Thursday, August 4, 2011

August 2011, Progress (Or Lack Thereof)

How did it get to be August already? This summer has simultaneously flown and crawled by; while I can't believe it's actually August, every day does have a dragging quality to it. This is typical for me for summer these days.

As a child, I loved summer. I could read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and when that wasn't going on I had the television and the Country Club swimming pool (complete with a somewhat creepy salamander population, but it was what it was). I was a self-entertaining child. I could make a project out of anything, and I still have notebooks full of recipes I copied by hand or cut out of my mother's Good Housekeeping magazines. Those magazines kept me fairly entertained with their weird stories, too, especially the medical ones. I remember reading one that was titled something like, "My Body Was Rusting!" I mean, who could resist that?

My son, Alex, is like me in this regard; he will sit and read all day, or play video games, or watch television, and if I take him to the pool or for a bike ride, he's pleased, too. My daughter, Julia, though, is another story. She's a hyper extrovert and she has enough energy for ten children. Actually, I suspect she might have enough energy to light up the entire Eastern seaboard, but I haven't figured out how to make that happen. No matter what we do, it's never enough, and she's just exhausting to be with constantly. I love her so much, but there's no way can I keep up with her. Our personalities clash somewhat, and she just overwhelms me. So having her constantly in my care is part of why I haven't gotten a ton of reading or blog writing about books done lately.

But I have done a bit of reading, my project isn't totally dead. Maybe it's on life support, but I have hopes of a complete recovery.

Here's what I've managed this summer:

1. I re-read the first Hunger Games book by Suzanne Collins in early June. So, so great.

2. Finished Julia Gillian (and the Quest for Joy). Good.

3. Finished reading Stephen Clarke's A Year in the Merde. This was a library book that I requested after a friend suggested that it might be a fun read. It was, but I didn't totally love it. And it didn't help with my Read These Books In My House project. Fie!

4. Finally, read the second volume in Joe Hill's Locke and Key graphic novel series, Head Games. This series is so fantastic and creepy, and the concept is just brilliant. The artwork is great. I can't wait to read the third volume, but I have to wait because Austin owns these books, they were gifts from me, and he's sort of pacing out his reading of them. (*taps foot impatiently in direction of husband*). In some ways, this book shouldn't count for my "read 100 books here before I buy myself another one" project, because I did buy this one for Austin for some holiday - maybe Christmas. But... I'm counting it.

Now I'm on to really starting Hellion Bride by Catherine Coulter, definitely a title that will be read and disposed of, I suspect. I'm only a few pages into it, and so far it's nothing like what I expected. It's a period romance set in the West Indies, and the language is more complicated than the title would suggest it would be. I'm curious to see where it's leading anyway.

And that's it for now. More reading, more blogging to come.

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