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I have to say that I am getting very excited about my cousin's upcoming wedding. It is not just because I am maid of honor, or only because I love the two of them so much. I think it is because it is NOT my wedding that I find myself ooohing and ahhing over dresses, tiaras, and invitations and I am not one bit stressed (the bride, however...). Anyway, we managed to get a lot done this weekend, including the all important spa appointment. Bliss! The Invention of Everything travelled with me, but I wasn't on the train long enough to really put a dent in it. Plus, lets face it, riding the train is fun! I guess if I had to do it everyday wouldn't think so, but I thought it was great.

Well, I'm off to Maryland for the weekend, so I thought I'd leave behind a super edition post. It reminds me of when I was a kid and the Babysitter's Club or Sweet Valley High would release the fat volume with some kind of (usually scary) theme, and I would think: Score! Yes, once a dork, always a dork. There has been a whole lotta starts and finishes going on around here. I started the new semester at school (crowd cheers " Yay " in sarcastic chant), I finished Duma Key (crowd boos), and finished The World Ends in Hickory Hollow (crowd " Aws "). Duma was a great read. I don't read too many page turners, and this one was really great. There was just enough supernatural stuff going on to keep me interested. Say what you want about King, people, and I'll defend him with my dying breath. He is this generations Edgar Allan Poe. The man makes tennis balls scary. That said, and this is coming from a true book snob, the real genius of King's wo...

The first thing I do when I visit someone's house is check out their bookshelves. Honestly, the place could be a mess and the mice could be doing the cha - cha on your entertainment center. I don't care. I just want to see what is on your shelves. A personal library tells me more about a person then anything else. I really want to know what you are reading, or what you have bought and not read yet. So, here is a peek at my shelves (because it wouldn't be fair for me to be the only peeker ). I just grabbed an entire shelf and stacked 'em on my bed. No, the dog does not usually sit on the bookshelf, she's just there for perspective. Delilah likes children's books best. Note the top book: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, which is not one of the best books I have ever read, it maintains (for me) the BEST BOOK TITLE EVER award.

Yeah, well, what I do in the minutes I am not reading (all twenty-six of them) is watch Doctor Who, Torchwood , Lost, and Life On Mars. As I have seen everything but the new episodes, I can multi-task while they are on. When I am in school, I have very little free time, and it goes without saying that the kids always come first. Out of the time I have to myself, if I don't have homework to do, like now, I invent projects for myself to do. I love to craft, but I don't enjoy any kind of work where I am trapped in a chair (like knitting or cross stitch). As pretty as it is, it just makes me feel old to do it (despite listening to audio books while knitting). I figure I'll knit when I'm old-or in case the world ends and I need to knit my kids sweaters. It is a valuable skill. Speaking of skills, I regret not learning a musical instrument when I was younger, and I would like to remedy that. I am also unable to cook, but am blessed with a mother who can cook like a demon. The...

Today I finished Promise Not to Tell. It is a ghost-involved story of a woman who returns home to care for her ailing mother and is sucked into a new murder mystery that eerily resembles the death of her childhood friend thirty years before. Now, I'm not a murder mystery fan. So I could care less about how the mystery is revealed and blah, blah, blah. However, this little charmer involves childhood flashbacks to a seventies commune where the main character grew up and a local legend about ghost of The Potato Girl-who is responsible for everything in town from bad weather to bad fortune. For a first novel, I thought the writing was about par. The story was interesting and the clues left by The Potato Girl were original and clever. So even though we see the murderer from a mile a way, the real story of how we treat one another over the course of our lives was much more effective. I would recommend this to fans of Alice Hoffman, or to those who loved The Lovely Bones. It is a quick r...

I just finished Now You're One of Us by Asa Nonami . This creepy, not too chilly chiller was a page turner. A young woman marries into her husband's super happy family. Things are weird from the get-go and hints at a deeper darkness emerge slowly as the story unfolds. What I really admired was how Nonami shows repeat themes in the plot without rehashing the story over and over again. The main character falls into an obsession over the death of a neighbor who had connections with the family. At the same time, the family is influencing the young bride in an effective manner and the change in the character's demeanor is subtle and complete. I couldn't put it down. By the end, the story had fallen into a hypnotic, trippy nightmare that leads to a complex spooky climax. My only regret is that I didn't read this one in October or during a thunderstorm. Woooooo ....(insert ghostly howling) Other reviewers comparing the story to Rosemary's Baby are not far off, and l...

My Grey Gardens obsession, which waxes and wanes as new information appears is being revved up by a new find by my buddy, Sam. The discovery that the book My Life at Grey Gardens by Lois Wright was just purchased by our library is certainly big news. Although I have no idea where they found it...I hadn't known it existed until Sam told me about it. I saw the film a few years ago and was absolutely amazed by it. If you have not seen it yet- make it tops on your list. The Broadway musical became a huge hit and the movie is still slated for a 2008 release. (I check IMDB for updates almost weekly). So intense is my love for the Beale women that I use Edie's picture on my Myspace page and break into "Tea for Two" at any given point in the day. Of course, breaking into song is not uncommon for me. I always wanted to live in a musical. Anyway, it is unfortunate that my pile of books is so high and I won't be able to start My Life at Grey Gardens for a week, but I ca...

One more challenge, the Japanese Literature Challenge (find it over at Dolce Bellezza http://dolcebellezza.blogspot.com/2007/11/youre-invited.html). Here we are to read three pieces of Japanese literature, any genre. I think this is wonderful. A couple of years ago, I discovered Banana Yoshimoto and quickly devoured everything she had out. Since then she has published one more, Goodbye Tsugumi . I will be reading that one. And today what should fall into my lap as I was griping about how slow Atonement is moving but Now You're One of Us by Asa Nonami . I'm on page twenty-three and loving it already. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for Atonement right now. I wonder if others found it slow too. Anyway, to conclude the Japanese novel challenge I have to read Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki for school so that is a gimmie . I need to lay off anymore challenges before I overwhelm myself. I keep forgetting school starts in less than two weeks. I'll have plenty of ...

Yet another challenge I will be attempting in '08. Woooo-hooo! Lookie, lookie: http://1morechapter.com/pub/

Finding time to read seems to be an issue if you are not the type to make it a priority. Really, though, I think the major obstacle to finding time to read is not Life itself, but the television. I try to limit my TV viewing. Time is so precious to me, I can't squander hours away in front of the box. Not only am I a parent of two little girls, I work full time, and attend college full time. The best thing that ever happened to me was the invention of the digital recorder. I can tape my shows and watch them on my schedule. Some of the TV shows I find worth my time are: Torchwood, Lost, Doctor Who, Pushing Daisies, and My Name Is Earl. I'm not loyal to any of them, and a great book takes precedence over watching TV. Last year I managed to read sixty four books. This was the lowest total for me in years, but my Fall semester was reading intensive and I don't count textbooks in my final total. I also do not count my YA reads, but I read quite a lot of them to stay on top of ...

Just finished Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg . I am a sucker for memoirs about dysfunctional families the only caveat being that I sometimes feel less bad for the victim when they come from a family dripping with money. Susanna had an overexposed childhood because of a wild mother, and it warped her into a sex fiend. Part of the fun of the book was trying to figure out who the disguised characters were (as most of the people in the book's names have been changed to protect their privacy). If it were fiction, the book would be a basic Danielle Steel plot, but the fact that these things really happened lead to some credibility. Through a great deal of the story, though, the reader is left with the feeling that the narrator is as confused as her mother and that we may not be getting the real story anyway. I am beginning to wonder if Jeanette Walls has just ruined me for anymore memoirs. How could anything compare to the Glass Castle ? I also finished the Teen One Book New Jersey...

I am so excited to be involved in a reading challenge this year. I honestly did not know there were as many people out there who are as obsessed with reading as I am. But I am honored to have found them. I accept this challenge and will post my choices as soon as I find some. I'm thinking Chabon's Kavalier and Clay, only because it has been on my TBR shelf for two years. Buying a book has always been the kiss of death for me. How can I possibly read what I just bought when I have new library books coming in all of the time and they all have to be read in a certain time frame? As a result, I actually own more books I have not read yet than ones I have. So, onto the Chunkster Challenge, which just happens to have the best name...

The purpose of this blog is to comment on what I have read, viewed, and other stuff. I tend to run in phases, all moon-like, so sometimes I'm crafty and, very rarely, I become domestic. As it is the new year, I'm embracing all things NEW-hence the blog. I'll sky dive later...