Category: Books

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Awesome Being a girl Books Love Memoir Nonfiction

Tetris + books = my life

I’ve been trying to figure out how to illustrate what I feel like my life has become: a cross between Tetris and books.

Unfortunately, I’m not an artist, so I can’t just draw it, and I don’t have any great skills with Photoshop, and I just didn’t feel that one of my typical MS Paint mashups was going to do this justice.

I’ve obtained a lot (and I mean A LOT) of new books lately. This is on top of already having a bunch of things that I haven’t read yet (and yet I keep thinking, “I love humorous non-fiction; I bet I will really like that book I bought when Borders went out of business and everything was 70% off”).

But then a couple weekends ago, I bought 7 or 8 used books at the library book sale, and I think I’ve only read about 3 of them.

I even checked out three books that day, although who knows why I felt like that was necessary.

I got books for my birthday this weekend (thank God some of them are for kids, so they’ll go quickly).

Although one of them is the FOURTH Game of Thrones book, and I have yet to start the third one! (Which I’m dying to do.)

I bought Jonathan’s book club book off of him, because he was just going to return it to the store. (But it’s The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta! I didn’t know anything about it when I turned over the cash, because I just have faith in Tom Perrotta, but it’s about the Rapture, and I don’t know if you know this about me but I’m kind of into Rapture stuff.)

And then I have to purchase my own book club’s next book, which I plan on doing from Amazon, but then I’ll want to add something else so I get to $25 so I have the free shipping.

It’s just a torrential downpour of books, and there’s no way I can keep up with them all. It’s like one of the later levels on Tetris, but instead of pretty colored shapes, it’s all books. But they’re piling up so fast!

At least books fit together well. Until you run out of space, that is.

Oh, I get it – it’s just like Tetris only none of the layers disappear when you fill them in. I guess that would happen if I actually read things, and then gave them away.

Why did I used to have so much time to read? I guess in New York I had the commute every day, and then both my roommates worked a show schedule, so I spent a lot of time alone. (Not in a sad way.)

But now, I just don’t have that same amount of time.

Although, I’m doing a cameo in wardrobe at Marin Theatre Company this weekend (started last weekend), and there is PLENTY of time to read then. Partly because the show is super easy (yay!) and partly because the show is short, so the break between shows is hours (yay!). So I’m going to try to get through as much this week as possible.

I would say, “And then I’m going to try to lay off acquiring books for awhile,” but it’s just not that easy.

That being said – anyone reading anything good lately?

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"Other people" Books Children Drew Games Not awesome

Calendar tricks

Tonight we were at the mall, and I was like, “Hey, let’s swing by Barnes and Noble and pick up my book for book club, and also a calendar.” There is a lot of stuff happening in the rest of 2012 and we’ve been talking about needing a wall calendar to keep track of it all.

B&N had zero 2012 calendars – they’re all 2013 – but the guy at the information desk said that they’re 16 month calendars so they cover the rest of this year. (Which doesn’t really make sense since, counting June, there are 7 months left in 2012.) But we liked this Where’s Waldo calendar, and they didn’t have the book I wanted in stock, so the calendar came home with us. (Please note on the cover where it says “16 month calendar.”)

Most of the pages are great and I look forward to being able to use this calendar. I also look forward to studying every month for a long time, not finding any of the characters, then having Drew find them all in about 30 seconds.

However, I can’t use this calendar for 7 more months, because the Barnes and Noble information desk guy tricked me. Having one little add-on page like below, should NOT count as a “16 month calendar.”

For shame, Barnes and Noble! Now I have to go find somewhere that’s still selling 2012 calendars. Also, I have to not forget where I put this one, so I can use it come January.

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Awesome Being a girl Books Children Drew Family Friends Memoir Nonfiction Pregnancy Sentiment TV Work

The weekend that lasted 3 days

This weekend felt longer than three days, but in that kind of weird draggy way. Allow me to explain.

On Saturday we had a dinner-and-game-night at our place, which I spent the day kind of stressing about, since it was an eclectic crowd of people and I’m not quite used to playing hostess yet. But overall everything went very well (possibly better than I had expected) and I learned that I love the game Balderdash, which I have never played before but now want to play all the time.

On Sunday, Drew and I went with Erin to San Jose to help out her dad with this steampunk convention he was doing. It was part of FanimeCon, but apparently only sort of? We didn’t really have all the details, but we were mostly there to do little odd jobs and make sure no one stole any of the equipment. It was…nerdy, honestly, and I don’t need to get into it but there was some major judging going on there. (By us; of the people attending the convention.) It was a fun day though, and it’s always good to branch out and spend some time around people wearing full out Victorian costumes (with steampunk accessories) and speaking in bad British accents.

Also, this bag of heads. But I have no idea why.

On Sunday night Drew and I started our Modern Family marathon – we hadn’t watched any of this most recent season, which ended last Wednesday. At least, we thought we hadn’t, until we started watching episodes and realized we’d actually seen about 4. But marathoning it is more fun than watching a half-hour episode once a week.

That’s mostly what we did on Sunday (after finishing reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the morning), until after 9 episodes I said, “I need a break,” and then right after that Hulu Plus said “You’ve been watching for 3 hours, need a break?” Oh how we laughed.

We went for a walk but didn’t really accomplish anything while on it. Well, we did pick up a menu from this Thai place near us that we may try out later this week.

We watched some more episodes that night, but we still have maybe 8 or 9 to go, which I think is a nice amount. Although, I do want to finish them this week because I think I’d like to cancel Hulu Plus before I have to pay for another month. (That’s how I roll.)

When I came into work this morning, I found a post-it saying “Gotcha!” taped over the laser on my mouse (so it wouldn’t work). I also found these people taped under the handset of my phone:

If you’re not familiar with Game of Thrones, that’s Cersei (she’s sort of a bad guy) and Tyrion (he’s totally the best guy). Tonight we watch episode 9 of season 2, which aired on Sunday, and which I have heard is an amazing episode. I am pretty stoked. (And I highly recommend if you’re not watching, you begin immediately.)

And, finally, if you’re keeping score, today marks 22 weeks pregnant for me, which is the end of the 5th month. (The counting is complicated, but trust me: 22 weeks = 5 months.) This week the baby is the size of a papaya, and probably weighs about a pound. This isn’t a particularly huge landmark, but we’re celebrating every single little one, plus I just kind of like this picture I took this morning. So please enjoy this relatively infrequent pregnancy update!

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Awesome Books Memoir Nonfiction Sentiment Technology

The real function of the internet

Yesterday I brought up the old adage that all quotes are either from the Bible or Shakespeare. Last night I was thinking about this. Before the internet, how did we know whether any particular quote was Shakespeare or Scripture?

If I had wanted to know where “Not with a bang but a whimper” came from, I would probably have to first have an idea (my idea was Yeats) and then I’d have to go through my poetry books from high school and college and try to find “that Yeats poem” that the quote was from.

If I were trying to narrow it down between the Bible and the Bard, I guess it’s possible that I would have a concordance of one or both of those things (my parents had a Bible concordance) and I could search for it that way. Is it likely, though, that I would have either of those books? (Maybe…as I was an English major, they would have been great pre-internet gifts.)

But then what happens in this situation, when all my guesses are wrong? I would have to just ask people if they knew, and keep an eye out for it in the future? Or maybe in a non-internet society I would be trained to remember these things better? And like a good English major, I would have just known: “Oh, that’s from TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men. It’s a reference to the Gunpowder Plot, and how instead of ending with the planned explosion, it ended with Guy Fawkes’ whimper as he was caught and executed.”

Man, I’d feel so smart all the time. And probably do better on Jeopardy!

But instead, the second I come up against something I’m not sure of (or something I’m pretty sure of) I run to Google to double check it.

New project: instead of just Googling things all the time* I’m going to try to remember some of them, using my brain power. Let’s see how this goes.

*Things I have Googled while writing this post: Yeats (correct spelling?); concordance (correct spelling?); “not with a bang but a whimper” (which Eliot poem was that again?); Shakespeare concordance (does such a thing exist?), “if I were” vs “if I was” (and now I finally understand the different between these two – so today is a success).

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"Other people" Books Celebrities Fashion Not awesome Self improvement

50 Shades of Awful

I get kind of worked up about bad writing. Particularly about bad writing that makes all the bestseller lists. Especially when this bad writing really serves no purpose. And when everyone is talking about it, even though they all admit it’s bad.

The worst is when I secretly want to read it, just in case I’m missing out on something big.

But no. I will not succumb.

When I first heard about Fifty Shades of Grey, I wanted to see what all the hype was about, even knowing right off the bat that it was housewife erotica, and then finding out it was based off of a Twilight fanfiction – ugh. On Amazon, the first two chapters of the book were available for reading online, so I sat down and spent 20 minutes with Anastasia.

Oh. Good. Gravy. From that oh-so-purple way of getting the first-person narrator to describe herself (by staring in the mirror and bemoaning how “unattractive” she is – spoiler alert, she’s bee-you-tee-ful!) to the horrific exclamations (“Holy crap!” etc), this is one of the worst things I’ve read. And people are eating this up? Because…it claims to be erotic? For the record, there wasn’t any of that in the first couple chapters, but I could see where it’s going. And it’s nowhere good.

The articles I’ve read about the book(s – there are three of them) since then have all been making fun of it and talking about how bad it is. The reviews I’ve heard have been mostly, “Meh, it’s all right, but it’s not very good.” So why is this thing doing so well?

The only thing I can do is keep promising myself that I will not spend any money to read it. And that I will not succumb and get it from the library either. (Getting erotica from the library…ew?)

But this is my PSA so that hopefully no one else gets sucked in to this terrible writing. Don’t do it, people! Here is a list of other good series that would be way more worth your time:

  • The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins
  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  • Harry Potter by JK Rowling
  • The Green Mile by Stephen King (a serialized novel – kind of a cheat)
  • Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
  • Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  • The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
  • A Song of Ice and Fire (A Game of Thrones, etc) by George RR Martin
  • The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
  • Earth’s Children (The Clan of the Cave Bear, etc) by Jean M Auel
  • Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

Just a list of ideas, running the gamut from children to YA to adult. I’m kinda just pulling this off of my shelves, so I know there’s a lot that’s not represented. (Let me know if there’s a series you feel I should include!)

For the record, this article about Fifty Shades of Grey from Vulture is kind of hysterical. (Also kind of graphic, so maybe not for everyone.)

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Awesome Books Friends Home improvements Love

Shelve all the things

Last night Erin came over to the new place to help me go through this:

 

After about an hour and a half, we took a break to get some water (and seconds of pizza) and admire how far we’d come:

 

And when she left an hour after that, we had filled all the shelves. Most of them were pretty themed. I tend to like to take all the books that

a) I like the most,
b) I’m proudest of, and
c) have the highest reread potential

and put them on the eye-level shelves. I don’t think Erin likes that very much. I think she wanted them more thematically arranged, and she didn’t seem to be a fan of Marian Keyes next to Ira Levin. But that’s okay. After it’s all done, I can always switch everything around. (JUST KIDDING ERIN.)

Anyway, here’s everything filled:

 

And all that remains is assorted fiction, which will hopefully fit on this one last shelf I have.

 

Oh, who am I kidding? I need to buy a new bookshelf!

(I promise, after this, I’ll stop talking about books for awhile. I know it’s been a lot lately.)

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Beginnings Being a girl Books Home improvements Sentiment Writing

Better late than never

Drew and I are in the middle of moving, as I keep mentioning. In fact we have given ourselves a goal of being completely out of here and living there by next Sunday. Which is slightly daunting.

This afternoon he went by the apartment and realized someone had left two pots of flowers on the doorstep. Since it doesn’t seem to be anyone that we know…I wonder if this means we have really sweet neighbors?

One funny thing that happened today as a result of being so far in the process, is that this afternoon I finished my other library book, and then I wandered around for awhile going, “What am I going to read now?” I had a few choices:

a) go in the guest bedroom and read a Cat Who book
b) read one of the (few) books (left behind) here that I have already finished
c) go out to my car and find something in the trunk

When Drew got home, he pointed out the Amazon box on the floor, under a box of ginger snaps, which I then remembered had 5 brand new books still in it.

See, every time I think we’ve got them all…

The other funny thing happened when we were unpacking all our kitchen stuff this weekend. We were pulling stuff out that we’ve literally never used. It’s mostly kitchen stuff, and, now that I think about it, it’s mostly stuff we didn’t register for, that we still liked, but just haven’t had the chance yet. For example, a sugar-and-creamer set…in a pattern that I totally adore, but we’re just not big coffee drinkers. (We should change that.) There’s also a wedding-style picture frame that we should probably use to display a wedding picture. One of these days.

A friend who was over helping us unpack suggested that it would make a good blogging project – to commit to using those things we’ve never used, and then chronicle that. So hopefully over the rest of 2012, I’ll be making an effort to get some of that great stuff out of its packaging and onto the table.

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Awesome Books Love Writing

The King of the Bookshelf

I pretty much adore Stephen King. I think I’ve made that evident. This is his author photo from his latest novel, 11/22/63. I think he looks remarkably like an older, fuller-cheeked version of my dad.

Author photo by Shane Leonard

Stephen King, if you read this, I think you’re awesome.

So awesome in fact, that I have collected nearly all of your work. Here is a comprehensive list of Stephen King books (novels, short stories and collections, and nonfiction). I have italicized all the books I own, and bolded the NINE that I have yet to get my hands on.

novels:
11/22/63
Bag of Bones
Black House
Blockade Billy
Carrie
Cell
Christine
The Colorado Kid
Cujo
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Dark Half
The Dark Tower Series 1-3
The Dark Tower Series 4-8
The Dead Zone
Desperation
Dolores Claiborne
Dreamcatcher
Duma Key
The Eyes of the Dragon
Firestarter
From a Buick 8
Gerald’s Game
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Green Mile
Insomnia
IT
Lisey’s Story
Misery
Needful Things
Pet Sematary
The Plant: Zenith Rising (this one is actually an unfinished eBook that I thought would be impossible to find. Then I looked on his website and saw it’s just available to download as a pdf. BOOM)
Rose Madder
‘Salem’s Lot (I don’t have this as a single book, but in one of the collections)
The Shining
The Stand
The Talisman
The Tommyknockers
Under the Dome

nonfiction:
Danse Macabre
On Writing
Secret Windows

short story/novella collections:
Different Seasons
Everything’s Eventual
Four Past Midnight
Full Dark, No Stars
Hearts in Atlantis
Just After Sunset
Night Shift
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Skeleton Crew

as Richard Bachman:
The Bachman Books
Blaze
The Regulators
Thinner

There it is. My gleeful collection. Once I have completed it, I can set about replacing some of the ancient, falling-apart copies with newer, still-bound-together copies. Oh, I should also finally read all of them…because yes, there are some that I have only read once, years ago, and a couple that I’m sorry to say I haven’t yet read.

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Being a girl Books Dreams Fashion Food Friends Love Nonfiction Religion Self improvement Sentiment Writing

21 in 2 months

After yesterday’s post about how I have bought too many books since Jan 1st, a friend asked me to list them all. So here goes!

These are the ones I bought from Amazon with a gift card:

Cell by Stephen King – this is me collecting every Stephen King book
Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara? by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy – I saw this in the used bookstore I used to frequent when I worked at the Opera, and even though Erin said it was so-so, I’ve wanted to read it since then
Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs – I want to own all his stuff because I think he’s a good role model for me
Naked, Drunk, and Writing by Adair Lara – I idolize her, and this is one of the best “how to” writing books I’ve ever read
A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs – collecting all the Augusten Burroughs books is a lot easier than collecting all the Stephen King books

A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin – so good!
Touched by a Vampire by someone named Jones – from the used bookstore, about religion in Twilight…it looks like a joke, and that’s why I bought it, although I paid $7 for it, so who’s the joke on now?
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volume II by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – love Sherlock Holmes!
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather – love these Barnes and Noble volumes!
A Widow for One Year by John Irving – love John Irving!
More Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin – I really liked the show at ACT, and I really liked the first Tales of the City, so I look forward to reading more

Oh! Here’s The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volume I, near the foot of the bed. I was reading it about 6 weeks ago.

I shouldn’t count these since they were Christmas presents, but they are sitting out, so…

Etiquette by Emily Post – the 1922 edition!
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

This was also a Christmas present.

11/22/63 by Stephen King – one of his weirder premises, but I still enjoyed it!

Two major finds a couple weekends ago – two Stephen King books I thought were going to be difficult to get. But they basically fell into my hands!

Blockade Billy by Stephen King – $4.95 on the sale shelf at Barnes and Noble
The Colorado Kid by Stephen King – $2.95 at the used bookstore in Berkeley

Books 2 through 4 of the Underland Chronicles by the author of The Hunger Games. I love these books. I cannot recommend them enough. I also have the first one, but loaned it to Erin. I haven’t bought the fifth and final one yet, but I will when I finish the fourth one.

Gregory the Overlander by Suzanne Collins (not pictured)
Gregory and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins
Gregory and the Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins
Gregory and the Marks of Secret by Suzanne Collins

Next to the bed! I’m about halfway through and really like it. I think I will read each book before the next season of the HBO series comes out.

A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin

So that’s 19 books that I’ve purchased since January 1st, plus 3 Christmas presents. But wait! I am currently awaiting two books from Amazon:

These are for next month’s book club – they’re both pretty short and we couldn’t meet for another 5 weeks, so we decided to do both of them. I am actually pretty excited about both, but I will probably read them in this order.

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney – this book has been on my “to read” list FOREVER

So there you have it. Twenty-one books purchased in the first two months of 2012. Will the trend continue like this?

The thing of it is, I’m obviously not embarrassed or worried about this behavior. I love buying books and having books and reading books. I have no intention to stop buying them. I make no promises like, “I won’t buy anything else until I read everything I own.” There’s a Barenaked Ladies lyric,

I don’t buy everything I read,
I haven’t even read everything I’ve bought.

I identify with that.

Stay tuned, and I’ll give you a full breakdown of all of Stephen King’s works, and the few I still need to complete my collection!

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Being a girl Books Nonfiction Religion

I will trade social media for books any day of the week.

I gave up Facebook for Lent. I wasn’t going to give up anything, because as usual it snuck up on me, but then my uncle made an offhand comment (a Facebook status, actually), that “I guess none of us gave this up for Lent.” And then I realized that would be a great idea.

My reasoning was that I have friends who I never reach out to anymore, because I rationalize that I know what’s going on in their life, because I just looked at 60 pictures they just posted of their latest vacation. But I’m not really keeping in touch with these people. So I’m going to attempt to communicate with friends and family via other methods – even if it’s just email – over the next 5 1/2 weeks.

In the few weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday, I had been getting tired of Facebook – of always checking it and of never really seeing anything new, but then checking it again anyway. I also feel like my news feed has devolved into people sharing not-funny pictures. Oh, and now I get to see all the weird, embarrassing articles you just read online.

I’m not complaining about Facebook. It is what it is and it’s great for some things. But I think this break comes at a good time.

On the other hand, I know I’m doing something right because I’m kind of dying to get back on there and see what’s going on.

I have been uploading things for work, but not looking at anything else. Which is hard. I have stopped myself half a dozen times from just lazily clicking on someone’s profile, from a comment they made on the work page, just to see what’s up. Oops!

But last night, while I was on a mini-cleaning frenzy, I looked down and realized there was an Amazon box of 4 books on the ground. I remembered ordering it, but couldn’t quite remember what the items were. Then I cast my gaze around…on the pile of books I got at that used bookstore…the other used bookstore…from that Amazon gift card…from that payday that I went to Barnes and Noble…and I realized, if I had 9 boxes of books (a conservative estimate) when we moved in here, I surely have 11 now.

How did that happen? In 2 months? Maybe for Lent, I should have given up buying books. But that’s just crazy talk. I’d sooner give up chocolate again.