New Year, New Reads, New Challenges

Happy New Year, everyone!

I've been unusually lazy during this time between Christmas and the dawn of the new year. We're still sort of in Holiday mode around here -- we typically leave the decorations up until at least the 5th, and our main activity is trying to finish up all those jigsaw puzzles we've been saving up for this time of year.

Still haven't decided what will be my first book of 2016. Most years, I've at least picked out something by now. I'm hoping that's not a bad omen. I usually try to start off with a thriller or sci-fi of some sort. But this year I'm thinking I might begin the year with one of the Mrs. Malory books (by Hazel Holt who died in 2015) -- there are still three or four books in the series that I need to read, and I'm a huge fan of Sheila Malory.

Lately, my major bookish activity (aside from coloring books -- but more about those later) has been figuring out which reading challenges I want to take part in during 2016, and getting all the bookkeeping set up for those. So far, I've signed up for 17 challenges (see my list); mostly ones that I join every year, but also a few new ones, like the Blogger Shame Review Challenge and the Color Coded Challenge. I'm trying very hard to stop at 17, but there are several others I'm really interested in -- especially:

Back to the Classics, hosted by Books & Chocolate

The E-Book Challenge, hosted by Annette's Book Spot

Read the Nobels, hosted by Guiltless Reading

And then there's Reading Challenge Addicts -- I guess that's sort of a no-brainer for me. I definitely belong there.

I'm hoping to do a regular "challenge checkup" post on the blog this year. Maybe once a month or so -- just to keep me on track and show myself how I'm doing and what I still need to read.

I'm also planning to do more Sunday Salon posts. It's been many, many months (or possibly years) since I participated in the group -- I sort of abandoned it once it became a Facebook group, since I'm not a real FB person. Hoping to get back to it in 2016.

Anyway, that's the plan at the moment. But that could all change, of course. The year (unlike yours truly) is young.

Sunday Salon: Hello Again!

It's been a really long time since I posted anything for Sunday Salon. A really long time. Possibly years. OK, maybe not years. But many months anyway. Haven't been getting as much reading done as I'd like, lately. That's not really new, of course; but more than usual this year, things just keep cropping up to take my attention away from the books. Bummer. Major.

But things seem to be settling down a bit now, and I've been able to get back to my bookish activities. After our recent move, M and I now have all our books in one place again -- although quite a few are still in boxes, waiting for shelf space (or waiting to find new homes). But most of the hardbacks, and reference books, and books we think we might read soon, and books we just can't do without are out where we can see them and get at them. And that's a very satisfying feeling. Now I'm on a great push to make sure all the books, both shelved and boxed, are listed in our Library Thing account, so we don't keep buying books we've already got. I'm embarrassed to admit how many times that's happened to me over the years.

So, as soon as this year's US Open is out of the way (Andy Roddick, yay!), I should be able to get back to reading on a more regular basis. I've signed up for this year's R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril event (Number VII!), hosted by Carl V. of Stainless Steel Droppings, and I've been having a great time putting together a list of possible reads. The RIP event focuses on some of my favorite types of fiction and nonfiction (mystery, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, gothic, horror, supernatural), and it's something I look forward to every year. It makes fall (not my favorite season) much more bearable and exciting.


And today I'm doing a bit of RIP reading -- I've started The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Not too spooky yet, although I can see the ground being laid. It's my introduction to Waters, and so far I'm enjoying it a lot -- should be a fast read, in spite of those 400+ pages!

The Sunday Salon: Still Here

Hard to believe we've come to the final Sunday of 2011. Also hard to believe this is just my second (I think) Salon post of the year. It's always hard for me to settle down and do any writing on Sundays, just as it's a little hard to get much reading done. Sundays are usually pretty busy around here, with errands to run and catching up on things we should have done during the week. And then, for most of the fall there's all that football to watch!

Today's been a little different, though. Haven't even turned the TV on. And after the orgy of Christmas movies in the last week or so, that's been a real relief. The hubby and I have been listening to Christmas music and working on a jigsaw puzzle (love puzzles, but I'm really pretty hopeless at putting them together). And I've even done a little reading.

Today I've been trying to finish up a biography of Britain's Prince Philip, by Philip Eade -- Prince Philip: The Turbulent Early Life of the Man Who Married Queen Elizabeth II. Catchy title, huh? It's an Early Reviewer book from Library Thing, and not really the sort of book I ordinarily request, but the prince has always interested me. I'm enjoying it and finding out a lot about his family life before he married Elizabeth. I knew about his family's connections to the National Socialist Party in Germany before and during WWII (his sisters all married German princes), but I didn't really know what a scattered and insecure life the young prince led. So far, the book is very informative and a really entertaining read. It also makes one more nonfiction book for the year -- I've read more nonfiction than usual this year, for some reason.

Later on, I'm hoping to get a start on wrapping up all the reading challenges I signed up for in 2011. Way too many, of course, but I did manage to complete the reading for most of them. Now I can start thinking about the challenges of 2012, and trying to keep myself from joining each and every one I hear about. I've promised myself to try to stop being such a challenge junkie next year, but old habits are hard to break.

The Sunday Salon: Long Time No See

It's been a really long time since I checked in on the Sunday Salon. We're usually pretty busy around here on Sunday, and that doesn't leave me much time for blogging or blog reading. But today we've rescheduled all our errands and other business so that the hubby can stay home and spend the entire day watching the NBA playoffs. Well, maybe not the entire day – it'll just seem like the entire day. (Just kidding – I'll probably be watching, too.) But that does leave me with a little extra blogging/reading time, so I decided to see what's going on in TSS country.

Also time to do a little stock-taking. So far in 2010 I've read 17 books (see my list here). I know that doesn't sound like a lot to all you super readers out there who can get through two or three books a day. But for a slowpoke such as moi, that's doing pretty darn good – I'm averaging about a book a week, which should make it possible for me to reach my fifty book goal by the end of the year, or get very close.

Last week, I actually finished two books. A River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters is the most recent addition (published this month, I believe) to her Amelia Peabody series, and a great adventure tale. I enjoyed it a lot even though I hadn't read any of the earlier books. Also finished reading An American Type, Henry Roth's posthumous novel due out in June. I received my ARC through Library Thing's Early Reviewer program, and I've put up a short review at LT; but I'll probably hold off a while on posting a blog review, until a little closer to the book's publication date.

If all goes well, I should be able to finish one of my current books today. I've been reading an ARC of Lisa Gardner's new D.D. Warren mystery, Live To Tell, and I've only got a few chapters to go. It's another one that's due out this summer, so I might hold off on that review, too. For now I'll just say it's packed with surprises, and I'm loving it.

The other book I've got going right now is The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. One of the groups I follow at Good Reads selected it as one of their April group reads, and I thought I'd join in. It's something of a chunkster, though, and I'm only about a third of the way in – so I might have to sit myself down and just blast through it this week. Wouldn't mind doing that because (so far) it's a great story!

So, that's where I'm at in the land of lit-ra-chure. Now I'm off to see what everyone else is occupying themselves with today. Hope we all have a great Sunday, and get lots of reading done!

The Sunday Salon: Not Another End of Year Wrap-Up

I had pretty much decided to give today's TSS a miss. I'm still in holiday mode, and not getting a lot of reading done. And my Salon posts don't usually get picked up by Yahoo Pipes anyway, so in my case it's mostly a labor of love.

But this is the last Salon of the year, and (depending on how you count) the last one of the decade, too. And how could I miss that? Even if I really don't have much to write about.

What I've been doing today instead of reading is sorting through the reading challenges I've joined for 2010, and the ones I'm thinking of signing up for - and getting my challenge blog organized for the new reading season. Just discovered the Typically British Reading Challenge yesterday, and I knew immediately (just by the name, in fact) that it was one I just couldn't resist - so that was one more to add. It's being hosted by the very creative Book Chick City, and I'm seriously considering signing up for her Speculative Fiction Challenge, too. But I'll have to give that one a little more speculation (sorry).

Otherwise, I've just been decompressing from all the Christmas-ing, and doing laundry. Oh, and watching a little football (Saints are losing again? oh, my!), and following the #MLA tweets on Twitter. The Modern Language Association Convention has always been held after Christmas every year, in New York City or some other major urban area - this year it's in Philly. Back in the day (the Day being back when M was still an active member of the MLA), we used to go to the convention whenever it was held in NYC, and it was always exciting and fun. Well, it was exciting and fun for me, anyway - I didn't have to attend any of the sessions or listen to any of the papers. I could just hang out in the lobby bars and go wander around Bloomingdale's and Tiffany's and FAO Schwarz. Fun times, fun times.

Anyway, I hope all of ya'll had (and are still having) a great holiday season, and that 2010 brings us all happiness and prosperity, and lots of good books to read, and no new reality TV shows.

Happy New Year, everyone!

The Sunday Salon: Hi, There!

It's been a couple of months since my last Sunday Salon visit. Sundays around here are usually taken up with errands, shopping, and watching countless football games on TV (or basketball games, or tennis matches, or . . . well, you get the idea). But today, the hubby is away on a business trip and I'm here on my own with no real schedule to keep. A perfect time to catch up on my reading.

I've got three books going at the moment – actually, I've been reading the same books for several weeks now. I'm trying to train myself to read one book at a time, as I really think that's the most sensible way of handling things: start a book, read it right to the end, then start another. See how nice and regular that sounds? But I keep backsliding.

The book I'm reading today (I'm determined to finish it tonight) is E.L. Doctorow's Homer & Langley. It's a novel based on the lives of the Collyer brothers, New York City's notorious hoarders who lived together in a boarded up brownstone filled with massive stacks of newspapers, broken furniture, bits of machinery, and other paraphernalia the brothers had "collected" over the years. After the two men were found dead in their home in 1947, more than a hundred tons of garbage were hauled away by the authorities.

The Collyers have been the subject of other fictions over the years, but Doctorow's has probably made the biggest splash. So far, I'm enjoying it quite a lot. I love his imagining of a reason for Langley's newspaper collecting mania, his ". . . collection of the daily papers with the ultimate aim of creating one day's edition of a newspaper that could be read forevermore as sufficient to any day thereof."

He would run out for all the morning papers, and in the afternoon for the evening papers, and then there were the business papers, the sex gazettes, the freak sheets, the vaudeville papers, and so on. He wanted to fix American life finally in one edition, what he called Collyer's eternally current dateless newspaper, the only newspaper anyone would ever need. [pp. 48-49]

Yes, it's OCD at its most rampant, but I can see how it would be a very satisfying endeavor. And, yes, I've got hoarding in my genetic makeup, too. They used to just call us pack rats!

Hmmmm. Now that I think about it, maybe I should stop reading for a while and do something about those boxes of old magazines that seem to be building up in the corners here. Before someone has to break into this place and dig me out from under a ton or so of old New Yorkers and Metropolitan Homes!

Sunday Salon: On a Sunny Sunday

This will be short and - well, maybe not sweet, but short anyway. Federer and Djokovic are in the midst of the Men's Semi-Finals at the US Open, the Redskins are losing to the Giants, and M is getting ready to start grilling the salmon for dinner. There's a new "Inspector Lewis" on Masterpiece Mystery tonight, and a new episode of Mad Men later on. So I can see I'm not likely to get much reading done tonight. Hope to get back on track tomorrow.

The week just past was actually a pretty good week in reading for me. Although I didn't finish any books, I did get several reviews posted:

• Grave Goods by Ariana Franklin
• The Old Man and Me by Elaine Dundy
• Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike

And since I've really been lagging behind in that department lately, it felt pretty good. Now if I can just make myself sit down and write a review of Ellen Gilchrist's Victory Over Japan, I'll be able to wrap up the Battle of the Prizes Challenge - which would be nice, as the challenge ended over a week ago! Yes, I'm old, but I'm slow.

And that's about all I've got for now. We've had some really beautiful weather today - one of those gorgeous end-of-summer days with lots of sunshine, low humidity, and a nice breeze through the poplars out front. It was very welcome coming after the wet, gloomy, cooler than normal week we've just survived. Even so, fall is definitely in the air around here now. And, although it's been a couple of generations since I was a schoolgirl, that kind of weather always makes me want to start drawing up my reading plans and looking forward to the books of autumn. How about you?

The Sunday Salon: Back from the Dead

It's been a while since I checked into the Salon. Actually, I haven't done much blogging or reading for the last three weeks or so. I haven't sworn off it, or anything. Just been busy with other stuff. Mainly family history stuff. One of M's aunts had a request from one of the other older members of the family for some genealogy information, and since I now seem to be the repository for that kind of data, I agreed to put together a package of photos and other leaves from the family tree. It's been a lot of work pulling it all together, but fun, too – I'm a hopeless family history freak. But by the end of the project, I did start to feel all those ancestral ghosts crowding in on me!

So my summer reading has been somewhat curtailed. But I still managed to finish two books this week – Ariana Franklin's Grave Goods (aka: Relics of the Dead), and an ARC of Fear the Worst by Linwood Barclay. That last one is due out this week, so I just got it read in the nick of time. Hope to get reviews of both posted tomorrow, but for now I'll just say I loved both of them. In fact, I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed Grave Goods because I'm not usually terribly fond of historical fiction. But I've also just recently finished Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts, another historical fiction work, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. (Oops! Need to get a review of that one up, too.) So maybe an old dog can learn new tricks – or at least learn to enjoy new things.

But this week, I'll be back to old friends. I'm starting John Updike's Rabbit Is Rich – reading it for the Battle of the Prizes Challenge. I've always enjoyed Updike, although I've mostly read his short fiction and essays in the past; this will only be the second of his novels I've tried. And then I'm also getting back to a book I started a couple of months ago and put aside for other stuff – Dance of Death, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Now that's one I know I'm gonna like – after reading Brimstone earlier this year, I have fallen deeply in love with Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. And since I last saw him being apparently killed off by his evil brother in the earlier book, I'm looking breathlessly forward to his resurrection in this one.

Oh, and please don't tell my husband about that "deeply in love" bit.

The Sunday Salon: Back to the Books in July

Wow, more than half of July has managed to sneak right by me. Doncha hate it when that happens? And here I was saying I wanted to try to slow down and savor (yes, I think I actually used that word) July a little more than I did June. (June was here and gone before I even turned around.) But so far, I don't seem to be doing much savoring. Well, I blame it partly on the cold I had during the first couple weeks of the month. Didn't really get much reading done. Mostly just slept and blew my nose. And watched the first season of "Man Men" via our cable company's On-Demand service. (Is it really possible Peggy didn't know she was pregnant? No, don't tell me what happens – I'm going to start season two this week.)

But the slow-down has really blown my reading schedule all to pieces. I was trying for a book a week this year, but here we are just about thirty weeks into 2009 (can that be right?) and I've only read twenty-seven books. So I'm obviously going to have to pick up the pace a bit. I'm doing a little better now, though. I finished Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Angel's Game this past week (review, I hope, to come tomorrow), and I'm going to be finishing up Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts later tonight. So at least July won't be a total loss.

And I've got a couple more underway: Dance of Death, one of the Pendergast thrillers by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child; and Grave Goods by Ariana Franklin. I suppose I should have started with Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death, before tackling Grave Goods, but I found GG among the new releases at the library the other day and it reached out and grabbed me, so I just had to bring it home.

Today I've been doing a little assessment of the books I've read this year, but haven't reviewed yet. Didn't realize there were quite so many. Out of the twenty-seven books I've read in 2009, there are a dozen I still need to review:

Blasphemy. Douglas Preston
Brimstone. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Ellen Foster. Kaye Gibbons
Index to Murder. Jo Dereske
Land of Marvels. Barry Unsworth
Moon Tiger. Penelope Lively
The Old Man and Me. Elaine Dundy
The Private Patient. P.D. James
Rest in Pieces. Rita Mae Brown
The Valley of Fear. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Mothman Prophecies. John A. Keel
The Angel's Game. Carlos Ruiz Zafon

So I need to get busy. And since I'm taking stock, I should admit that there are a few books I've started this year, but put on hold for now: Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand, Stone's Fall by Iain Pears, and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I think I'll probably get back to Stone's Fall eventually, but the other two may just stay on the shelf, unread. Sad.

Anyway, that's where I stand at the moment. Now I need to go find out what becomes of Suora Zuana and the young Novice Serafina in that appalling convent in Sixteenth Century Ferrara. No, don't tell me what happens – I'm still hoping for a happy ending.

The Sunday Salon: Saying Bye-Bye to May

Haven't written a Sunday Salon post for a few weeks. May has been particularly hectic this year – for some reason I just couldn't settle down to anything for any length of time during the first few weeks of the month. Spring fever, I guess. Well, that and annual mammogram time – I always get a little frantic when health check month rolls around.

And then, of course, there were all those NBA playoff games to attend to.

But that's all done now – everything is OK (if you ignore what happened to the Celtics and the Spurs) and back to normal; so I've been playing catch-up this last week, and trying to make up for lost reading time.

Still, I read seven books in May (counting the one I'm reading now, which I should be finishing up tonight). Here's the list, with links to a couple of reviews:

Brimstone. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Optimist's Daughter. Eudora Welty
Ellen Foster. Kaye Gibbons
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Robert C. O'Brien
To Dance with the White Dog. Terry Kay
The Unit. Ninni Holmqvist
Moon Tiger. Penelope Lively (reading now)

And although I haven't reviewed all of those yet, I did post two reviews of books I read earlier this year:

The Master. Colm Toibin
The Great Victorian Collection. Brian Moore

I know I still have a lot of reviews to write, but I'm working on it. Especially since I need to do a wrap-up post for the Book Awards II Challenge which ends tomorrow. Now I need to decide what to read next. Do I go with a book for one of the other reading challenges I've signed up for, or do I get back to Dance of Death, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, which I started a while back and put aside? Or do I start that ARC of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Angel's Game I've been itching to get to?

Well, I'm really thinking I'll probably go with the Preston/Child – maybe I can make it fit one of my challenges, with a little tweaking. See, I think I've fallen seriously in love with Agent Aloysius Pendergast – he of the ghostly complexion and the perfectly-tailored black suits. And June is a good time for a nice bulky thriller, right? What a nice dilemma – two good books and a whole new month stretching out ahead.

The Sunday Salon: On a Cloudy Sunday

In the interest of not clogging up the blogosphere with pointless filler, I haven't written a TSS post in quite a while. But I thought this week I'd use the Salon to say congratulations and "good job" to everyone who took part in the 24-Hour Read-a-thon yesterday. For about two seconds, I thought about joining in, but decided I'd never be able to stick it out. I have great admiration for anyone who can read for 24 hours at a stretch. I consider myself a pretty assiduous reader, but I could never spend a whole day doing just that. You guys are amazing.

And just the teensiest bit crazy.

But crazy in a good way.

Well, even though I didn't join in the Saturday marathon, I did get some reading done this weekend. I've got four books on deck right now, and I'm actively reading two of them. The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery by Enrique Joven is a strange amalgamation of fiction and history, just about as eccentric as you might expect when you're dealing with a novel written by an engineer with a doctorate in physics. So far, I'm enjoying it, but then I'm pretty geeky – a story with a lot of historical facts and speculation and not much action is perfectly OK with me.

The other book I'm involved in at the moment is Brimstone, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I'm reading it for the Suspense-Thriller Challenge, and it's pretty much the exact opposite of the Joven book – plenty of action and spine-tingling goings-on. It's the first Preston-Child book I've read (although I did read Preston's Blasphemy earlier this year), and I've been a little surprised at how much I'm liking it. At nearly five hundred pages, it's something of a chunkster, but I think it's going to be a pretty fast read. It's a little bit like "CSI meets The X-Files", so it's right down my literary alley.

Now I guess I better get back to my books. But first I think I'll spend a little time looking in on other Salon posts, checking up on everybody's reading news and looking for "new finds" for my TBR list. Now isn't that a great way to spend a Sunday evening?

The Sunday Salon: Library Shopping Spree

Dontcha just love a library sale? Well, I love all book sales, but since I also love hanging out at the library, library sales are my favorites. Our local branch had its spring sale this weekend, and M and I came away with a dozen new books – well, they were new to us, anyway. Got there bright and early so we'd have our pick of the crop, and I was a little upset to see people already on their way out clutching huge bags and boxes stuffed with books! But once inside, we found there was still plenty to choose from (too much, M would probably say).

Most of the titles I picked up were already on my TBR list, although a couple are books I've read in the past – just never bought my own copy until now. Lots of really good stuff here:

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
A Closed Eye by Anita Brookner
Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith
Frankenstein (Modern Library Edition) by Mary Shelley
A Ghost in the Machine by Caroline Graham
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Ignorance by Milan Kundera
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Loving/Living/Party Going by Henry Green
Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper by Harriet Scott Chessman
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
Slouching Towards Bethlehem/Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion

So there's plenty of great reading ahead. At the moment, I'm still struggling to finish A.S. Byatt's Angels & Insects. I always have trouble with Byatt – I think I like the idea of her books better than the books themselves. I had the same trouble with Possession when I read it years ago. I'm not a big fan of the tale-within-a-tale formula, and that seems to be her specialty. It's not that I'm not enjoying the book; it's just slow going at times.

But the weather this weekend has been perfect for curling up with a good book – cold, rainy, gray. No good reason to go outside. And now that I've had my book sale adventure, I think I'll go pour myself another cup of coffee and spend the rest of the evening lost in the land of books. That is, if I can tear myself away from this computer for a few hours!

The Sunday Salon: Life List

This week was a pretty good reading week for me. I finished Barry Unsworth's Land of Marvels, and Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence; and I only have a few more pages left to read in Brian Moore's wonderful and weird 1975 novel, The Great Victorian Collection. I'm going to try to get reviews of all three posted on my blog this week. I'm so extremely far behind on review-writing, that I'll probably never catch up. But I did manage to post a review of one book (count 'em – one!) last week – P.D. James's first Adam Dalgliesh novel, Cover Her Face; and I'm hoping that means the dry spell is ending.

The main thing that's been swallowing up all my non-reading free time during the last couple of weeks is my obsession with creating a life list of books. Do you have a life list? Over the years, I've kept a lot of separate lists of the books I read each year – lists on pages in my journals, lists on the backs of envelopes, lists on scraps of newspaper, etc. But I've never tried putting them all together in one humongous list until now. It was all those darn "X Number of Books You Just Have to Read Before You Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil" lists that have been published lately: That's what did me in. I started comparing my own reading life to the various recommendations, and of course I was immediately hooked. I love lists and list-making – so I guess it was inevitable.

I started out keeping a Microsoft Works database of all the titles. But then I realized it might be more useful if I could keep it online, so I've converted it into a Google Docs spreadsheet which seems to work very nicely. I'm up to a little over a thousand titles now, but I'm listing everything I can remember – even the books I read as a child.

And now I've got my husband hooked, too. So we've been spending the last week or so reminding each other of books we remember reading, books we think we've read, books we should have read or probably read but can't remember now. It's actually been a lot of fun, in a deeply twisted sort of way. And it's been a very valuable memory-jogger, too. I've rediscovered dozens of books I'd forgotten about reading – it's almost like having the experience of reading them all over again. But now that my life list is almost complete (well, I think it is anyway), I'm really looking forward to getting back to reading in the present once again!

The Sunday Salon: My Weekly Reading – So Far So Good

Well, today I finished reading Jo Dereske's Index to Murder, and I can now tell the world that the butler definitely didn't do it! Other than that, I'm not saying anything about the ending of the 11th installment in Dereske's Miss Zukas mystery series, centering around dedicated small-town librarian Helma Zukas. Well nothing else except that there's not a single butler in the book, murderous or otherwise – so you can relax.

But I can say I enjoyed it and I've put the first book in the series on my TBR list. Officially, of course, I'd always recommend starting out with the first book of a series and working one's way through. It just so happens that "Index" was the one Miss Zukas book I found at the used book store a few months back. So – in medias res and all that.

It's been a really lovely day here in Northern Virginia – at least to look at. Still a lot colder than I'd like it to be, even with all the gorgeous sunshine. But at least the "wintry mix" that was predicted never developed this weekend, so I've been able to lull myself into believing that spring is just around the corner.

However, staying indoors has its "up" side, of course – I was able to get quite a lot of reading done today. Started off with the Sunday book review supplements (last appearance of the Washington Post's Book World – boo-hoo), and then progressed to sessions with each of the three books I've been reading this week. Aside from Index to Murder, I've got Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth and Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence both started. And I'm about midway through "Marvels," so I should be able to finish that one in a day or two. I'm trying to get through at least a book a week, and so far I'm doing pretty well – but, of course, the year is still young.

Well, I suppose that's all I have to report for today. So I'll leave you with a little snippet from Index to Murder, with librarian Helma Zukas spending a restless night, near the book's end:

In her apartment, during the darkest of the night, Helma did what she often did during puzzling times. She Cut Things Out. Using a pair of imported Scherenschnitte scissors . . . Helma began with last month's Smithsonian magazine. So precise that not a fraction remained of the surroundings or was excised from the illustration. She cut out two leopards, then the letters of the word "Smithsonian."

She opened the magazine and cut out the editor's head, then excised the colorful figures occupying a South American landscape. A llama, two girls weaving, an ultramodern hotel, storm clouds, palm trees, rare flowering orchids, . . . rubies found in Egypt, a mummy, a double rainbow. The pieces grew on her coffee table, each perfect image after the next. [p. 212]

And I thought I had some really deep and interesting neuroses! Miss Zukas and I are obviously kindred spirits.

The Sunday Salon: My Weekly Reading and (Not) Reviewing

I am a world-class procrastinator. If there were an Olympics for putting things off, I could delay for the US of A. I've actually done pretty well with my reading so far this year – six books finished, and three more started. But I've only written two reviews. Plus, I have at least four or five reviews I've never written for books I read in 2008. And I really want to write the reviews – I just can't seem to make myself write. Yes, I can hear you saying, "Stop whining, and just sit down and do it, already!" That's exactly what I've been telling myself.

But I haven't been completely dormant this week. This is what I've been doing instead of writing those reviews:

Started reading Land of Marvels, by Barry Unsworth. This was an ARC that I received last week, even though the book is actually out now. Haven't got very far into it, but it's billed as a "thriller set in 1914," so I'm thinking it might fit into my reading for the Suspense-Thriller Challenge (Historical Thriller sub-genre).






Started reading Index to Murder, by Jo Dereske. This is one of the Miss Zukas mystery series, about librarian and amateur sleuth Helma Zukas. I'm reading this one mainly for the 2009 Reading Challenge associated with the MysteryReaderCafe Yahoo Group ("new-to-me author").







Continued reading The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. I've only gotten a few chapters into this one and I'm still reserving judgment, but so far it's not really grabbing me. But it's a relatively long book and I've seen a lot of favorable reviews of it, so I'm going to stick with it a little longer and hope it picks up.





Spent way too much time playing with my Good Reads account. I've had it for quite a while now, but I'm just getting around to adding books. I still prefer LibraryThing as my main cataloguing site. But I have accounts at Shelfari and Good Reads, too; and I'm using them mainly to keep track of books I've read and books I intend to read someday. Don't know which I'll like better – they each have their different attractions.

Found yet another challenge that I'm thinking about signing up for. Yes, I know I'm seriously challenge-addicted, but I've already finished one this year, The Winter Reading Challenge – though I've yet to write all the reviews or the wrap-up post (more procrastination – I'm definitely going for the Gold). So there's room for one more now, right? Anyway, the new entry is The Guardian's 1000 Novels Challenge, hosted by Jennie of Biblio File, and based on a list (compiled by the British newspaper, The Guardian) of the 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read Before They Die. It runs through February 2010, and involves reading ten books from several different categories (you can read more about the challenge, and sign up here). I was surprised, when I looked at the list, at how many of the books I've already read. But there are hundreds of interesting titles still to be read, many of which I've already got on my lists this year, for one challenge or another. So this one really does look doable.

And that's pretty much it. Oh, I also spent a considerable amount of time searching for something to replace the Stanley Desk Journal refills I've been using for years now. They came from Levenger, and fit into really nice refillable leather covers. But they seem to have been discontinued, like most of the products I use. Bummer. So I guess it's Moleskine from now on.

The Sunday Salon: My Weekly Reading

Just a brief post today. I'm anxious to get back to my reading. I've actually got four books going right now, and one of them is a whodunit. And I'm getting close to finding out who done it. Although I think I've already got it figured out (I always think that, but I'm almost always wrong).

The mystery novel is Rita Mae Brown's Rest in Pieces, the second in her Mrs. Murphy series (and that's a very good title for it – dismembered corpses are piling up at an alarming rate). I've read a few other books in the series – but now I'm determined to read the rest in the proper order. Although I don't think that's necessary in order to enjoy the books – I'm just extremely obsessive-compulsive about such things. Actually, you can dive in at any point in the series and still have a great time.

The other books I'm reading right now are Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner, Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I really started the first two late last year, but didn't get far enough to claim them as "books read in 2008." Time Traveler is a little longer than most of the books I usually choose – at 530+ pages in paperback, it's something of a chunkster (and I'm considering using it for that particular challenge). But I've heard such good things about it, I decided to give it a try and so far I'm enjoying it quite a lot.

This past week, I managed to read one book that I've had on my TBR list for a couple of years now – The Master, by Colm Toibin. Now I need to work on a short review for my blog. I also managed to post a review this week – first one in quite a while (Review: Drawers & Booths, by Ara 13), so I feel like I'm finally getting moving again. One of my private resolutions for the new year was to write reviews of all my un-reviewed books from 2008, and get them posted before the end of January. And that's about half a dozen books, so I really need to get busy this week.

I've also spent a little time today trying to catch up on my blog reading. And there were a lot of really interesting posts this week, especially the one about the ethics of book reviewing, over at Trish's blog (Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin?). If you haven't read it yet, you might want to stop by and see where you stand on the issue. I weighed in with my own thoughts here.

Hmmmm. I said this was going to be brief, didn't I? Well, the best-laid plans of mice and bloggers . . . . Anyway, hope everybody has a great week and gets a lot of reading done! Now back to all those scattered body parts.

The Sunday Salon: Late Arrival

I know that, technically at least, it's really not Sunday anymore (well, not around here anyway). But it's Sunday somewhere, right? And since I've missed the Salon for the last few weeks, I just wanted to check in briefly – especially since I've actually done some reading today (on Sunday, that is).

Even though there were those playoff games to watch (I was kinda hoping Donovan McNabb might get another shot at winning the Big Game, but c'est la guerre, I guess). But over the years, I've learned to read while the NFL wars are raging on the TV screen in front of me. At least the Cowboys weren't involved – so M. wasn't jumping up and down and yelling things like "They're pathetic!" and "Romo, you idiot!" Today's session was really peaceful in comparison.

The book I've been immersed in today is Colm Toibin's The Master, based on the life of Henry James. In 2004, the book was short-listed for the Booker Prize and was also chosen by the New York Times as one of the ten most notable books of the year. I've had it on my TBR list since it first came out, and I'm really kicking myself now, for putting it off for so long. It's a fascinating book about a truly fascinating character. And it's making me want to do some research – I'd like to know just how close Toibin came to James's real persona.

It appears that he must have done an incredible amount of research – but then I'm no James expert. I've always loved the idea of reading Henry James more than the actual books themselves. Some of his shorter works are among my favorites – Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers, especially. But I find I lose interest in the longer novels, after a chapter or two. I used to feel guilty about that until one of my college English professors (who was a Medievalist, so I suppose he can be forgiven) said that Henry James was "all about whether I should have peas or carrots for lunch, and who the hell cares, anyway?"

Well, it's true that much of James's work is full of the trivialities of day to day life – or at least, life as lived by 19th century aristocrats. But I'm much more tolerant of that kind of writing now than I was when I was a twenty-year-old college student, just beginning to fall in love with English literature. Maybe if I read Portrait of a Lady today, the exploits and tribulations of Isabel Archer and her various suitors wouldn't bore me to tears again.

Right now, however, I'm going to get back to Toibin and his version of the Master. Henry and his brother William are studying law at Harvard and avoiding enlisting in the Union Army. And Henry has just decided that literature might be a more interesting study than the law. Right on.

The Sunday Salon: A Little Romance

I actually did a little reading today. As I said last week, my reading schedule has been really thrown off by all the Christmas activities I've been indulging in lately. So it felt very good to get back to doing some reading again, even though it was very light reading.

I'm thinking of signing up for Naida's Romance Reading Challenge – mainly for old time's sake. In my distant youth I was a huge fan of Gothic romances, and read many Victoria Holts and Mary Stewarts. But I gave it up sometime back in the late 1970s when the bodice-ripper craze came in. But, as Naida points out in her challenge guidelines, a lot of literature qualifies as "romance," and there are a few authors who really transcend the label of romance-writer. So for the last couple of days I've been sampling a few books to see if I still feel the same attraction. And one – Daughter of the Stars, by Phyllis A. Whitney – has, I believe, got me hooked again, even though I've only read a couple of chapters. The book is set in Charlottesville and Harpers Ferry, so it's familiar territory for me; and Whitney is a writer I've never read before. I definitely intend to read this one, so I've put it on my list for the Winter Reading Challenge.

OK, long story short – I just might break down and join another challenge. Actually, there are several more I'm eyeing (the Victorian Challenge really looks tempting) – even though I'm signed up for almost a dozen already. Now, I know to some of you who are involved in thirty or so, twelve challenges sounds like nothing. But I'm a slow reader, and not as well-organized as I'd like to be. So keeping track of all those challenges is part of the challenge for me!

But I think the whole point of joining the challenges is to give myself a little nudge to keep on reading. So the thing I think about is not how many challenges I'm involved in, but how many books I've got on my roster. I didn't quite make my goal of 50 books in 2008, but I'm going to come close (after all, the year still has a few days to run). And I'm hoping to do at least that well next year. Right now I've got 45 books on my list for 2009, and so far all the challenges I've joined allow crossovers, which means I'll be using many of the same books for several challenges. So while it may look like I'm just about to hit the overload point, I'm actually keeping a pretty close eye on my lineup.

So, what do you think? How many challenges is too many? Do you join challenges? Do you think they're a waste of time? And how many of us are willing to admit we join them at least in part to put together the book lists and collect those nifty buttons to display on our blogs?

The Sunday Salon: Christmas Dry Spell

I haven't put in an appearance here in the Sunday Salon for several weeks now. And I really don't have any business taking up everybody's time today, since my reading has been confined to the Book World section of the Washington Post (very nice review by Michael Dirda, of small presses that publish fantasy, mystery, and horror books). And a lot of blogs, of course.

The entire month of December has been almost bookless for me. In fact, I don't think I've finished a single book this month – although I've got several going at the moment. And this remarkable dry spell has mostly been caused by the fact that I've been doing so much Christmasing, I just haven't been able to settle down long enough to get a lot of reading done. With all these Christmas movies to watch on the tube, and several Christmas jigsaw puzzles to put together, the printed page has been getting short shrift around here lately.

But as soon as all the holiday turmoil subsides, I fully intend to get back to reading up a storm. And to spur me along, I've been joining reading challenges right and left. In fact, if there's a competition for getting oneself involved in the most challenges, I could probably compete. I'm already signed up for nine or ten of them, and there are at least three or four more that look really tempting.

Didn't I say something about cutting back on reading challenges in 2009? Hmmmm. No, that obviously must have been some other, much more sensible blogger.

So, I'll let everybody get back to their real reading, and I'll get back to my Christmas flicks. Still haven't watched Prancer or The Man Who Came to Dinner or How the Grinch Stole Christmas yet.

But I've got Rita Mae Brown's new Mrs. Murphy mystery, Santa Clawed, coming from Amazon probably tomorrow, and I'm eagerly awaiting it. So I might still get in some reading before the holidays are gone. Just in time to end that dry spell.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to Sunday Saloners everywhere!

The Sunday Salon: Gloom for a Sunny Day

I'm very late getting to the Salon this evening, so I'll try to keep this post short. Most of my reading today has been from Anita Brookner's Hotel Du Lac. I'm enjoying it, but I'm very glad I've had a nice sunny day for reading – because the book is not really designed to perk up one's spirits. These are the first few lines:

From the window all that could be seen was a receding area of grey. It was to be supposed that beyond the grey garden, which seemed to sprout nothing but the stiffish leaves of some unfamiliar plant, lay the vast grey lake, spreading like an anaesthetic towards the invisible further shore . . . .

And the book continues on in that same vein – at least as far as I've read. Of course, that's classic Brookner, and I love her novels. But they can be gloomy in the extreme. Take this bit, a little further along:

Her walk along the lake shore reminded her of nothing so much as those silent walks one takes in dreams, and in which unreason and inevitability go hand in hand. As in dreams she felt both despair and a sort of doomed curiosity, as if she must pursue this path until its purpose were revealed to her. The cast of her mind on this evening, and the aspect of the path itself, seemed to promise an unfavourable outcome: shock, betrayal, or at the very least a train missed, an important occasion in rags, an appearance in the dock on an unknown charge. . . . [p. 21]

Fortunately, I'm also reading Rest in Pieces, by Rita Mae Brown (and Sneaky Pie Brown, of course) – one of her Mrs. Murphy mysteries. So when the Brookner becomes just too too depressing, I can get back to watching Mrs. Murphy (who is a pet cat, in case you're not familiar with the series) digging up scattered body parts in the surprisingly bloody little hamlet of Crozet, Virginia. Lots more laughs in that one. No, really, there are.