me kind of sad.)

So, yeah--lots of Dr Seuss and Adventure Time comics at The Little Pink House right now. Tomorrow we may go see How to Train Your Dragon 2, assuming I'm not dead of allergies.

I am s l o w l y working my way through a re-read of Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, which I remember really loving when I was 19 and read it the first time. I'm kind of wondering how much of that love was due to the fact that I was reading it during my semester abroad, quite frankly, because the second time through, at 41, is ... not the same experience. In some ways it's good. In some ways it's not. But there are some interesting ideas/quotes, and half the reason I want to keep going is I might end up blogging about it.

Still watching Orphan Black. In fact, there's a whole blog entry in me about why I love Sarah and Allison the best ...

(I just got a free copy of Allure, and it tells you something about my age and overall sensibilities that the headline "Her Gutsy Haircut & Supermodel Stories" is perhaps the funniest thing I've seen since I learned the phrase "high as balls.")

The allergies have made my voice go all squeaky (I rarely get the Phoebe-style sexy phlegm; I sound like the little rabbit kid from the Disney Robin Hood), so when patrons approach the desk to ask me for help, I end up replying with this startling sort of bark/squeak noise that then resolves itself into actual words. It's both embarrassing and amusing. Another observation of my current allergy hell is how much my mood and general outlook depend on whether or not I can breathe through my nose.

Okay, I honestly thought I had more stuff to write about--like, I had an actual idea for the next paragraph, and now--poof!--gone.

... all right, yeah, it's not coming back. And so I will wrap up this goofy, pointless blog post and go blow my nose. Again.

I wrote a long post about why I love To Kill a Mockingbird. I don't think it's what you think.

(There are footnotes. At some point I'll mess around with the html and see if it all works over here, but for now, linkage.)

It's Banned Books Week.

My go-to banned book is To Kill a Mockingbird ... perhaps one day I shall tell you the story of my love for this book, but the very short version is that To Kill a Mockingbird was the one book I read in high school, for class, that I absolutely loved and did not want to have end.

I wasn't a kid who didn't read; my A-ha! Books are *awesome*! moment probably happened around the age of two, when I figured out that there were stories in these flappy things my parents kept giving me. But I always think about the utter joy I had, reading To Kill a Mockingbird during silent reading in English Honors II, and coming across this quote, quite near the beginning of the novel:

Atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

Dude, ohmygod, I was reading a book in class that had swearing in it! And it was funny!

And what if I'd been a kid who hated reading, and that had been my a-ha! moment? What if I were a kid for whom that could have been my a-ha! moment, but because the book had been yanked from the school curriculum because of its language, I never got to read it?

So, yeah. Go read To Kill a Mockingbird. Or, hell, 50 Shades of Grey. Or both, why not? Check them out of your library.

***

Kyle Cassidy makes an interesting and uncomfortable point about banned books and books that are kept from publication.

(My first thought was that this was opening a door for anyone whose novel is passed over by an agent/publisher to start yelling about being censored, but then I realized that people do that, anyway.)

Let's be honest--I would totally love a world where people weren't horrible. And I would like them to all agree to my terms of not being horrible. But ... yeah, no.

I've been a First Amendment nutjob since high school. Which means I have to respect and defend the right of anyone to say whatever they want to say, vile or not. And I do actually believe that the best way to combat the vile things that people say is to argue with those things. Critique them. Poke holes in their arguments; show the rest of the world the logical fallacies and the rage-induced hyperbole.** (I taught argumentative writing; it slips out now and then.)

Because, as my lovely friend Jason says, you have the right to say whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you have the right to not get called on it. It's discourse, and by trying to ban books, we take that possibility for discourse away.

*I am capable of this, myself; just ask the husband about watching Star Trek: Into Darkness with me this past weekend.

I have a post on my WP blog that's mostly links to cool stuff you can read for free online, but trying to copy that many links onto LJ is a lot of damn work. So I'm just going to link to it here, and if you're looking for some decent short fiction to read on your computer and/or tablet, then ... click here for that post.

(There's another post over at WP that I'll be mirroring here shortly.)

Strange Horizons is having its annual fund drive!

What is Strange Horizons, you ask? Well, my friend, Strange Horizons is an online magazine of speculative literature--poems, short stories, and nonfiction; scifi, fantasy, horror, and so on--and they need money to keep putting out quality work!

I love SH. They publish great stories--one of my all-time favorite stories, just generally, is "Draco Campestris" by Sarah Monette, and guess where that was first published? Yup. You can get lost in their archives, and that is not a bad thing; there are stories there, old and new, that will haunt the back of your head.

And, you know, in 2011 they published a story by me, which you can find over in my links. Working with then-editor Jed Hartman was, as I've said before, a really enjoyable experience that taught me a lot, and seeing my story in the same place as work from my favorite writers still gives me a thrill.

So if you have some extra cash, send it their way. And go read the magazine!

This is "Punishment," my favorite poem by Seamus Heaney.

So there I am, in my English Lit class (it must have been Longmire's class, because Carson taught early English Lit, Haegert was Modernism and Lit Crit, Clough was totally American Lit, and I only took World Lit with Richardson. I remember this poem in Dr. Longmire's voice, anyway; he was short, and limped because he had polio as a kid; he had all this white hair and was the best advisor my intimidated self could have gotten as a freshman in college, first-person-in-my-family to go to college and utterly clueless beyond knowing without question that I could write, read, and analyze a text. One day I may blog the story of how I prompted him to declare to the class that one should "never use irony with freshmen," but that day is not today) ...

Okay. So I'm eighteen, maybe nineteen. Ridiculous girl--pretension and insecurity and feeling, dear lord, but also intelligence; my brain was starting to grow and I could feel it--but heading toward the future me, this person blogging on her laptop with silent headphones on, having forgotten to turn on her music (ridiculous in a different way, I suppose). I sat in my lit class, Norton Anthology open in front of me.

If you imagine the inside of my brain as a large open field with a lot of half-built stone walls here and there in mounds and lumps?

Dr. Longmire read "Punishment" out loud.

There was no explosion, no epiphany, no moment of This is what poetry is, I see! I'd had that moment already, with e.e. cummings. This ... this was a rumbling, a quaking; this was those half-formed walls crumbling, shaken, but not being destroyed. I felt this poem in the frame of me.

This poem was history, this was girlhood, this was anger and guilt and real and a part of my heart I didn't know I had.

It was like Robert Frost, a little; this feeling of Oh, that, that's in my blood, I belong to that somehow. (Though I never loved Frost the way I loved this poem.) It was locked in with the end (though not the rest) of Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill": Time held me green and dying/Though I sang in my chains like the sea. It was utterly itself, in the end, related but not exact.

There are things--poems, paintings, photographs, novels, comic books, songs, artists, whole works and phrases and bits of things--that I think, if I could somehow collect them and hand them to someone, they would know me. They're not what I love, always (though I love this poem); they're things that I recognize, that my bones reach for.

I who have stood dumb/when your betraying sisters/cauled in tar/wept by the railings

1. DOMA and Prop 8 are struck down. Yay!

2. My grandmother, who has been in the hospital and a rehab for the past month, is home and doing great. Phew!

3. Apparently, my kid cleaned his room today. Yay from my shins and feet!

4. I'm reading Wolf Hall, which is an historical novel and is written in present tense, which makes me feel a bit like I'm reading fan-fiction. Well, that and the fact that Cardinal Wolsey is now always Sam Neill in my head, thank you The Tudors.

(One not-so-happy thing: I really don't like the new LJ front page. It looks half-done.)

I'm at work, on my break, attempting to update on my sort of new tablet (I've had it for about a month). It's a Nexus 7, which means we're still not quite an Apple-only family, but overall it works for what I want to do: read books, download apps, occasionally edit stuff, scribble ideas down. I actually prefer an actual notebook for that last, but when you're out running around, it's nice to not have a lot of extra stuff.

Of course, I say that having been lugging a copy of Salman Rushdie's memoir, Joseph Anton, around for two months (I've been reading that book longer than I've owned this tablet). It's good, but it's hard to read for long periods. Especially if you want to keep your overall faith in humanity.

I've been hearing good things from people who have read "The Drowned Man" at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which is nice (and if you haven't read it yet, go read it, this is my unsubtle hint!).

I will say, the cut and paste on this thing is nicer than my iPhone, though touchscreen keyboards remain impish tools of the devil.

And now, back to work I go. Summer in the college library: count the shadows.

Well, hi! I have stuff to write about! (Ack, it's April, what can I say?)

Baking!

So tonight I made caramel. I tried last night and wound up burning it, so today I tried again, and my husband has been devouring it. I AM MIGHTY!

It's supposed to be used to make frosting, so that will likely be my next step. Then I may try the chocolate cupcakes it's meant to be paired with--I feel confident after the crazy science experiment that was the caramel, and may be willing to attempt to make something chocolate from scratch, though I have not always had the best results in the past.

Books!

I've been trying and failing to read lately, but The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe has managed to settle my crazy, end-of-semester brain down. It reminds me of Life As We Knew It, but (so far) without being so depressing you want to kill yourself after reading it. This is not to say Life As We Knew It was bad--just harrowing.

Glee!

I actually liked the disco episode a lot more than I thought I would. It was cute, set stuff up, and for the very first time I actually got to hear the lyrics to "You Should Be Dancing." Um. Wow.

As for last night's episode, let me direct you to a .gif set of what is my favorite scene from Glee, ever: here.* (spoilery, maybe.)

I love the variety of what the hell did you do?! that is aimed at Kurt. I also love it because they've apparently adopted Blaine--they know how snotty and rude Kurt can be, and now he has apparently cheated on the adorable puppy he brought them! Dude, even Will is wondering what the hell is going on.

Plus, how many of these people have cheated on each other? It's awesome.

Anyway. Poor Blaine. I thought Darren Criss did a really nice job with the lost, sad, broken thing. And between him, and Dianna Agron's face during "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," well, angst! Kurt's number made me happy--plus Mike's glance at Blaine was hilarious (Mike Chang is easily swayed by performance). I love watching Brittany dance. Still not sure what I think of Dreadlocks Dude, but he's not as annoying as Rory, and at least he has a plotline.

Oh, and my second favorite scene in the episode: Puck and the guys in the locker room, with the shot glasses. ("Why does mine say 'Drink 'til She's Cute'?") I love Puck. I miss Puck. I'm glad he's getting some story in the next episode, and I'm glad it apparently does not involve sleeping with a damn teacher.

All that said, I felt like the texting thing was a little artificial. I mean, there's a lot of organic stress there, with Kurt's impending departure for NYC. And all the stuff they were complaining about--Blaine pulling away, Kurt being self-centered, neither of them talking, and all of that sort of feeding the cycle--are things that could have precipitated a blow-up (much like the fight they had at the bar, back in the day, which I think worked really well). However, it likely would not have fit the song they wanted Blaine to sing, and if they had not used the texting/cheating story, I would not have had my favorite scene ever ... and so I guess I will have to roll my eyes and go with it.

Ugh, Will.

Oh, and apparently Kurt is singing "Not the Boy Next Door" for his audition piece, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Everything Else

This time next week, we'll be at Disney! I have made plans, maps, and am excited.

*yes, I have a Tumblr now. And if you want to follow me, feel free, but mostly it's cat .gifs and pictures, because the Zweeble loves the cute kittens, and this gives me a nice place to put them as I find them.

Alrighty, let's see what's been going on in the Little Pink House ...

1. Looks like I will be starting a new job in May, at the school library. I'm a little sad--I like teaching--but also excited (libraries are some of my favorite places, and the school has a beautiful one).

2. Last night, Scott was going into our room to practice a speech for class and told me if I wanted to, I could come in and listen, but I didn't have to. So I grabbed my glass of water and headed in. Well, apparently he didn't want me in there and was just being polite, and so I was instructed not to laugh at the opening of the speech.

Well, okay.

Speech opens: "You all know me, somewhat, now--" Scott breaks off, points directly at me, and thunders, "NOT ONE WORD!"

Um, okay. I give him the old, dude, chiil, get on with it shrug, and take a mouthful of water.

"Do I strike you as crazy? Conspiracy nut?"

Reader, I literally spit my water across the comforter. However, I would not have done so had I not been primed to by my paranoid husband! Remember kids, paranoia can be a self-fulfilling prophecy!

3. Z. is on Spring Break this week--Scott and I were on break last week--which means squeezing the writing in during the ever-shorter naptimes. On the plus side, I don't have papers coming in until Friday, and my other grading has been really light. Today I'm off, and want to see if he wants to do anything besides buy a friend a birthday gift. He looks pretty entrenched in his pillow fort, though.

4. I've been re-reading the Hunger Games books. Not planning to see the movies. (Actually, the only movie I'm planning to see is The Avengers.) I keep looking at my three-book unread stack and getting that need. more. books. feeling, but I have something like five books on the Nook. Clearly I'm not fully in tune with this new technology. Get off my lawn!

5. I have to get started planning Z's 5th birthday party. He wants to have it at the park, with his friends, and have a pinata. This is do-able, I'm sure, but I am not feeling the planning.

6. Right before I start the new job, we have a Disney trip! Three days, and both my parents are going, which I'm psyched about. That planning I'm feeling.

Did I mention I got a Nook tablet for Christmas?

I mostly wanted it for work: I've been working on being as paper-free as possible in class, but pulling lecture notes up on the computer when I have to use the same computer for a PowerPoint was problematic. It works pretty well for that.

I've also been internet-ing on it, which is better than surfing on my phone for the most part, but not as good as surfing on my laptop.

As far as using it for books, I've bought a few for it and have only read one, but that's because I had a massive stack of library books to read after Christmas. Still, it feels weird to read an e-book. Like I'm not reading a real book. This wasn't helped by the fact that my first e-book had this weird copy-error: every time there was an ellipsis in the text, the letter right before it was dropped and replaced with a period (He fel .... odd, as an example). Still, I like it and am pretty sure I'll get used to it.

My only frustration at the moment is that my local library has none of the books on my to-read list in ebook format. I'm sure this will change as new books come out, but right now it's annoying.

A cold, a new semester (with attendant craziness) starting, and now I'm sort of catching up with my own life and brain.

Writer Laura

In his summary of 2011 in webzines, Rich Horton mentions "Items" in his overview of Strange Horizons. Yay!

Positive comments or reviews aside (though, let me tell you, they're really nice to read), I also get a thrill out of the proof that someone who doesn't know me personally has read my story. I mean, that is the main goal--to have someone besides my parents as an audience.

Zweeble's Mom

Well, the Great Elementary School hunt continues apace. I still think this school choice nonsense is going to either kill me or drive me to drink, but we're narrowing the field. One more tour, next week, and we need to gather the forms and fill out the paperwork before handing it all in and then waiting for four months to find out which school he's been assigned to.

Right now it seems our ideal school is one that has a mostly open-air campus with friendly teachers and a professional, organized staff ... along with some other curriculum stuff I won't get into here because it's a) only halfway interesting to other parents, and b) probably different from state-to-state, anyway.

Teacher Laura

I had heard tales of people teaching during the daylight hours ... but I did not believe them! And yet, there I was on Monday, leaving campus in the daylight! I felt like a truant.

Bookworm Laura

If you can find Somewhere Beneath Those Waves by Sarah Monette, get it and read it (it's on the Nook, e-reader peeps) because it's really good. Short story collection, very good, by one of my absolute favorite writers.

TV Laura

Is on hiatus until Sherlock comes back, apparently.

And that, gang, is the State of the Laura. I had a wonderful Christmas break, but that's over now--back to the chaos that is my life. :)

Well, overall 2011 did not live up to its predecessor. But, thinking it over, it wasn't bad so much as schizophrenic. So let's focus, on this last night of the year, on 11 good things about 2011:

1. "Items" at Strange Horizons!

2. My best friend for 28 years, the lovely

doggiesushi, married his always-fabulous

sugarcoatedlie, and I got to be there.

2a. I got to finally meet

jenifoto and

takarosa in person, and met

jehzuhbell and

belladonna_, along with a ton of other people I've been hearing and reading about for years, all of whom were hilarious, nice, and generally awesome to be around.

2b.

gnadige and I stormed Detroit! In a Chevy Aveo! Armed only with Coke and Rock Star! BECAUSE WE ARE AWESOME LIKE THAT!

3. My friends rock. Scary things were a lot less scary thanks to

jkason and David. And my friend K taught me a great lesson: denial is not always a bad thing, as long as you choose it and set an end date.

4. Amanda Palmer's music.

5. Books! Holy cats, there were a lot of good books to read this year! And

dracoangelica, Girl of Fire and Thorns was freaking awesome*, so thank you for the rec!

6. Good TV. Sherlock. Doctor Who was a touch uneven, but a bad episode of Doctor Who still usually has some good moments. Even some of the shows I didn't get as into (Whitechapel) were interesting.

7. My husband and my son have gotten to spend a lot of time together, and it shows (sometimes in sheer annoyance with each other, but mostly in their "guy" bond).

8. My kiddo is always a highlight of my year. Today he took the teeth portion of his play-doh dentist set, put it in his mouth so he had this odd, jack-o-lantern mouth, and calmly walked into the kitchen, where he stood and stared at us, deadpan, until we noticed. And cracked up.

9. 2011 marked twenty years of the Scott and Laura Saga. A lot of things made me feel old this year, but that ... does not. :)

10. But speaking of old--I threw a surprise birthday party for my husband's 40th last January, and aside from a couple of glitches, I pulled it off! I'd almost forgotten about that. :)

11. This was the year of unexpected stories. I kept finding short stories to write--right up until Thursday night, actually. They were welcome surprises.

So while I am not sad to see 2011 go, it did have its high points. I suppose all years do. But for 2012, I wish for us all some unexpected, but very welcome, stories; the chance to see old friends and meet new ones; good music, books, and TV; funny stories about small kids and/or pets; the pulling off of something cool; and the continuation of something wonderful and true.

*#1 in a series, but it had an actual ending, which was really nice.

I have gone a little crazy in the inter-library loan department, especially considering it's almost Christmas. I have, in my reading stack, two October Daye books, The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Legend, Ganymeade, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Shine, plus my father sent me home last week with the new Stephen King book (it's about time travel and the Kennedy assassination, so of course he got it before I did). And I'm still waiting on two books to come into the library.

NO MORE BOOKS.

On the other hand, I have read 70 books in 2011. (Thank you, Goodreads, for making it easy and convenient for me to keep track all year.) This is probably down from my pre-Zweeble days, but I feel it's a respectable number.

I've come to the disturbing conclusion that there are too many entertainment options out there for me, and that I don't have enough time to really watch/read/play/hear everything I want to. (This then leads to some questions of whether or not I have enough life left to catch up, and that sounds like I'm a video game character, but whatever.) I knew I was in trouble when being required to cut comics out of our budget felt more like relief because I'd no longer be woefully behind than sorrow at losing the stories.

If 2011 was about rolling with and trying to embrace Change, I think perhaps 2012 will be about reassessing and sort of narrowing my focus to what I really want to do with my "copious" spare time. Books, yes. Probably less TV. I'd like to see a few more movies, but I think Scott and I might have to re-designate a movie night to manage that. Then we can alternate with video game nights, maybe.

That leaves the internet, my biggest time-suck ...

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Laura E. Price

January 2019

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I Speak With the Tongue of a Thousand White-Hot Lies!

Wordsmithery, Eloquence, and Smarmy Grace

Entries tagged with reading is fundamental

state of the laura

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Hey, look over there!

Gilgamesh?

Limbo

My Good Things for Today

state of the Laura: boring and drowning in snot

Meanwhile, over at WordPress ...

Banned Books Week

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The Strange Horizons 2013 Fund Drive!

Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013

Happy Things ...

so let's try this out

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State of the Laura

typing on my nook

State of the Laura, all sides of her edition

New Year's Eve, 2011

A book may eat the Zweeble's mom ...

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January 2019

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