the week in reading

So... not horrible this week.   Not good, but better.  At least I tried.
I'm still yards behind, but whatevs.  I WILL catch up.  50 books is too far in to stop now.

the week in reading: 6-12 August

I suck.

the week in reading: 30 July - 5 August

Well.  Um.  So!  Not the best week yet on record.  But also not the worst.

Beatrix Potter and her lovely five minute picture books came to the rescue, ah, frequently.  I did not feel proud of that.  But at least I'm reading.  And they truly are great.   This upcoming week, I'd like to step it up again.  I have to get back into good habits before school starts. Yipes!

I'm having a hard time getting my reading done because this new house is so distracting.  Well, this new yard actually.  I spend a lot of time swimming.  But I don't feel too guilty because fall will be here all too soon and my legs are shockingly white.  My mother actually laughed the other day when I emerged from the house in my board shorts.  It's weird looking down and realizing that those astonishingly white limbs are actually attached to my body.  I can hardly believe it.

I will try to focus this week.  I'll try to read something good and long and preferably written for grown-ups.  I can feel my books eyeing me reproachfully.

Au revoir, my dear blog.  I'm going to go... uh... swim in the lake now.

the week in reading: 23-29

Not, um, the most successful of weeks.  Moving took over my life.  I still haven't quite wrestled control  back yet.  (Becoming homeowners has suddenly plunged us back into the world of yardwork and fence building and repairs. But I'm not complaining too much.  I have my own room.  I can bear with a lot for that.)  Doing better, but I'm still sort of wobbly.  I need a routine, and then everything will get better.

This week, I would like to do my catch-up reading and stay strong.

the week in reading: 15-22 July

I can't believe it's already been two weeks.  I'm not even having difficulty remembering to read, which is a miracle.  I forget everything else.  I'm like a 21 year old, female version of your typical disheveled, gaga professor, minus the brilliance.  I put all my clothes on the wrong way.  I even have the hair.

 You just look me in my crazed, gleaming pupils and say it ain't so.  I won't ask you to imagine what it looks like when it's long, because you would have to poke out your mind's eye.

What a very pleasant week it has been.  I still have no idea why I'm doing this, but I'm also still glad I am.
I'm finding that, unless I start reading before eight, I can only manage around 300 pages.  When I try to push it past the 300-ish mark, my eyeballs shrivel and I have to bathe them with extremely expensive French spring water, and then keep them propped up in my head with two fingers.  So, I'm trying to stick to 300 pages right now.  In an ideal world, I would be disciplined enough to read a shorter book (Like, say, The Willoughbys), and make headway on a longer one on the same day. But, so far, I haven't exhibited any symptoms of discipline.  I never have, now I think about it.

For a day or two I was staying up way too late to read and thought I was going to die.  (Which would have made me an entertaining headstone in the cemetery, to say the least.) But I've been better about getting finished with books before two.

Yes, all in all it's been fun, these two weeks. I packed almost all my books up the other day (eight days to the move! Yes! Yes!), so I'm relying on the library to get me through the upcoming week.  I guess I should be good and get Steinbeck or something, but I really, really want more Madeline L'Engle kids books. Plus the big annual book sale is happening tomorrow and Saturday at the main library.  As a Friend of the Central Arkansas Library, I could have gone to the FOCAL preview party today, but I decided not to (read: forgot it was happening) and will instead cross elbows over the Agatha Christie paperbacks with the proles tomorrow.

If I intend to keep taking my own pictures of the books I read, they must be less cruddy.

Also, I must try to balance my reading between grown-up and kids' books.  The scales have been a bit, um, tipped lately.

I like books.

The week in reading: 8-14 July

Wowzer! I can't believe I did it.  Seven books in a week.  It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're going from maybe one per seven-night, it is.

I feel terribly proud of myself.  I know It's only been one stupid week, but I'm still bursting with triumph.  It was a good week.  Four lovely kid's books, an exploration of guilt and shame, a novella about evil and a play about who knows what.  Yes, a very good week.

This whole project may be a waste of time, but it's certainly less of a waste than looking up this season's make-up trends on magazine websites, watching celebrity interviews and moping about my looks.  This is going to sound so pompous, but I honestly feel like my life has been richer.   I've had more to think about.

Golly, I hope I keep doing this.  What would it be like if I could tell people in a casual way, "Oh, when I was 21 I read a book every day for a year.  And they weren't all short books, let me tell you!" (I keep picturing the people I so suavely relate this fascinating anecdote to as being a pack of admiring little grandchildren all piled up around my chair and sitting on my lap, and I a sweet, fluffy old lady with hair all different shades of gray.  It's rather lovely.)  What a conceited fool I am.  But a happy fool!

GOALS: I'd like to read something really long this week.  I've been planning to alternate short books and long books, so that when I read short books I can also begin the long ones and finish them the next day.  I'd also like to check out some non-fiction.  Maybe about plants or birds or something.  Non-fiction tends to take me longer, but I'd like to read more of it.  Mostly, I just want to stick to the project. Even if it means reading a picture book while I'm brushing my teeth, I want to read something every day.

By George, I'm having a jolly time.

That's all.