It always happens..I have all these wonderful plans for the long weekend. I have a stack of books on my bedside, just waiting to be read. Instead...I spent the entire weekend in bed, sick. My hubby and nine year old son had symptoms of a cold earlier in the week. My hubby had gone out the night before his symptoms appeared and I blamed it on a hangover (sorry baby!). Ok, I can admit it...I was wrong. Unless hangovers are contagious, he really was sick that day.
Ok, back to me :). The symptoms started Friday while I was at work. Tingly nose, itchy throat. We'd done a lot of cleaning around the office so I assumed that my allergies were just reacting. At lunch that day, I took my son to his school's Open House. I put on a happy face, but my head was throbbing. Luckily the powers that be decided to close the office early that day in honor of the Labor Day weekend.
I get home around 3:30 and I can barely see to drive, my headache is so bad. The normal allergy/sinus meds weren't kicking in. I drank some coffee, and that seemed to alleviate the pain for the time being.
Hubby and I had plans to take our nine year old to the mall to do some final back to school shopping. I was able to get through that relatively easily, but by the time we got home it hit me. I lost all energy and crashed.
I woke up the next morning at 6 am, thanks to our three year old son. That's when the coughing began. I coughed so much I thought my ribs would crack. The coughing lasted all weekend, and finally, after an entire 3 day weekend of drinking the all-powerful, cure-all Robitussin, I'm finally starting to feel normal again.
The downside of the meds was waking up, wide awake, at 3 am. I got a lot of quality reading done in those early hours! I finished Inside Out Girl
, Sweetsmoke
, and Chelsea Cain's newest, Sweetheart
. I've started Woman of a Thousand Secrets
and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
(for the Sci-Fi Lit class I'm taking). Look for my reviews of these books (ok maybe not Frankenstein) later this week.
Ok, this was meant to be a short little message explaining my absence but as usual I started rambling :). I hope everyone has a good week, and I'm sending out a special prayer to all those affected by Gustav. Also, there's still time to enter the giveaway for a Tess Gerritsen book!
Last weekend was a big weekend for our American friends: Memorial Weekend! I hope you guys enjoyed the the first unofficial weekend of the summer.
Which brings us to the Weekly Geeks Round Up. Participants had a choice of two topics:
1) A military focused post or 2) Summer reading.
Let's take a look at some of those posts.
Icedream from Reading in Appalachia honored her Uncles Joe and Keith in a post about her favorite military books.
Meghan from Medieval Bookworm joined Weekly Geeks for the first time this week. She shared her thoughts on summer reading.
Trisha from eclectic/eccentric discussed some Holocaust books, remembering victims of World War II.
Ariel Dalloway doesn't quite enjoy the summer like some of the rest of us do and from the sound of it I don't blame her. Her reading habits do change with the season.
Thanks to everyone who joined in this week. See you all next time for a new theme!
More than 5,000 ancient coins found in a Buckinghamshire field are an "unprecedented" find, the county's keeper of archaeology has said.
More than 5,000 ancient coins were found in a Buckinghamshire field [Credit: Weekend Wanderers Metal Detecting Club]
A member of the Weekend Wanderers Metal Detecting Club discovered the 11th Century coins buried in a field near Aylesbury four days before Christmas.
Brett Thorn from Bucks County Museum said it was the largest hoard of Saxon coins ever found in the county and the second largest in the UK.
"It just doesn't happen," he said.
Paul Coleman, from Southampton, was taking part in a dig in the Padbury area on 21 December when he found the coins from the late Anglo Saxon, early Norman period, depicting the heads of kings Ethelred the Unready and Canute.
The 11th Century coins had been left in a "sealed" lead container [Credit: Weekend Wanderers Metal Detecting Club]
"I saw one shiny disk," he told BBC News. "It was reflecting in the sky and I immediately knew it was a coin, you just know. So I bent down to pick the coin up and as I could focus down in the hole I could see lots of circular shapes behind it. Club spokesman Peter Welch said the coins, which were buried in a lead bucket, had "looked almost uncirculated, like they were straight from a mint".
Mr Thorn said the find was "massive" and the largest find of Saxon coins since 1840 when about 7,000 were unearthed in Cuerdale, near Preston in Lancashire.
'Very significant'
"I was absolutely astounded," he said. "To give an idea of scale, people normally find between five and 20 [Saxon] coins. We have about 4,000 Roman coins in the Bucks County Museum and only 30 Saxon ones, so it is very significant both nationally and for the county, it is just unprecedented."
The heads of Ethelred the Unready and Canute can be seen on the coins [Credit: Weekend Wanderers Metal Detecting Club]
The coins, which feature at least two kings, will be cleaned and examined by the British Museum to establish which mint they came from.
"Until they are cleaned and dated [to find the oldest] we can't begin to find out why they were collected or why they were carefully wrapped and very definitely hidden," said Mr Thorn.
A coroner must rule if they are "treasure" under the Treasure Act.
Mr Thorn could not comment on their estimated value but said if the museum decided, in conjunction with the British Museum, to acquire them "it would be a major fundraising effort".
The largest UK hoard of Anglo Saxon treasure was about 1,600 items, including helmet parts and processional crosses.
It was found in a Staffordshire field in July 2009 and valued at £3.285m.
I'm participating in another read-a-thon this weekend! This one is hosted by Back of the Book Reviews! This read-a-thon is quite a bit longer than any other I've participated in, going from Friday to Monday (96 hours!). I'm not sure what the official starting and ending time zones are (will update if/when I figure that out) so for now, I'm just acting as if it's by individual time zone.
I don't know for sure how dedicated I'll be each day, because I do have plans for this weekend, but I'm hoping to get a significant amount of reading done. My tentative goal is to shoot for 20 books. I managed to read 10 during my last (36 hour) read-a-thon, so really, this should be a piece of cake.:)
I don't really want to make a list of all the books I plan to read this weekend, because I never stick to it, but I will be back here to periodically update my status. I'll keep an update on this post of all the books I've read, and maybe how long I've spent reading. We'll see how it goes!:)
Last weekend I was so busy with the Iowa City Book Festival I didn't get the chance to post a Sunday Salon. This weekend has been equally busy but I've managed to find a little more time. I've been in Madison, Wisconsin with my boyfriend this weekend. It's a cool city and I'm thinking about going to library school here in a couple of years so I wanted to check out the area to see if I might like living here. I think it's safe to say that I would really enjoy living in Madison. My boyfriend and I are all about biking, walking, canoeing, and "green" living I suppose you would say. It seems like Madison does really cater towards that. Plus it's only five hours away from my hometown and three hours away from where I go to school now.
The main street downtown is State Street. Yesterday we went to some places my old roommate (who is from Wisconsin) suggested like Dobra Tea and Maharani Indian Restaurant. The Indian food was superb and I have to agree with her now. The Indian food in Iowa City just does not measure up. Of course no vacation would be complete with a stop at a bookstore. There were four bookstores I saw on State Street but we only went to two and I think the first one was the best.
Bookworks and Avol's Bookstore are actually two bookstores I guess, connected by an open door. I really only checked out the Avol's said because by the time I was done in there I had already found plenty. I got Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris because I just finished Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby and he really enjoyed it, although judging by the writing the person who originally owned this book did he didn't have as high of an opinion. I also got Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, and a children's book called Mathilda and the Orange Balloon by Randall de Seve and illustrated by Jen Corace. It's very cute.
To finish off the day we went to watch the sunset over the lake. It was so pretty and relaxing. I don't remember the last time I sat to watch a sunset.
So the Got Books Event is over now, but contest is still open until midnight tonight. If you haven't checked out my giveaway yet please do so. I'm giving away two books, one to each winner. The first book is Notes From No Man's Land by Eula Biss and the second is The Moon, Come to Earth by Philip Graham. If you're interested in winning either book please enter!
I know that neither of the reading challenges I'm participating in this weekend have officially finished, and I could easily squeeze more reading time in if I wanted to stay up all night. But, the last three hours of my evening have been spent reading the hashtag on Twitter — #YASaves. The hashtag ended up trending last night for quite a while, and it's in response to an article published by the Wall Street Journal. I've linked it here, but it's likely to make you angry... It's an article talking about how horrible the current YA market is, because so many of the books deal with dark topics like cutting, suicide, abuse, eating disorders and more.
Wait, what?! Seriously?! Somedays, I really hate people.
I could seriously rant about this for a long time. But, I won't. I'm going to rein in my tongue and accept that the many YASaves tweets last night from myself and so, so many others is enough to express my anger and disappointment on the issue. So, I will simply say that I am, once again, incredibly disappointed that they are letting someone who doesn't read YA lit, or understand the importance of YA lit to millions of people, speak as if they are the authority and the voice of the people. Really? Sigh. If you want people to take you seriously, you should probably read the books you are dismissing, demeaning and condemning.
I know I said I wouldn't really rant. But I had to let just a little out. Maybe later I'll have more to say, but right now, all I want to do is spew venom at the people who are so small minded they can't understand that not talking about a problem doesn't make it magically disappear, so I'm going to move on.
I spent hours on Twitter tweeting my own thoughts and reading about the experiences and thoughts of others. Which means, I wasn't reading my books.: P Because I spent to much time doing things not reading, I'm choosing to stop my readathons now, so that I can get some sleep tonight, and be awake and alert when I have to help keep 8 different 5 years old attentive and sitting still for 2 hours.
I did keep a fairly detailed accounting of my time spent on the challenge, but because I'm stopping so early, I don't actually think that time really makes a difference at this point, so I'll just tell you what I read.:)
Even with all the time I spent doing other things, I did manage to get 5 different books read, 6 if you count the book I read Friday morning, before I 'officially' started my challenge. I read:
What Daddy Did by Neal Shusterman (Friday, before the challenge began) Stolen by Lucy Christopher The Mermaid Summer by Mollie Hunter The Boys Next Door by Jennifer Echols Endless Summer — Jennifer Echols King of the Wind — Marguerite Henry
Even though I spent a lot of time doing other things, I'm pretty proud of my reading progress this weekend. I *might* get a little more done tomorrow, but who knows. For now, I'm just glad I was able to participate and managed to read a little more than normal.:)
This week Suey asked Geekers to share their plans for this weekend's 24 Hour Read-A-Thon...and a few of you took on the challenge.
Molly (The Restless Reader) will be experiencing her first Read-A-Thon. She writes: "Instead of worrying about the number of pages read, my overall goal is to just enjoy the experience."
You might want to amble over to Charlie's house (Life Happens) if you are looking for something good to eat. She plans on: "Food? Snacks? ALWAYS. I prefer lots of these things. I may get a cheese/grape/strawberry plate I spied at the store the other day. It's light and good for you...or I may get Easy Cheese and Chicken in a Biscuits...we'll see how it turns out. The less crumbs on the books the better."
Melydia isn't planning on participating in the Read-A-Thon this year, but she has a strategy anyway. Check out her post on Utter Randomonium for some good advice.
Melanie from Cynical Optimism is mixing a book festival and shopping at the farmer's market into her day of reading. She writes: "The Southern Festival of Books runs Friday-Sunday. Saturday specifically i intend to see Harold Ford at 10, the authors of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us at 12, Brian Yansky and Paolo Bacigalupi at 2:30, then at 3 Dr Bill Bass and author Jon Jefferson are talking about their book!" Check out her blog for some live posts about the festival on Saturday.
There were nine other responses to this week's Weekly Geek's post - and they are all great...so check out the links on this post.
Whatever you're planning for this autumn weekend, I hope it is wonderful...and that you find some great books along the way!
I read a lot of nonfiction, but sometimes when it feels like I've read tons of nonfiction books in a row I get a strong desire to cheat. Usually on weekend mornings when I want to read in bed a book about the environment or a memoir just aren't going to cut it for me that morning. I want an escape, something I will sink into my pillows with and forget that I'm wearing pajamas. When that desire happens it seems like I almost always reach for a YA novel.
This is exactly what happened yesterday morning. I've been working my way through Triumph of the City
for a couple weeks and I really love it. I'm going to review it later this week and I'm talking about it on my podcast because I'm just that enthusiastic about it. But on a Saturday morning I felt like cheating. Not thinking about cities or the environment and just think about something fun. I knew exactly what the perfect book was too, Bright Young Things
. I bought this book the day it came out because I loved Anna Godbersen's Luxe series. I was completely devastated when the series ended and couldn't wait to read what she had next. The second book in Bright Young Things doesn't come out until September though, so I've put off reading it a little bit. I can already tell I'm going to have the same experience with Bright Young Things, I can't put the first book down.
Of course now I need to finish Triumph of the City quickly because I have a review obligation with TLC Book Tours, so I probably should have finished it earlier. I don't feel guilty. Bright Young Things is exactly what I needed this weekend.
What kind of books do you pick up when you're looking to cheat? Do you cheat on your books, or do you just power through until the end?
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I am participating in the Dewey Readathon today! My readathon mornings are always messed up. I always oversleep, and it seems like I'm always going to my parents' house for the weekend. This readathon was new different. I got started about two hours late, nine o'clock my time. I haven't wasted much time though, one and a half books finished. Jason and I made a little pit stop in Pella, Iowa on the way home to meet some of family for lunch. Now I'm at my parents' house to read for an hour before we go get our engagement pictures taken.
Time spent reading: 15/21 Pages read: 704 Hours listened: 3 Books completed: The Walking Dead Volume 2 by Robert Kirkman, Welcome to My Country by Lauren Slater, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, The Pharmacist's Mate by Amy Fusselman Activities completed: None Trees planted: 8
I'll be returning to update this post throughout the day. You might be wondering about trees planted. For each book I finish during the readathon I am planting two trees through Eco-Libris.
Update: My engagement pictures are complete! We had a lot of fun getting out pictures taken and I read a little Shakespeare during the photo shoot. I'm sure I'll share some of those later. For now I will just say The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a fantastic book. A really quick read too! Also, I didn't fill this out during hour one, so I'm doing it now.
1) My parents' house in Altoona, Iowa. Started at my house in Iowa City, Iowa and read on the road in between. 2) I love essays, almond macaroons are my favorite cookie, and I'm probably going camping next weekend. 3) 10 4) I don't really have any specific goals this time around, I'm just hoping to get a lot of reading done! 5) Relax and have fun. Try to get some actual reading in instead of checking up on everyone else's blogs!
Update: It's now 11:18 here. I went and got some dinner, took a nap, and started two books. I was originally planning on reading Molly Fox's Birthday, but decided it wasn't really working for today. Right now I'm reading Welcome to my Country by Lauren Slater instead. I've been working on some art projects for school while listening to Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World, which has been a nice break from reading and a good opportunity to get some work done. Now I think I'm going to get back to some real text reading for a few hours. Who is still out there? Are you hanging in there?
Update: A few hours have gone by since my last update. I'm officially starting to get tired. I've accomplished a lot more in this readathon than I thought I would. I've finished four books and made a pretty good dent in the beginning of an audiobook. I even managed to get a little homework done. In the last few hours I read a graphic novel to give my eyes a rest from all the text. In the next couple hours I think I might listen to some audio while trying to get some more homework done and then see how I feel.
Update: This will probably be my final update for the readathon. My eyes are heavy and I'm at the beginning of a book which is making it difficult for me to keep up with it. I might try to get up after a little nap to read just a little bit more-but I am basically done for this readathon. I also keep thinking about the paper I have to write tomorrow and how I should probably be a little coherent for that!
How is your readathon going? If you're not participating then how are you spending your Saturday?
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.
Natasha at Maw Books has announced the first edition of the Bloggiesta!! The Bloggiesta will focus on blog content, improving/cleaning up your blog or working on your social network profiles.
The official times are Friday, June 19th beginning at 8am, Saturday the 20th and ending Sunday the 21st at 8am.
Here are my plans on what I will do during the Bloggiesta:
Write backlog reviews
Clean up my labels for my posts
Write my meme posts for the next two weeks
Since it's Father's Day weekend (yes, we celebrate the entire weekend at our house) I didn't want to create a list that was too daunting. I may add things to this list, but it's a great starting point!
Interested in signing up for the Bloggiesta? Visit Maw Books and sign up now!
My book buying ban is finally over! I bought quite a few books over the weekend though, so now I'm starting to think I shouldn't buy any more books until school gets out. To be fair I only bought four books though, my mom came to visit and bought me some books while we were shopping. So I really didn't do that bad on my first weekend back to book buying. Here is what I ended up with:
1. An American Childhood
by Annie Dillard. I just finished Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
and was really impressed by Dillard's writing. 2. So when I saw An American Childhood and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard on the buy 2 get 1 free table I couldn't pass it up. My mom got the third book. 3. Missouri
by Christine Wunnicke was on a display for GLBT books. I thought it looked interesting because it was a western about two gay men in Missouri. We'll see how I like it. 4. My friend Katherine told me I might enjoy Essays of E.B. White
, so I decided to get that when I saw it in the essays section. 5. Unfamiliar Fishes
by Sarah Vowell. I've heard so much about Sarah Vowell I thought I might as well give her a shot even though I originally planned on listening to her audio. My copy has two book jackets, I assume by mistake. Anyone else ever get a book with two book jackets on it? 6. After I picked up Unfamiliar Fishes I saw The Wordy Shipmates
as a bargain book, so I got that too. 7. The previous six books I got when I was with my mom. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
by Barbara Demick I got on my own. Kim's review at Sophisticated Dorkiness has had me wanting this book for a long time. In fact, Kim influenced me to want several books during my book buying ban. 8. Annabel has been all over the blogosphere since it came out in January and I think it sounds like a fantastic fiction book. 9. Not pictured, I also got And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado
, which I also heard of from Kim and The Only Dance in Iowa: A History of Six-Player Girls' Basketball
.
So apparently I pretty much caught up for not getting any books for one month. I think I should probably read ten more books before I can go book shopping again! Did you get any books this week?
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.
I've said for awhile that I would never put myself on a book buying ban. I didn't think I was buying that many books and after all, if I was having a bad week a new book on the weekend could make me feel a little better. For some reason I've bought a lot of books since I got back from Europe. Maybe because I wasn't buying any while I was there? It just seems like there have been a lot of sales, coupons, and books wanted over the last two months. My TBR pile grew substantially and my reading pace slowed down a bit. I'm realizing I need to stop.
For about a week I've been on an unofficial sort of ban. I'm going to continue this ban until April 1st. It's not so much that I can't buy any books at all, but I really shouldn't. I've just gotten too many lately. However, I'm visiting my parents this weekend and last night I went to the mall with my mom. You know how moms are... Anyway, she gave me a little book money and I went ahead and spent it on a few books. In the spirit of shopping.
And since some of you want to know, I got the following books. 1. Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood because I've only read one book by Margaret Atwood and that needs to change. 2. Delirium
by Lauren Oliver even though I wasn't going to buy if after all the hype. I still think it sounds really good. 3. Flapper by Joshua Zeitz, which is a historical nonfiction book about flappers. I thought this would be fun after Bright Young Things. 4. The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow, finally, after a year I bought this because the hardcover was on sale for six dollars and I've wanted it ever since it came out.
I just don't think I can make myself not buy any books, so the ban is really more of an attempt of awareness. Awareness of how many books are coming in and how recently I've bought a book and how quickly I can read the books I'm bringing in. I got into some bad book buying habits over the summer because I was reading so fast. When you're reading three books a week, buying a couple new ones doesn't grow the pile that much. When you're reading one it makes a pretty big difference.
Have you put yourself on a book buying ban? A bit of a ban? How do you manage your book buying habits?
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.
So, I'm a total sucker for a read-a-thon. I've been a little stressed lately at how much I need to read and now. I feel really behind on my books and with two events coming up (Psychtember at A Tapestry of Words in September and Just Contemporary in November here) it's getting even worse. So, when my friend Kristen mentioned Once Upon a Chapter's read-a-thon, going from Friday (today) until Sunday, I decided that I'd sign up last minute.:)
So, this is my starting post.
I could technically count the last 100 pages or so of Between Shades of Gray by Ruth Sepetys in my read-a-thon totals, since I finished it after midnight (and... Wow, btw. Amazing) but instead I'm just going to start with what I read starting in the morning. And, I might extend my own personal read-a-thon time into Monday, since I already have the day of work. It is also the day that my sister will be home from vacation, so I might spend time with her instead, so we shall see.
I do know that I won't spend the whole time reading either. I have stuff that needs to be done this weekend, and I need to finalize the pen-pal stuff so I can get that post up and that stuff started this weekend. But, I do plan to get a lot done. I'm going to set my goal between 6 and 9, with a hopeful possibility of 12.
The read-a-thon hosts did ask for a general idea of reading plans and goals, so — at the start, here they are:
What books are you starting with? Rules of Attraction by Simone ElkelesBet Me by Jennifer Cruise Also hope to read: Ashfall by Mike Mullin Willow by Julia Hoban Pearl by Jo Knowles The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly Raven by Allison van Diepen Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion I hope to read: 9 books (or more!) Status: Total Books Read: Books Read Since Last Update: (there are more questions on the host's updates than mine, like pages read, time read. I might add it later, but I doubt it. I don't really keep track of time or pages, and don't want to.: P) I'll update this post periodically, and will probably have a finish line post, although I might just update this one. We shall see.: P Wish me luck!:)
If you were here last weekend then you know I bought a nook. Since Sunday I have almost finished two books (finished one and almost finished another) on the nook and I can say already that I have really enjoyed the experience of reading on it. I'm planning on posting an actual review towards the end of June, so if you're thinking about buying any e-reader be sure to check out my review later this month!
I am going to keep this post pretty short, mostly because my head hurts and I've had a bit of a rocky weekend. This week I posted a review of Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age, which is a really interesting book if you are interested in libraries or archives. I also posted a review of The Carrie Diaries, which is a fun summer read, particularly if you are a Sex and the City fan. I did my first Booking Through Thursday post about signed books and I talked about my third week at my internship. Last Saturday I had a guest post about The Graphic Novel, which got a great response so next Saturday check back for guest poster Ron to fill us in on his must read graphic novels!
As for reading this summer, I've done pretty well on the weekends on the beginning and end of the weeks, but since I work Tuesday-Thursday I'm usually pretty tuckered out at night and then I want to spend time with my family and the boyfriend. I am still getting quite a bit of reading done this summer. Originally I thought I would read more heavy books during the summer since I wouldn't be reading them during school, but I've found that the only stuff I've really gotten into have been memoirs, essays, and junk food (particularly Meg Cabot and romance novels). At first I was kind of bummed with myself for not reading more challenging books, but hell, it's summer. And frankly I don't give a damn.
My tumble down the stairs last week required me to go to parents over the weekend; therefore, I didn't get as much reading done as I had planned. That being said, here is what I'm reading right now and what I plan to read this week. J.Kaye's Book Blog is the source of my What I'm Reading Mondays is J.Kaye's Book Blog.
Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere
by Jan Morris. I am finishing this book today for my travel writing class. The first half was not what I expected at all but I'm enjoying the second half more. It is about the city of Trieste which is in Italy (although it is unknown by most Italians).
A Little Princess
by Frances Hodgson Burnett is my first book for Shelf Discovery. I wanted to finish it over the weekend but it just didn't happen. I am enjoying it though. I grew up watching the movie and it is similar but the differences really change the way you understand the story.
I am embarking on a journey with George Eliot's Middlemarch starting today. It will be a very long journey, but I am looking forward to it.
I'm planning on reading The Lover
by Marguerite Duras later this week for the November Novella Challenge. I started this book once before and didn't finish it, even though I really liked it. So hopefully that will get done this week.
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!
I am in Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.
So, I know I have been going a little crazy with the posting. I feel like I've posted a lot in the last few days... Sorry about that. I'll keep this one short.:)
Mother Reader is hosting a 48 hour reading challenge on her blog this weekend. From Friday to Sunday, you pick your best, consecutive 48 hours and you read, all that you can. Taking time to write reviews of the books read counts for your time, as does 1 hour of social networking (blog/twitter comments) per 5 hours of reading time.
I'm behind on my reading (although, not as behind as on reviews!) so this chance to just read like crazy is awesome, and pretty much exactly what I need.
So, I'm starting now (3pm) and will go until 3pm on Sunday afternoon, MST. I'll most likely post another update tomorrow at some point, let you all see how my progress is going, and will also post on Sunday, to let you know how I did.
Because I'm crazy & also have no problems double dipping, I'm also participating in the Saturday readathon as Awesome Bookworm 's blog. So, on Saturday, I'll be putting a more intense focus on reading, and less on writing reviews (even more behind...) and not as much tweet checking.:) But, it should still be a lot of fun! The 24 hour readathons are even more motivating!:)
If any of you are participating in any of these readathons I'd love to hear from you! Stop by, say hello, leave a link, tell me what you're reading etc.
Wish me luck!:) Happy Reading
What I hope to get read:
The Boys Next Door/Endless Summer — Jennifer Echols Mermaid Summer — Mollie Hunter Amy and Roger's Epic Detour — Morgan Matson Stolen — Lucy Christopher Please Ignore Vera Dietz — A.S. King Dobry — Monica Shannon That Summer — Sarah Dessen The Burning Bridge — John Flanagan Twenty Boy Summer — Sarah Ockler
Finals week for English majors is never really about exams. It's about papers. I have two ten pagers due next Wednesday and I'm aiming to finish them by the end of the weekend. The paper writing process can be excruciating, somewhat like pulling teeth or so I imagine, as I've never had a tooth pulled. While this semester as been mundane, horrible, terrible, disgusting, whatever, I am actually super excited to write both of this final papers because my paper topics are so interesting to me.
I'm writing a paper on whether or not Sarah Silverman is essayistic at all by looking at her film Jesus is Magic
and her book The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
. I just started reading The Bedwetter yesterday and I must say I am so glad I can consider that homework. I haven't read any books for class this semester! Only essays. I really miss reading whole books for class. And The Bedwetter is hilarious so far, I'm a little over a 1/3 of the way through it. This paper is relaxing and stimulating. It's reminding me that paper writing can be fun.
Everyone at Iowa has to take a rhetoric class their freshman or sophomore year. I took my mine first semester my freshman year since I'm an English major and while I didn't really enjoy the class, I did write an awesome paper for it. I wrote about German rap music and how it relates to ethnicity. I listened to a ton of German rap music as music. I got an A on that paper and writing it was a trip.
Currently, I'm also writing a paper about book catalogs in the Renaissance. The class I'm writing this for, Literature and the Book, is my favorite class I've taken this semester. I've loved analyzing how they sold books during the Renaissance and book catalogs is a perfect way to do that. I get to use some really great databases to look at microfilm and some actually books from our library's special collections. This isn't as relaxed as Sarah Silverman, but book history is something I really enjoy so it seems fun to me.
I've also written some papers about actual books (go figure) and analyzed passages. These kind of papers are awesome if you have a great argument. I remember my freshman year I took Intro to the English Major and did less than desired on the first paper. When we wrote about The Tempest
I got a really good argument going about gender and the New World in my paper. I was so proud to get my first A in the English department.
I complain about writing papers a lot, but honestly I feel pretty lucky to be an English major and write papers about things that interest me all the time, instead of just taking exams about things I don't care about.
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Since this weekend is Valentine's Day I decided to do a little bit of love reading I'm two thirds of the way through Love Letters of Great Women edited by Ursula Doyle.
"I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could." Abigail Smith Adams to John Adams, 31 March 1776 (p. 51)
I do like a nice book cover, but I don't give them nearly as much thought as Jana at the Broke and Bookish so my list won't be as in-depth or interesting as hers. Mine aren't in any order either because I'm just putting them in as I think of them basically.
There were times when I was reading The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova where I just couldn't help but stop reading and look at the cover. This is truly one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen. I love the darkness of the background and how the image changes for you as you read the book and find out more about the story. The text is great as well, kind of a mix between old and new, which is something the book plays with a lot. Also, I know this isn't part of the cover and I don't know what the books that have been released look like, but on my ARC the binding is gold and looks quite nice on my shelf.
One of the most effective ways to sell books is probably to have them cover out instead of binding out. If it wasn't for that, I never would have seen The Impostor's Daughter by Laurie Sandell this weekend. I was attracted to this cover because of the bright colors, fun font style, and the mystery about why she's covering her face with a picture of her dad. I picked up the book and read the back cover, thought it looked interesting so I opened it up to find it was a graphic novel! I was really excited to find a graphic novel in memoir form because I loved Persepolis so I bought it right away.
This cover is really simple and white, with a great brightly covered image that totally sums up the message of this book. It looks comicy, but still empowering. This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson is probably one of my favorite covers from books I've read this summer. Every time I see the librarian with her cape I smile and I realized something a little different about the picture every time I look at it. For instance, it took me awhile to realize that those were books she was flying out of.
I think part of the reason I read Sunflowers by Sheramy Bundrick was that every time I looked at it I said "Pretty!" I love Sunflowers and Vincent Van Gogh's art and I think it was really effective to do a close up of one painting rather than try to fill the cover with an entire painting. The white text allows the image to speak for itself, and those who know Van Gogh will be immediately attracted just by recognition. Plus I just love green and yellow.
I buy children's books all the time even though I have no children and I'm not a teacher nor do I want to be one. Part of it started when I was a reading tutor and it's just kind of carried on since then. One day I'll have kids to share some of these beautiful children's books with and one I can't wait to share is The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. This was a staff pick at a store once and the artwork is just beautiful. I was attracted by the little red haired boy who sticks out amongst the green and blue of the natural scene behind him.
I still haven't read Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman but every time I walk by the cover I get the urge to start it. It is so simple, most of his covers are, but it just looks interesting. The image reminds of a children's reference book about dinosaurs with all of the labels on it. I love dinosaurs so I'm attracted to that. And I like how the author's name and the title are the same size and sandwich the image.
I just had to add one more children's book to this list. Boris and Bella, authored by Carolyn Crimi and illustrated but Gris Grimly is just a great cover. It's Tim Burton-esque and creepy. Normally when you see a male and female name on a book you assume they are in love, but this is not the case with Boris and Bella. We can tell from the image that these ghouls obviously do not like each other. I also like the purple and black for a creepier story like this one, plus the text fits perfectly.
I haven't read Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart yet, but I intend to soon because the book sounds great to me. I love this cover because it combines and simple colorless photograph with a tiffany blue colored box for text, and then the box is topped with a bow like one from Tiffany would be. I just think that was a really cute idea and I love the simple color scheme of this book.
I read this book a week ago and I think it has a pretty neat cover. This cover of Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman really embodies Rita's personality. The orange and green are bright and fun, which is just like her attitude. I also like the map at the top of the cover that shows all the different places she goes to and how she's constantly traveling back and forth. Plus I like that they used a photograph for a travel narrative because it let's you feel like you're in on their trip a little bit.
My last cover is the 50th Anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It's beautiful. The color scheme is really unique, you don't see that deep, wine red on books very often, and it let's the green of the tree really pop. I have the older lavender version right now and I have been lusting after this book ever since I saw it. I also love the text they use on this cover, a slanted print that looks almost like a child's handwriting.
I actually learned a lot about myself by doing this, I appears that I'm really attracted to colors or white covers with a single image on them. Who knew! What are you attracted to in covers?
