Best and Worst Books (of the Ones I Read in 2012)

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It is the end of 2012 and I have finished reading 41 books this year.  It would have been more if I had not gotten so bogged down in both orientation for my job and in reading Red Mars (seriously, it took me two months to get through that book), but that leaves me an easy goal for 2013: finish more than 41 books.

Without any further ado, here are the five worst and the five best books I read in 2012.

The Bad Ones

5. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.  I complained extensively about this book both online and to anyone who would listen to me kvetch in person.  The concept is great, but unfortunately, the characters are not interesting and the execution of the story is boring.  How you can make a story like this dull, I’m not sure, but Robinson managed admirably.  Months later all I remember is a few interesting moments and being baffled over why anyone would be remotely attracted to any of the three main characters in the central love triangle of the book.

4. The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon.  I first read this terrifically trashy book when I was in high school.  I’ll be honest: I liked it a lot better then than I did this time around.  The plot was interesting and twisty in the way that a poorly written soap opera is interesting and twisty, and it does have some mildly interesting sex scenes.  Mostly, though, it’s nonsense.

3. Brother Odd by Dean Koontz.  I liked the first Odd Thomas book pretty well and the second wasn’t bad, but this was padded and poor.  Dean Koontz is such an on and off writer that I was entirely unsurprised.

2. Redwall by Brian Jacques.  Predictable, sexist, and sanctimonious, this is the first book that has actively made me want to stomp on mice or any other kind of animal.  The fact that the head bad guy’s name in this tome is “Cluny” is so stupid that it doesn’t bear repeating unless you are being warned against read this book.  Which you are.

1.  Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James.  A lot of people love this book, especially women, and… I don’t get it.  It is poorly written to the point of being comical and the sex scenes – purported to be super hot and interesting because of the BDSM content – are pretty generic.  And every damn character is so dull and uninteresting that you barely care about their alleged relationships.  There’s a lot better smut available for free on the internet, people.  And in print.  And probably on the backs of bathroom stall doors.  If you’re looking for erotica, I would look further.  It shouldn’t be hard to find something much better.

The Good Ones

5. Bossypants by Tina Fey.  Tina Fey is very funny, and so is her memoir.  I listened to this on compact discs while working in my kitchen.  Fey herself reads it, which is an added pleasure.  My son watched me doubled over, laughing, while listening to this at one point.  Really, really enjoyable.

4. Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver by Arthur Allen.  I have long been interesting in the debates surrounding vaccinations, and Allen offers a thorough and fascinating study of the subject, focusing primarily on vaccination and its history in the United States.  From the first vaccine for smallpox to modern vaccines for rotavirus, Allen takes the reader through American history and shows how public health and the government interact with the American people – both individuals and in populations.

3.  11/22/63 by Stephen King.  I became one of Stephen King’s Constant Readers when I was fourteen.  I’m forty now, and have read almost all of his novels – the great (The Shining, Salem’s Lot, The Stand, etc.) and the terrible (Insomnia, Gerald’s Game).  11/22/63 is long.  And well-researched historical fiction.  And it has an emotional love story in the second half that broke my heart a bit.  I was surprised at this late date to be able to add a new Stephen King book to my “top five King reads,” but there it is.  Don’t miss this one. 

2. Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado. This one wins for best non-fiction book I read this year, hands down, no question about it. Parrado’s first person account of his experience in the 1972 plane crash into the uninhabitable mountains of the Andes is gripping, harrowing, and occasionally nauseating. I have mentioned this book to numerous people as a “must read,” and it is.

1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I was dimly aware of this novel before a fellow nurse handed me the audio book and suggested I listen to it on my commute. It is excellent, one of the best books I have read EVER. I literally was sitting in my car many times once I’d gotten home, wanting to sit in the garage and just keep listening. The movie is good, yes, but the book is better by far.



And that’s it for 2012!

Next year: more about books… and some guest bloggers!

 

Packing Up, Trying to Finish Books, and My Renewed Obsession with the Public Library

First of all, the major book thing I’ve been doing lately is packing them.  All of them.  Into boxes.  Many, many boxes.  And then carting them to a storage area so that somehow someone will buy our house and then we can move into a beautiful, bigger house that we are trying to buy (which is only about four blocks from where we live now).

I thought this would be more traumatic than it has been, to be honest.  But packing books is easy.  Yes, they are heavy, but they also fit nicely into boxes.  This is why most of the books that live in my house are now living in a cold storage area for a while.  I do have plenty of books still here, at least three or four bookshelves worth, so really, it almost doesn’t matter how long selling this house takes in this regard.  I will not run out of reading material.  It’s possible I will go mad and set the house on fire out of frustration with all the painting, re-carpeting, and cleaning we are doing, but at least I still have the solace of some books.

It is finally December and I’ve decided that I need to stop starting new books and start finishing off the ones I’ve been slogging along with this year.  Thus, the only new books I’m going to allow myself to begin before January 1, 2013 will be audiobooks from the library and maybe one or two from my shelf of ten (but only if I finish the previous Shelf of Ten book).

Yes, if it wasn’t clear to the two people who ever read this blog before, I do read multiple books at a time.  Usually the number is around five.  I’ll sometimes try to commit to reading just one at a time but it never works out somehow.  Currently I’m reading four… and it was five until I stayed up until two a.m. on Friday night finishing reading a library book; The M.D.: A Horror Story by Thomas M. Disch.

That title brings me to something I need to comment on: my obsessive love for our public library, which has recently been renewed. 

I love libraries.  My first job (other than retail work for my father) was in a public library.  I even went to library school for a while.  My most vivid memory of junior high is standing in the science fiction section of our local public library and looking for new Ray Bradbury titles I hadn’t yet devoured. 

Because of my attempt to read the books I already own – and try to get rid of some of them – I hadn’t been visiting the public library as much as I used to.  But now I’m obsessed again… because of the audiobook selection.  I’ve finished listening to eleven audio books in the last four months or so and I’m currently listening to two more.  I have a plan to go to the library today to pick up another one because I’m afraid I will run out of discs this weekend; I’m working four days in a row at Mayo but not planning to stay over in Rochester.  That is about eight hours of driving time that requires audiobook entertainment.

The only downside that I have run into using the library for this purpose is the occasional scratched disc.  I confess: that is super annoying to me.  But nothing is perfect.

Big Exciting Plan for my next blog post: Best and Worst Books I Read in 2012.  Probably.

Awesome Books That I Have Recently Read

Yes, it’s true: I do actually read books that I like as well as Books That I Hate Enough To Bitch About Them On The Internet (BTIHETBATOTI).  In this post I will regale you with information about the three that have been the highlight of my last summer/early fall reading.

First, Tina Fey’s Bossypants.  I spotted the unabridged audio version at our public library and it was read by Tina Fey herself, so how was I supposed to resist that?  I brought it home and listened to it in my kitchen and it was very funny.  So much so that at one point my 14 year old son watched in amazement as I doubled over from laughing while doing the dishes and listening.  Great fun if you like Fey’s sense of humor and this is one of those books that I actually think benefit from being read out loud.  The only downside was that some of Fey’s asides are difficult to hear… and I always wanted to hear every word, so I did have to backtrack sometimes.

There is a .pdf file of entertaining photos from Fey’s life on the fifth and final compact disc, as well as a video of Fey portraying Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.  I enjoyed these items but had to ask my computer-guy husband to help me access them.  I am just clueless about that kind of thing,  I guess.

Rules of Prey by John Sanford has been on my mental To Read list for a long time.  Years.  Like since 1997 or so.  I finally got to it, starting the Prey series about which I have heard many good things from reading friends I trust.  And… it is great stuff, fast-paced, violent (but not too graphic, at least in this first book in the series).  It’s well written and I really enjoyed it.

Sidenote: I lent Rules of Prey to a co-worker who was stuck in an Individual Patient Assignment (IPA) with a patient who was sleeping or otherwise out of it.  My co-worker was under the misapprehension that this book was nonfiction, perhaps because it is set in the Twin Cities area and it depicts Minnesota so clearly and realistically.  But no, it isn’t non-fiction; it’s made up. 

Thankfully.

And now we come to Judy Blume’s classic, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret.  I read this book waaaaay back when I was in grade school and vaguely remembered enjoying it.  Julia, my 10 year old, is so interested in Growing Up and All Things Puberty that I ordered a copy for her for her birthday.  She read it in short order and it was sitting there… so I picked it up again.

I’m so glad I did!  I had forgotten almost everything about this book. Mostly I remembered that it was a book about puberty and a girl named Margaret.  I had entirely forgotten the huge struggle that the main character, Margaret, is going through, trying to choose which religion she might be… Catholic or Jewish?

This is a very fast read and so well done, brilliantly capturing the desire of young people to just be “normal” as they enter puberty - and trying to figure out what that might even mean.  Julia loved it and I highly recommend it for preteen and tween girls and for those of us who might want to remember how scary, exciting, and confusing this age was for us, too.

So… these three books aren’t adding to or subtracting from my personal library.  Bossypants needs to go back to the public library and the other two I’m keeping. 

And I’m buried in trying to move right now (!), so who knows when next I will blog about books.  But I will do it.  You will see.

Brian Jacques, You Are Dead to Me. Dean Koontz… You Might Be Next

Oh Lord, now how long has it been since I posted? 

That long, huh.

Well… sorry.  I keep going off to my job to “work” and “be a nurse.”  It’s fun sometimes and it’s really tough at other times, but I do love my patients and I rarely leave without learning a lot of new stuff.  Plus I have taken to listening to audiobooks on my commute, so even if I work on a particular day I can get in almost two hours of reading time.  It’s like magic! 

I read a bunch of books over the summer, of course, but one stands out as the most irritating book: Redwall by Brian Jacques.  I purchased this book long ago (possibly as far back as the late 1990s, when I used to work at a Barnes and Noble store).  It came highly recommended as young adult fantasy.

And… I hated it.  Pretty much the entire thing.  I thought the narrative was entirely predictable, the characters were cliché (and when they weren’t cliché, they were obnoxious), and the main character – the hero of the book, Mattias the mouse - was a sanctimonious twit.  The leader of the antagonists in the story, “Cluny the Scourge,” was equally annoying.  It is never a good sign when, as a reader, I am laughing at the stupidity of the bad guys and I want to stomp on the heads of the good guys.  On top of all of that, the sexist treatment of Cornflower, Mattias’ love interest, was just… ugh. 

Admittedly, I am not a huge fan of fantasy writing.  A few years ago I read a book that was about fairies that nearly put me into a coma.  I struggled to get through Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books (although I love the movies and the story). 

But it is also very unusual for me to not like something about a book.  In this case, all I can say in its defense is that, despite being written for children, the author does not shy away from interesting vocabulary choices.  Otherwise… I hated it.  And I will never read any of the ten zillion sequels.

So.  Onward to the Dean Koontz book that I read earlier this year, Brother Odd.  I really enjoyed the first book in this series, Odd Thomas, and I liked the second book, Forever Odd well enough to not be horribly annoyed by it.  Brother Odd, though… meh.

Dean Koontz has always been a wildly uneven writer.  I remember the first book I read of his, Strangers.  It was great for the first half – what a build-up! – but then the second half, with the explanation for what was going on, was total crap.  Later I read Watchers and loved it.  Intensity was pretty good, as long as you can suspend your disbelief long enough to believe that the smart main character would do something profoundly stupid in the middle of the book instead of doing the sane, sensible thing to save herself and others.  (SO annoying!)

Like I said, I liked the first two books in the Odd Thomas series, at least enough to keep reading.  The concept is solid; a man who sees the dead and sometimes works to avenge their deaths, and who also sees other supernatural creatures that portend terrible violence.  Odd is charming and quirky and has interesting friends, and he is truly heroic in Odd Thomas, the first book in the series.

But… Brother Odd is just kind of meh.  The writing in the narrative veers from quirky and fun to overwrought and dramatic and back, which is jarring.  But worse… not much happens in the first hundred pages or so.  The book is over four hundred pages long, but with proper editing it could have been much shorter.  (Not to mention better written.)

I will no doubt read Koontz again, because sometimes his books really are written well and they can even be scary.  I just can’t recommend Brother Odd.  And, like Redwall, it is going on the donation pile and leaving my house for good.

Thankfully I have been reading some fantastic stuff lately, and I hope to blog about it soon.  Not kidding.

Promise.

The Inevitable _Fifty Shades of Grey_ Blog Post

Okay work has been busy and life has been busy, but really... how it it July already?  In 2012, I mean. 

For the two people that ever look at this blog, apologies for once again going weeks without writing... life gets in the way of our best intentions, doesn't it. 

I have finished reading Blockade Billy by Stephen King and Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah, as well as two more volumes of the Walking Dead graphic novel series that Robert Kirkman writes.  All were interesting and had some good moments.  The Stephen King book is staying, Kristin Hannah goes to whomever wants it (takers?), and the graphic novels are going on loan to another nurse on my unit at the hospital.

Really, it's just way more fun to write about books that I don't like.

Which brings me to Fifty Shades of Grey, the uber-popular first book in the Fifty Shades trilogy, penned by E.L. James.  E.L. James began this series as Twilight fan fiction of a (far) more adult nature, and then it got really popular online, so she edited it and published it and it got to be a huge hit.  (At least that's what I understand.)

Now, I haven't read any of the Twilight novels.  I don't even want to, even a little bit, especially after reading Fifty Shades of Grey.  The only thing I think Fifty Shades has going for it is some decently written sex scenes (by no means all of the sex scenes even qualify as "decently written," though).  Everything else about it is uber-annoying, in particular the main characters, Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. 

Christian: he's a super rich, super damaged person (apparently), who is very into being a Dominant in the sense of consensual sado-masochistic sex.  He's not interested in any other kind of relationship with a woman.  And he won't let Ana touch his upper body for some reason.  But at least he's up front about what he requires in a relationship.  He's also annoyingly controlling, especially about Ana and what she eats (what woman can resist being repeatedly told to eat all their food?), and about... well, kind of about everything. 

Ana: Oh lord, where to even start with this woman.  She's 22, graduating from college, and she's not only a virgin who has never even been curious enough to masturbate, but she's never been attracted to any man before she met Christian.

Now... I know very well that there are 7 billion people on the planet and we are all different, but really... that just seems crazy to me.  But okay.

I would have less of a quarrel with the story if it wasn't badly written, poorly edited, and sometimes inadvertently hilarious.  There's a sex scene in which Christian takes off his watch and his jacket (I'm with you so far, Ms. James), but then the text specifies that he takes off his socks "individually."  First of all, this is a sex scene and there is just nothing sexy about men's socks.  I'm sorry, I don't want to hear about them in this context.  I've been around the socks that men have been wearing all day.  Please don't write about them in a sex scene.

Secondly... how else would one take off their socks?  Go put some socks on.  Now try to remove them "individually..." that is how you always do it, right?  Put them back on.  Try removing them simultaneously.  It's not even sexy in a funny way... you just look like an idiot.  Now put your socks in the laundry and forget you ever tried this experiment.

There's a series of hot sex scenes toward the middle of the book that take place over the course of two or three days... which would work better if in the text, Christian hadn't just had Ana examined by a gynecologist right before all the sexual activity starts.  I know there are a lot of different people on this planet, and I'm not shocked or whatever by the S&M content in this book, but I do not even want to understand a woman who feels like having a lot of sex right after a pelvic exam. 

 The upside of this book is that some friends and I have had some great laughs while looking through it.  It's also a fast read.  I actually have a short list of friends who want to borrow it now that I'm finished with it, so I don't have to feel like it's going to stay in my house forever, taking up space.  AND, if I want extra lolz, there is a blogger called Jennifer Armintrout who has read through the entire series (I think) and hilariously complained about each chapter:

http://jenniferarmintrout.blogspot.com/p/jen-reads-50-shades-of-grey.html?zx=bf3a8545c6541106

And... that is it.  Fifty Shades isn't good, but it is kind of in the So Bad It's Good category, at least if you are paging through it with hilarious people.  

It's not going to stay in my permanent collection, but I'm not sorry I read it.  I am somewhat disturbed by the occasional Facebook posts from my friends, wishing they would find their own Christian Grey.  But hey, maybe we just have really different tastes in men.

The next book I'll be finishing is Dean Koontz's Brother Odd.  I have a feeling I will be blogging about it in the near future.

Red Mars, You Kind of Suck

Is it May again already?  No one has called an RRT* on this blog? It's still breathing... barely.  I'll try to get it stable again here, I don't want to have to move it to the Intensive Care Unit for blogs (wherever that might be), or - God forbid - have a funeral for it.

I guess I should start by making my excuses.  I've been training at a new job that is in a city an hour away from the one I live in.  I'm tired a lot and busy a lot and I haven't been reading a lot.  And the book I have been reading, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, left a lot to be desired.  It took me two months to get through it.

I've been wanting to read Red Mars for many years.  It won a Nebula Award for best novel in the early 1990s and the concept is compelling: this is a story about how Mars is colonized and the different personalities who envision different fates for the planet.  Robinson does a great job of imagining what the science and politics might look like in that eventuality and he creates a lot of conflict.  So you might think this five hundred-plus page book would be a page turner.

It is not.

The major problem I had reading through this book is that, despite a huge cast of characters, I felt indifferent toward all of them.  Much more time is spent on what the characters are doing with their work than anything else.  It's hard to feel anything for anyone when all you know about them is that they are brilliantly intelligent and hard-working. 

The book does try to hook you in with a love triangle between three of the protagonists, Frank, John, and Maya.  Within the first thirty pages or so you know that Frank is angry about something, enough so that he kills John.  This frames the book and we are taken back to the beginning of the colonization, but it's never clear why Frank committed murder (was passion or jealously over Maya?  professional envy?  politics?  who knows!).  Neither is it clear to the reader why any of these three characters would be attracted to the others.  The descriptions of sex on the flight to Mars or on Mars read to me like really boring robots engaging in sex.  No offense to robots but that is just not hot.  Or interesting. 

Other characters in the book have strong points of view; Ann believes Mars should be left alone entirely and merely studied, while Phyllis, a business-minded Christian, pushes for it to be utilized as a new resource for the overflowing population of Earth.  There is a woman named Hiroko who creates a secret, hidden colony on Mars. 

Part of the problem is that there are so many characters that you get to know very little about any of them, and part of it is that so much is written about what they do that the reader never understands why they feel how they do. 

There are two further novels in Robinson's Mars trilogy, Green Mars and Blue Mars.  I'm curious to see if they are better than I thought Red Mars was, but that assessment is going to have to wait.  I have a lot of other stuff right now on my Shelf of Ten, and a lot of it looks a lot better than reading more of Robinson's vision.

The next book on my Shelf is Stephen King's Blockade Billy.  It should be a much faster read.


*Sorry, I really can't give up the health care metaphors at this point, apologies to anyone reading this blog, most of whom probably have no idea what I'm on about.

The Other Side of Nonsense

When last I blogged, I was responding to Julia's "eight books by March 14" challenge. Austin has, of course, already read well past eight, and is being appropriately gloaty. Julia has read five. I'm... slower, but my books are longer (really) and I have this whole "new job as a nurse in a town an hour away" thing going on. So every day is an adventure, but I try to get a little reading done anyway.

I finished Stephen King's 11/22/63 weeks ago, and damn... this one is a good one. I feel in love with Stephen King's work when I was fourteen and I have never given up on him (no, not even after Gerald's Game). 11/22/63 is probably his best work in years, and I say that as someone who really enjoyed both Duma Key and Full Dark, No Stars. Did I have some quarrels with the new novel? Yes. The basic concept is a time travel book - the protagonist goes back in time to try to save JFK from being assassinated. Most of the story is set in the past, and most of it rocks along compellingly. It drags a bit at times when King offers too much detail about Lee Harvey Oswald's politics and associations, and I have a quarrel with the heavy-handedness of aspects of the end of the story, but overall this one deserves an A. Note to those of sentimental disposition: having several tissues handy for the last few pages is helpful. This book will have a permanent spot on the bookshelves at my house. Not surprisingly.

I moved from the sublime to the ridiculous next, picking up The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon. I remembered enjoying it when I was in high school... and it is compulsively readable, but for all the wrong reasons. It's entertaining but stupid, and I spent most of the book wondering just who the protagonist was even supposed to be.

There's nothing particularly believable in this (or any book by Sidney Sheldon, as I recall); it's full of rich, beautiful, wildly talented people, all of whom are having an unrealistic amount of badly described sex. The main character, Noelle, becomes rich and famous with almost no effort, and of course she's luminously beautiful, a fantastic cook, and no man she's ever been with can forget her. Her only motivation in life, though, is to get revenge on Larry, the first man she ever loved, a cocky playboy womanizer pilot. This book is set mid-twentieth century, and much of it is set against the backdrop of World War II. There's one minor character that can be described as a hero (a doctor who fights against the Nazis), but everyone else is consistently out for themselves. This flaw might make the characters likable if they had any other flaws... they just seem like paper dolls.

Curiosity compelled me to finish, and it is amusing, but this book is going in the donation pile. A better title for it would have been The Other Side of Nonsense.

I'm currently reading two more books; Diana Gabaldon's The Scottish Prisoner and Max Brooks' World War Z. I'm still hoping to get those eight books read by March 14... three down, five to finish.

The Bad Mother's Handbook and Julia Challenges Me

So I finished reading The Bad Mother's Handbook by Kate Long; cute and has some great moments. Not as hilarious as the title's premise might suggest, but still... three generations of women in one house, all of them sort of trying to figure out their lives... not bad. The worse thing about it is that each of the women acts as narrator at times and that means that figuring out who is "speaking" can be a challenge. I find that distracting. It's also by a British author and the characters are Brits, so that's also a bit of a challenge sometimes if you, like me, are unfamiliar with Britisher slang.

This book isn't going to have a permanent home with me; either it will be donated to the big Northfield used book sale that we have here every April (which benefits the local hospital) or I will pawn it off on a friend.

But anyway. Finished a book, moved another book onto the Shelf of Ten and on we go.

Julia, my energetic 9 year old, has been pining to go to our public library lately, and I'm planning to take her tonight. She is required to read books off of a Maud Hart Lovelace list that her teacher gave her - and J's goal is to read 8 of these books by March 14. We'd better get to the library, stat....

I showed J my Shelf of Ten, and she and I cooked up a plan for me to also read 8 of the books by March 14. I'm in, but did I mention that a lot of these books are really, really long? I'm currently into Stephen King's new book, 11/22/63, which is over 800 pages long. I have Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars on my Shelf right now... that one must have 500 pages. And the new Diana Gabaldon, The Scottish Prisoner, which will likely have great moments (swoon-worthy Jamie is in it, not just interesting-but-gay-so-somehow-less-interesting-in-a-romance-series Lord John), but sometimes her focus on historical detail takes time to absorb. Added to all this is the fact that I actually start a new job on Feb. 15, in a different city, and orientation will be full time.

But... I agreed to the challenge and I'm weirdly excited about it. Julia wants Austin to participate, too, and he seemed willing (it's a little difficult to know just what he is reading, since half the time he's using a Kindle at this point, but whatever). Julia did not want to invite Alex, which is just silly brother-sister stuff I'm sure, but it's not like Alex needs the motivation anyway. Alex is more interested in reading than in eating. (Alex is more interested in almost everything than in eating, but nevermind.)

So. The gauntlet has been thrown down... and I'm in. We'll see how far this takes me.

Oh Hello, Blog. You're Not Dead Yet? a.k.a. Shelf of Ten

No, my blog isn't dead. I've just been super busy with my Real Life for the past few months - giving vaccinations and trying to not starve to death or let my family starve to death and executing the necessary holidays that everyone expects (because we all know that the world will end if I don't send the right number of Christmas cards or whatever). So my writing time has been limited and I haven't been reading nearly as much as I should. My most utilized recreational activity has actually been working New York Times crossword puzzles (another obsession) lately.

But here I am, back at this blog, administering Blog-CPR and doses of epinephrine and atropine and whatever else I'm supposed to remember from that ACLS class I took last May.

So. Where am I? Well... I actually acquired four or five books for myself (yes, I said I wouldn't, but hey at least some of them were gifts!), so I'm probably not moving in the right direction in that regard. AND the last book I read was actually a re-read (the fourth in Stephen King's Dark Tower series; Wizard and Glass... which wasn't as astonishingly awesome as I remember it being, but it's still my favorite in that series up to that point). So no progress on that front, either.

But new hope has arrived somehow, as it always does, and I have a new scheme to get reading the giant stash of books in my home (and get rid of many along the way). I was reading my Twitter feed (yes, I know, shut up) and one of the many people I follow is Joe Hill. Hill is an entertaining writer (check out his Locke and Key graphic novels, stat) and he is also quite funny, so his Twitter feed is often full of good thoughts and ideas. And the Shelf of Ten is an idea I stole from him.

What is the Shelf of Ten? Essentially it is a shelf you can create in your home that contains only the next ten books you plan to read. The idea is to read them in the order you choose, but not to deviate from reading them. I take that to mean I can still read other books simultaneously (as if anyone could stop me anyway), but I'm willing to commit to reading these ten books, in order. And it's weirdly fun to choose them and make a little shelf, and I have to say that I get enthusiastic all over again every time I see my "shelf" (really a section of the floor next to a bookshelf in my bedroom, but nevermind).

So this is my current plan and I'll see where it takes me. The first book I'm tearing through is a weird one, The Bad Mother's Handbook by Kate Long. It was one the free book exchange shelf at the clinic I'd been working at and I couldn't resist that title. It's not what I expected it to be (sadly, it turns out that it is a work of fiction), but it's not bad. Happily, it's also not good enough that I'm going to feel the need to keep it on my bookshelf forever, either.

Okay, that's the update. Hopefully that's enough chest compressions and epi for this blog to last a few weeks.