On my nightstand

Woah.  I really thought I would be able to post more in the past month.  No school for me apparently meant not much computer for me.  I think I just needed a break from my laptop.  But I read a lot!  I actually, for the first time, worked my way completely through my nightstand from last month.  Well, at least the front stack.


What I read:
The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion)
Maine (J. Courtney Sullivan)
Heads in Beds (Jacob Tomsky)
Eighteen Acres (Nicolle Wallace)
Ready Player One (Ernest Cline)

And I'm currently reading Going Clear.  That's it.  That's the stack!  Yay for me!

This month, I'm hoping to finish Going Clear.  Right now I'm stalled on it.  I read another book about Scientology a couple of years ago, so I'm waiting for this one to hook me in with some new information.  The new stack has Still Missing by Chevy Stevens.  This one was sent to me by my mother.  I like a good mystery.  We will see, since this one has a blurb by Gillian Flynn, who wrote Gone Girl, which I did not like at all.  The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, Glock by Paul M. Barrett, and Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman. I've also moved Cloud Atlas from the back stack to the front stack.  Although I've been meaning to read this for years, the reason it gets moved up this month is because Ready Player One was amazing.

Ready Player One had been sitting on my nightstand for months, and I cannot believe people were not shaking me for not reading it sooner!  How can you be a movie geek raised in the 80s and not read this?  It was so unique and engrossing.  I stayed up way too late on several nights to finish it.  It has been a long time since a book has made me stay up reading past 2 am.  So, Cloud Atlas, there's a lot of pressure on you!  Are you as good as Ready Player One?  I've heard rumors...

On my nightstand

Whoo hoo!  Finished with spring semester, 2014.  That was a hard slog.  Three classes, one of which was pathophysiology.  Ugh.

So what are my educational plans for the summer?  This:

Only recreational reading.  That's right, I'm not taking classes at all this summer!  Ohmygosh, I'm so very excited to not have to be on a deadline for the next four months.

Right now, I'm reading The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion on my Kindle.  Not great, but good.  On the stack are:  Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan (bought at a Barnes & Noble 3 for 2 table), Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky (insiders view of hotel service), Going Clear by Lawrence Wright (about Scientology), Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (this has been on my to-read list since it came out), and Eighteen Acres by Nicolle Wallace (given to me by my mother, and sounds kind of like the television program Scandal).

The books in the second stack have been hanging out quite a while.  There are a couple of feeding babies and toddlers, one one parenting, Cloud Atlas (which has been on the table for at least a year, and I refuse to watch the movie before reading the book, which means that I've been telling my DVR not to delete it for months now, too), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (re-reading this one, so not in a hurry to finish), and The Winter Palace (ordered in a fit of Russian interest during the Winter Olymics, about Catherine the Great).

I'm also planning some knitting, of course, but no pictures of yarn yet.  And I'm starting a sampler.  The floss is wound.

And, of course, hanging out with these two.

Please note the dog (Charlie) photo bombing the picture.  Snouts everywhere, I tell you.

Rainy Day Woman

It has been raining since before I woke up.  The kind of rain that can last for hours.  (The Snufflepuffs do not like this kind of rain, however.  It means that eventually I will have to put on wellies and take them for a walk.  Given their druthers, they would sit under the covered area of the deck and watch the rain.  Or not even go out in it at all, like Frosty.  Despite Frosty's love of walks, he has been known to turn right around once he feels a raindrop.  Bit of a prima donna, that one.)

Spring rain is one of the things I really like about North Carolina.  Spring rain often lasts all day, unlike the summer rain.  The summer rain comes in hard, lasts an hour, and makes the already humid air even more heavy and close.  We haven't hid humid weather yet, so this rain isn't going choke me.

Rain is one of the things I really missed when I lived out in San Diego.  The weather in San Diego is very much the same most days.  San Diego is almost the absence of weather.  The joke is that it is 75 and sunny, every day.  And it pretty much is.  I once asked a co-worker about his vacation to the midwest, and the first thing he mentioned was that he heard a thunderstorm for the first time in years.  I don't think it thunderstormed the entire time I lived out there.

So when we get days rainy days like this here, I celebrate it.  I make up for all the rain I missed.  I light candles in the day time, listen to mellow music, and drink buckets of hot tea while knitting and reading.  (Unfortunately not at the same time.  I wish I could be one of those people who can knit and read, but I can't.  Not yet anyway.)

Two new yarns, wound into cakes for two new projects.  The pink (MadelineTosh Tosh Sock in Pop Rocks) is for a pair of Hedgerow Mitts (Rav link).  The brown is Dream in Color Smooshy for a Little Oak (Rav link).  Behind the yarn is a pile of new library books.

I'm currently mining the Young Adult section of the base library for books.  Gregor the Overlander is the first book in a series by Suzanne Collins.  She wrote this series before she wrote the Hunger Games trilogy.  Stoneheart begins a trilogy about statues in London that come to life.  Really, how could I leave that on the shelf?  The Iron Throne is about magic and witchcraft set in a Victorian-ish America.  (I didn't know that the steampunk movement influenced YA fiction, but I guess I'm not surprised.)  I thought it was a stand-alone novel, but when I linked up to Amazon it seems that it is a trilogy.  Another thing I'm not really surprised by, as many YA novels are series novels.  I didn't quite mean to start three different series simultaneously, though.  Whoops.

I'm off to load up the CD player with some Bob Dylan, Mumford & Sons, and Nick Drake and start knitting.

On my nightstand

Last semester, I was so terrified of nursing school that I didn't think I would be able to concentrate on anything but nursing for sixteen weeks, and that all day, every day would be consumed by nursing.  While I spent quite a lot of time reading and studying nursing, I had enough free time that I managed to watch a considerable amount of bad television.

You see, because I was convinced I couldn't read anything but nursing texts, I didn't have a book on hand.  (Not quite true.  I'm a reader; I have shelves of books.  I just didn't have a book at the ready.  I need a plan.)  This semester I plan to manage my downtime a little differently.  I need to have a book to read.  I just do.  If I don't have something focused to do when I'm not studying, I end up randomly channel surfing and watching old episodes of Cold Case.

Just before Christmas, I shared the books on my nightstand.  While I didn't finish everything on it, I did read a lot, including some "extra" books not on the table.  So now I give you my nightstand today, with an updated list of then to now.

What's gone?
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  (My GoodReads review.)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Turns out, when you only have a couple of chapters to read, it goes pretty quickly.
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry.  Same reason as above.
Consider the Oyster.  I'm not sure why this disappeared.  I must have put it away with something else because I didn't read it.  Now I'm going to have trouble finding it, because it surely isn't where it is supposed to be.
The Best American Essays 2012.  I read a little bit of this, but it has moved to back on the shelf.  It isn't shelved, though.  It is sitting on top of its brothers.  This makes it really easy to just grab if I want a finite amount of reading, say, for the bath.  (This happens often, actually.  I will need something to fill twenty minutes and only twenty minutes.)
In the Woods.  Three stars out of five.
The Passage by Justin Cronin.  This has been moved over until spring break.  It is a doorstop of a book, and it has a sequel (which is currently available at the library-- I had to stop myself from checking it out and giving myself over to both of them).  I think it needs some undivided time, so this one will be back.

Still around:
Cloud Atlas.  Haven't started.
The Night Circus.  Haven't started.
World War Z.  I'm about 2/3 through.  I love it, but it doesn't need to be read in one sitting.  It is a series of vignettes about the Zombie War, so I can read one and put it down.  Makes me curious about the movie.
The Knitter's Almanac.  Always there.
An Everlasting Meal.  Ditto.

New:
A Big Truck Went By by Jonathan M. Katz.  About the earthquake in Haiti and the aftermath of all the "support".
Forever by Maggie Stiefvater.  This is Book 3 in her Wolves of Mercy Hill trilogy.  (Book 2, Linger, is out in the living room right now.  That's what I'm currently reading.)  It is Young Adult, but well-written yet quick.  So far I'm about halfway through Linger.  The first book, Shiver, was a bit better, but Linger is keeping me going.
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.  It sounded good at the library but I can't remember what it is about now.  It won an award of some sort.  (Clearly my criteria for checking books out of the library is nonexistent.)
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon.  I find Chabon to be hit or miss.  I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Wonder Boys, but I've found some of his new stuff hard to get into.  I'm hoping that I love this; it is a big sink-into book with lots of drama (or so I hope).
Drop Dead Healthy by A. J. Jacobs.  I like this kind of "schtick lit."  A.J. Jacobs was one of the first to do it, with his The Know-It-All, which I've read, and I've read all the rest of his stuff.  Why stop now?  And, I figure, this kind of has a little bit to do with health so I can trick myself into thinking I'm not completely ignoring school.  Hah!

And because no photo shoot in this house is complete without some interference by the Fluffy Gang:

In my absence

I've stayed away from here for longer than I meant.  At first I was just exhausted from studying for finals.  Then my mother-in-law was in town.  And then I didn't feel quite right posting over the weekend end, in light of what had happened.  A "hey, here's what I'm doing" post seemed inappropriate, somehow.

But here I am.  And here is what I've been doing.

This is my nightstand.  It doesn't quite look like this anymore, and usually there are some other things, like eyedrops, on there somewhere.  (I had laser eye surgery a year ago and I highly recommend it.  It has changed my life.  The downside is that I have to use eyedrops a lot, especially in the morning.  It can make wearing mascara a pain in the patootey.)  This is the pile of books I hope to get through before I go back to school on 15 January.

(I'm going to link these to their respective Amazon pages, but I get nothing back from Amazon.)

In no particular order, the line up is:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  I've actually read about two-thirds of this and then got sidetracked by I'm not sure what.  Anyway, I want to finish it.  And I really like that the present-day narrator lives in Rhinebeck, NY.

Consider the Oysterby MFK Fisher.  Being both a foodie and a reader, I've been meaning to read this for years.  I know that I bought it when I lived in California, so that means I've had if for at least four years.  It's time to read it.  It is, after all, a very small book.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.  I wanted to read this before the movie came out.  I didn't get around to it, so I never saw the movie.  (According to the reviews, I'm not sure that is anything to lament.)  I've heard good things about the book, though.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  I mentioned that I saw this on a table at a bookstore, and a friend of mine sent along her copy.  I honestly can't even remember what it is about right now, just that it sounded interesting.

World War Z by Max Brooks.  Zombies.  What can I say?  And besides, I have to read it before Brad Pitt completely ruins it.

The Best American Essay of 2012.  I've been reading this series for years.  I love the literary essay, creative non-fiction, what ever you want to call it.  This series is guest edited each year by a different author.  What I love about it is that year's collection retains the (for a better word) flavor of the editor.  The year edited by David Foster Wallace has a completely different feel than the years edited by Susan Orleans or Christopher Hitchens.  This year's collection is edited by David Brooks of the NYTimes, so I am looking forward to reading what he thought was interesting.

In the Woods by Tana French.  This sounded good while I was at the bookstore picking up some Christmas gifts.  And the essay book for me.  And a knitting magazine for  me.  And a magazine about keeping chickens (a dream of mine, so obviously for me).

The Passage by Justin Cronin.  Vampires.  Love the undead (unless we are talking Twilight undead).

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  I know it is YA fiction, but there is a lot of YA stuff that is really, truly amazing right now.

Also on the nightstand, but not there for "winter break reading" are The Knitter's Almanac because it is always on my nightstand, An Everlasting Meal for constant inspiration, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry simply because I haven't finished it but can't seem  find the energy to do so, and a daily gratitude/highlight journal.

And to show you, dear Reader, what I have to got though to get a decent photograph, a couple of shots from the discard pile.

Hey, whatcha doing?

Hi Peep!