The Sunday Salon: Reading in Fits and Starts

Today has been a very scattered reading day for me – haven’t really been able to stick to any one thing very long. Several reasons for that. All of them ditsy in one way or another.

First, the Cowboys are playing today and M is watching the game on TV in the living room, and I have to keep going in to check the score. I’m not actually watching the game because I have this personal superstition that when I watch their games, they lose. So I’m doing Wade and Tony and Terrell and the gang a big favor by staying away from the tube. But curiosity keeps drawing me in for little peeks now and then.

Secondly, the book I’m reading is driving me batty, so I can’t really stick with it for long periods without a lot of breaks for screaming and throwing it across the room. I’ve been trying to slog my way through Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife this week, and it’s been very slow going (not to mention harrowing). Not that I don’t like the book – I’m not really saying that. Actually, I’m reserving judgment until I get all the way through it. I’ll just say that, at the moment, it’s really creeping me out.

Then I wasted spent quite a lot of time playing with the “blog following” feature on Blogger. When did they start that? I know, I know – it’s probably been there from the year one. But I just noticed it today. Transferred all the blogs that I usually read in Google Reader to my Blogger Reading List. Read about public vs. private following. Seems interesting and I like the idea of being able to read all my favorite blogs right from my Blogger dashboard page. So far, it doesn’t look like any of the blogs I “follow” have added the “following widget” to their sites – but then a lot of my favorites are on WordPress anyway.

Then I decided to update my ARC database (I use the Microsoft Works database program) and discovered I’ve got eight advance reading copies that I’ve never gotten around to reading yet (not counting American Wife). That’s way too many, folks. Especially for the world’s slowest reader. So I think I’m going to have to declare a little moratorium on ARC requesting for a while. Getting free books is lots of fun, of course. But I do feel an obligation to at least read the books once I’ve got them, even if I don’t go on to review them. I wonder how many is too many? How many unread ARCs do you have in your stack right now?

So that’s how my Sunday reading is shaping up so far. I guess it’s time to get back to Alice/Laura and see what new enormities she’s having to put up with from Charlie/Dubya. I’ll try not to do any more book flinging until I get to the final page. Oh, and right now the Cowboys apparently are ahead at half-time. I’m thrilled but I also apologize to any Browns fans who may be reading this.