After a very productive, post-every-day, first week of November, I came to a screeching halt this week, and haven't blogged about anything since my last Sunday Salon post last week. I'm kind of disappointed in myself; I just wasn't able to keep my head in the game, I guess.

I did some book buying, though- probably more than I should have. I brought home several new treasures for myself. On Wednesday, I ran into Borders to get one of those Wedge-Light things, (Love it, by the way), and also got The Meaning of Night: A Confession by Michael Cox. A trip to Barnes & Noble yesterday brought in a remaindered hardcover of Toni Morrison's Love, and at Borders (also yesterday), I got Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck, both by Christopher Moore. I'm going through a vampire phase right now, and Christopher Moore's books are supposed to be great. Additionally, I also got a couple books in the mail: The King's Daughter: A Novel of the First Tudor Queen by Sandra Worth, which was sent to me for review, and The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates, which came from BookMooch.

I'm hoping to get back on the proverbial wagon this week. I'm hoping that the vampires (both Christopher Moore's and others) will do the trick. Because I've got a ton of great review books that I really, really need to review.

I'm also starting to get really excited for the 999 challenge. I know it doesn't start until next year, but I've got most of my books all planned out (two categories are blank because they literally can't be filled yet). My thread on Library Thing is here. As you can tell from some of the categories, I'm feeling pretty ambitious. And there are books that I plan to read next year that don't fall into those categories. The "chunksters" category will give me the most trouble, as most of those books are really, really long. Clarissa may be too much to hope for, but I do have some others I can sub in if need be. If I decide to throw a category over to miscellaneous, that will probably be the first category to go.

But for now, I've got really high hopes for the challenge. And since I won't be in school at all next year (next semester is my first semester out of school in 19 years), I figure I have a better shot to succeed than I did with the 888 challenge this year (which I gave up on in August). And I might be making some small changes to the way I post reviews next year. We'll see how it all works out. I should easily reach 50 books for this year, so I've got my eye on 100 books for next year. Here's hoping that not being in school will do wonders for my desire and ability to read for leisure.

Well, it's pretty late here (my brain still says it's Saturday- I am posting really early), so I'm going to bed. I'll try to comment on other Salon posts more actively this week. Hope you all have a great Sunday.

Tags: 999 challenge, acquisitions, sunday salon
Current Mood: apathetic
Current Music: Led Zeppelin - Black Dog

This was such a busy week in the blogosphere! Huge, huge thanks again to Amy for hosting Book Blogger Appreciation Week. I'm so glad to be part of such an amazing community.

Thanks again to all those who entered my Sweet Love Giveaway, and congratulations to Karen of Planet Books for winning.

I've added a few new books to my collection this week. They include:
-Goldengrove by Francine Prose
-Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Lavransdatter
-The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
-Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland*
-Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti**
-A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry**
-Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson**

* denotes LT Early Reviewer Book
** denotes BookMooch acquisition

Both Kristin Lavransdatter and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo are part of my attempt to branch out and read things written by people not in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France or Spain (most of my reading material comes from the first two, the rest seems to come from the remaining three). And what better way to do that than to read books written in the countries of my ancestors (I'm something like, 90% Northern European- most of my family is from Sweden, Norway, or Germany). KL is the current pick for the LT group read, but I've got so much else going on right now I don't think I have the time to invest for a group read. So I'm putting it away for a rainy day.

In terms of what I'm actually reading right now, I'm still working on The 19th Wife. I didn't have much time to spend with it this last week, but I'm hoping to finish it this coming week. If I just spend a few good hours with it, I should be close to done. Maybe I'll work on that the rest of the afternoon.

Have a great Sunday.

Tags: acquisitions, sunday salon

Sunday already? Wow. Hope you're all having a great Sunday and staying cool. It's pretty warm here, but not warm enough to justify turning on the A/C, so I'm trying to stay cool with my ceiling fan. I think it's feeling overworked, though, since it's basically been on non-stop all summer. Poor thing.

It's been a busy week for me, in terms of review-writing. I reviewed several books this week: Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (slightly spoilery, so be warned if you're trying to avoid spoilers); A Room with a View by E.M. Forster; The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler; Silk by Alessandro Baricco; and Secret Society Girl by Diana Peterfreund. On the whole, I enjoyed them all, though I liked some more than others. I'm planning to do a lot more catch-up reviews in the coming weeks. I've so enjoyed the reviews I've read on other blogs, I decided it was time to start taking the reviews I post here a lot more seriously.

I also bought a few more books this week: Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates; The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson (which has gotten a ton of great reviews from reviewers I really respect; I'm choosing to ignore the slam it received from EW); and The Vicomte de Bragelonne and Louise de la Valliere both by Alexandre Dumas (I also bought Silk, which I already read and reviewed). In light of the fact that my TBR currently stands 300+ books high, I am going to make every effort to avoid purchasing more books in the coming months. BookMooch and the library are one thing, but I need to make some very real progress on the books I already own, and I don't need to add more to the madness.

I also signed up for Amazon associates this week. If I'm directing traffic their way, a little compensation is the least they can do.

And, I've made a bunch of changes to the look of this blog this week. My profile page looks amazing, and I'm trying to figure out what codes I need to put the banner at the top of my "about me" at the top of the main blog page and all pages that fall into that category. Anyone know anything about LJ's S2 component style and how to personalize it like that? Or where I should go to ask that question? I don't know enough about HTML to do more than the basics. And I changed the colors around on the home page; I think the blues suit me a little better than the pastels.

In terms of actual reading, I've done a bit of that this week as well. I read Silk in a little over two hours on Wednesday night, and thought it was beautiful. I really need to read more international fiction. I love British lit, and I'm coming to love American lit as well, but some of the international authors I've read this year are pretty amazing. On that note, I'm still reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and loving it. I'm about halfway through, and just taking my time enjoying it. I also started Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood this week. I began reading it nearly five years ago, and just never got into it (and no, it wasn't my first Atwood). I let it sit on the shelf for years, and decided it was time to give it another go this year. And I think I can appreciate it much better at 24 than I was able to at 19. I'm getting a lot more out of it, even though I'm still at the beginning. I'm reading it for both the 1% Well Read Challenge and the Book Awards Challenge. And, it will be nice to finish a book that's been on the TBR for five long years.

Have a great week everyone. Don't forget to check back during the week for new reviews.

Tags: acquisitions, sunday salon
Current Mood: complacent
Current Music: Jon McLaughlin - So Close

I did something this week I never thought I'd do: I read while sitting at a bar in a restaurant, while my brother sat beside me watching sports. He'd had a bad day (we found out someone has been possibly using his social security number since 1987), and I went along for the ride. After we'd eaten dinner, though, he sat nursing his drink and watching the racing channel, and I quickly grew bored. It made me glad I've learned to carry a book with me at all times for bibliomergencies. So I got in some quality reading time while finishing my mudslide and waiting for my brother to finish whatever toxic substance he was drinking.

I'm finally starting to put a bit of a dent into The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I'm really enjoying it, but it is taking me forever to read this book. I'll get really into it at some points, and then struggle with it at other points. Does that happen to anyone else? It seems to happen to me more than I would like. I'm about a quarter of the way in now; I wish I was farther along, but so far, no luck.

I also made a few purchases this week. I went into town last night armed with a gift card, a coupon, and my Rewards cards, and I hit both Borders and Barnes & Noble. I came away with some pretty good reads.
From Borders:
*The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
*Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas
*Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

From B&N:
*After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
*Kafka on the Shore, also by Murakami
*The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble
*The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

On top of the books I brought home the week before, it's definitely time to try to put a moratorium on book purchases. According to my "tbr" tag on Library Thing, my current to be read list is at 307 books. Think I can hold off on buying books until, oh, Christmas? Because I know I'd never get through those 307 books between now and then. I had made a goal at the beginning of July to not buy more than 3 or 4 books a month for the rest of the year. I want to see if I can go until Christmas without buying any more books. I'll still get books from the library and BookMooch (That's a given), but I want to try to pull this off. This madness must end.

Have a great afternoon/evening, Saloners!

Tags: acquisitions, sunday salon
Current Mood: dorky

Happy Sunday, Saloners! I celebrated my 24th birthday this past week, and pulled in a lovely haul of books. Some of them are quality books, with a lot of literary merit; others are, erm, fluffy.

From my parents:
*The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
*Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
*When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

From Michelle:
*The Matchbreaker by Chris Manby
*Sex...in Uniform
*Rites of Spring (Break) by Diana Peterfreund


My own purchases:
*The Secret River by Kate Grenville
*Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
*Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

The books from Michelle are not books that I would have purchased on my own, with the exception of the Peterfreund book (which I had in fact already purchased and read, so I will probably just list one copy on BookMooch, since I've always had a hard time telling people that I already own books they've bought for me). And I probably won't read the uniform book, since I think she purchased it due to a long-running joke we have. She knows I don't read books that are gratuitously smutty like that (and that was not what I had in mind a few months ago when I said I wanted to read more short stories).

Breaking Dawn is already read and completed, but I will probably write a real book review for it within the next few days, so I won't say anything here. I've also been continuing to plug away at The Shadow of the Wind. I'm off work Tuesday, so I'm hoping to get a chance to get some quality reading time in. Additionally, the Book Awards II Challenge started on Friday, and so I'll be devoting some time to that as well this week.

Have a great week!

Tags: acquisitions, gifts, sunday salon
Current Mood: tired