I just went through a period of having to read many books I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen for myself for a project. So these past weeks I’ve felt like a kid again, reading anything I want. How glorious! My taste in pleasure reading is very eclectic–everything from crime fiction to biographies to non-fiction. Throw in cereal boxes, celebrity online gossip, and free local newspapers, and you’ve got me covered.
Audiobooks are perhaps my favorite mode of reading. I love to be read to–whether it’s by the author in person (at a reading–I’ve never had one over to the house to tuck me in) or an actor, or now, even the weird, uninflected voice in my iBooks app. I used to tease my husband years ago about the robot voice that was on his first Kindle. Fortunately the voices have improved, on iBooks, anyway. And thank goodness, because audiobooks are crazy-expensive.
Here’s what I’m reading this week:
Just finished this. I have seen all the Poirot episodes and films, but have only started reading the Poirot novels during the last five. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas is a locked room mystery. (I’ve always wanted to write one of those, but I can’t for the life of me decide what a solution might be.) While it takes place at Christmas, you could read it any time of year. It was written in the days when people didn’t go mad for the holiday, and so festivities are little mentioned. Comfort reading, but delightful. (Also, the real Poirot can get a bit snippier than the David Suchet Poirot.)
Have I mentioned lately that I have a thing for birds? I adore wild birds and love to watch them and look at pictures of them and read about them. Domesticated birds, not so much. We have had traumatic parakeet experiences. I think we are a predator family, given that we’re happy with 2 dogs and 2 cats. I’ll be honest and tell you I thought I was buying an audio copy of this book. Seriously, iTunes confuses the heck out of me. And now our family has Apple Music, which means I have no idea what’s on my phone and what’s in the cloud. So puzzling. But I digress. I came across Beaks, Bones, and Bird Songs online and bought it for a trip. Only then did I discover it was just an ebook. But now that the nice British robot lady is reading it to me from iTunes, all is well. It’s full of trivia about birds and their development and habits. Heaven.
I’ll write at more length on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein another time. The boy and I are reading it for homeschool. We are doing an entire section on golem stories and films, starting with this book. The eighteen year-old Shelley’s writing blows me away. I think that at age 18, I was good for a 3.8 paragraph, and that’s it. I bought Penguin Classic editions, so we have some good background and commentary. All I’ll say now is that Victor Frankenstein is rather an arrogant whiny-butt (as a professional book critic, I assure you that’s a professional term).
ALSO! If you go to the Kill Zone Blog, you can read my recent adventures in having a short story published (or not published as it were–it’s pretty shocking). The post will go up overnight, so if you’re a night owl, you might want to catch it later on. (I blog there every other Wednesday.)
January 10 Words
Journal: 450 words
Long fiction: 103 words
Short fiction: 0
Non-fiction: 0 words
Blogging: 1900 words
Exercise: 36 minutes on the treadmill–and I got 9750 steps today . I would’ve made my 10K goal, but I forgot the last 250 as I was sitting and blogging. Bummer.
