Merry Wanderer of the Night:
decorating

I moved into my townhouse with three bookshelves and they were completely full right away, so I knew a new bookshelf was in my future eventually. I finally got sick of all the random stacks of books around the house towards the end of last semester and yesterday I bought the bookshelf. It's the biggest bookshelf I've got so far. Apparently I've become more realistic about my growing library. I'm amazed by how many of the books I own I've purchased since I started blogging. Apparently I just didn't know what books to buy before my blog and now I'm constantly bombarded with books I want to read plus I find ones on my own. Book blogging has definitely changed the way I approach shopping in a bookstore-- but that is a post for a different day.

The bottom shelf is games and children's books, two things that didn't really have a home in my house so it makes sense for them to go on a fairly empty bookshelf. Above that is about two shelves of unread books. Just by looking at my bookshelves it seems like I'm finishing one shelf of books for every shelf of new books, which means I'll never get past that one bookshelf worth of books I haven't read. I'm pretty okay with this ratio right now, obviously I would like to read more books than I'm taking in. The worst part is that I have two shelves of books that I've owned for a long time but still haven't read. When I look at the books I think I want to get to them someday, but I don't want to read them as much as the new books I bought in the last year. I should probably get rid of some of the books I haven't read but I honestly think getting rid of books is a humongous pain in the butt.

The second shelf from the top houses literary magazines which were previously under my coffee table. This collection is only going to get bigger in 2011 because I not only have a subscription to The Believer (my second year with it) but I have one to McSweeney's as well. The very top shelf has some beer bottles from Germany on it. Not much to do with books, I just thought they were pretty.

Have any of you gotten a new bookshelf recently? Do you need one? Are the stacks of books taking over your house?

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This week has been a little jarring. It was the fourth week of classes, although it didn't really feel like it. Homework is starting to get heavier, and I have a midterm in a little over a week. I can feel the stress coming. When I'm stressed I like to clean, so on Thursday night I decided to reorganize my bookshelves.

I reorganized them by books I have read and books I haven't. I was actually quite pleased when I discovered I've read a lot of my books! The two bookshelves on the left are all books I have read, and the bookshelf on the right are books I have not. The book on top of the middle shelf are books I have not read yet, but those are the books I want to read really soon. The books on the top shelf of the unread shelf are books I'd like to read soonish, and then they decrease in importance as the shelf goes down. I thought maybe when I got to the bottom of the shelf I would find some books I want to get rid of, but I actually want to read most of them, just not right now. A lot of them are Victorian novels which I haven't been in the mood for recently.

Earlier this week I posted the start of a readalong for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. A lot of people have responded and said they'd like to join but don't have time. I've decided to extend the amount of time the readalong will go for. We will now discuss the book on November 1st, and hopefully this will give people more time to get the book and read it as it's rather long. I really hope some more people join! I also heard that the link I posted for Awesome Essays yesterday wasn't working for everyone, so I changed the link and hopefully now you can read The Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf with ease. And after some request I've decided to bring back Children's Book Thursday, so check that out!

Okay- back to homework!

Over winter break I posted some pictures of a book wreath I made. Even though I got some cringes I'm still going to post the pictures of a book flower I recently made. I'm actually going to make two of these for a floor vase I'll use in the townhouse I'm moving into (in five weeks!).

Some people are against crafting with books, and I get that. In my case this was a romance novel I had already read and the options I had for getting rid of it were taking it to a used bookstore that might by it and getting a quarter or turning it into something beautiful I could enjoy. I chose the latter.

Yesterday I came back to Iowa City (finally!) and I must admit I'm actually excited about starting classes again. I'm not really looking forward to the homework but I am looking forward to learning and having stuff to do. I came back to ten packages last night! All of which were books. Pretty sure the full time desk clerk was wondering what the heck I was doing ordering all of that stuff. I also attempted to put together the new bookshelf I bought over break for my birthday. Unsuccessful. Thankfully my boyfriend came to the rescue. This is what it looks like:

I also thought I would brag a little bit about my awesome new bookends! I also bought these for my birthday even though they were hella expensive. But trees and birds are my favorite things and they match the bookshelves my boyfriend and I made over the summer.

Pretty right?
So this week I didn't post any reviews (I know I was bad) because I wanted to save some up. I'm not going to get to read three books a week anymore because I'm going to be at school. I might be able to do two on a good week though. Instead I wrapped up my 19 Going on 20 Challenge and alerted everyone of my awards. Finally I shared my thoughts on textbooks with my other college blogging friends. This week I'm going to start actually following my fancy schedule that I have in the right hand column. Books that I'm going to review in the upcoming weeks are Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, The Virgin Queen's Daughter by Ella March Chase, and Rumors by Anna Godbersen. I really enjoyed all of these books and hope you all enjoy my review of them!

This is my last week as a teenager! I'm going to be 20 on Sunday. In case you are interested I am going to The Lion King for my birthday at the Des Moines Civic Center. I have never been to The Lion King before so I am very excited. I'm also going to celebrate my birthday by participating in Maw Books Blog's Bloggiesta, which runs from January 8-10. A Bloggiesta is basically just a chance to improve your blog. I worked a lot on my layout this past week, but I'm going to be using the bloggiesta time to make some post templates and work on a few other things for my blog. I'm going to try and work on my blog for a total of 24 hours over the weekend. My challenge to myself is to work on my blog for ten hours straight from Saturday to Sunday. You obviously won't see a lot of the work that I do on my blog, but I'll make a post at the end of the weekend to share what I've done.

This week I posted the books I got for Christmas and my plans for this blog in the coming year. I also posted reviews of The Clumsiest People in Europe, The Time Traveler's Wife, and A Great and Terrible Beauty. I also joined one more challenge: The Essay Reading Challenge.

I'm working on where I'm going to live next year and I will probably be signing a lease for my first apartment soon. Yesterday was a busy day for me because it was a day of making plans. I'm planning a couple of trips, applying for a couple of internships, and I'm looking into the first apartment situation. I'm most likely going to be living by myself, which won't be very different from how things are now. All of this apartment talk has got me thinking about decorating though! Decorating is probably my second passion after books. I spent this entire past summer thinking about how I was going to decorate my dorm room for this year, and anyone who has seen my dorm room will tell you that it is pretty sweet. I thought I would share a few things I found about decorating with books, a challenge for any avid reader. I found a link on Better Homes and Gardens about Decorating With Books. Some of the ideas aren't that practical, but they are pretty. I might use some of these ideas next year. I'm also lusting after At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries. It's a little expensive but I think it's something I would use for many, many years. Perhaps a birthday present to myself?

Happy reading!

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