January Reading Round-up

I read a lot.

No, really -- I don't think you understand.  I read A LOT.  If books were methamphetamine, all my teeth would have fallen out and I would on the Walgreens hit list for buying too much Sudaphed. 

I read so much that it has recently occurred to me that I have probably completely forgotten about alot of what I've read.  I wish I had been keeping a log or something about the stacks and stacks of books that I go through, like my best friend from college who has multiple binders logging all her reading experiences.  But since I haven't done that, I have decided to do monthly review posts of what I've been reading.  So here we go!

I started the month with  book that has been getting alot of good press and decent reviews, The Last Werewolf.  It had all the things I usually like -- a supernatural aspect, nice long length, decent writing, etc. And, well, it sucked.  It sucked so bad that I didn't even finish it, which is odd for me.  Man, was that one boring werewolf.  I gave up about a third of the way in because I was just tired of long monologues about how difficult it is to be a werewolf, and be the only one left.  Sheesh, Werewolf, just grow a pair and get on with life, okay?

After that, I raced through a bunch of sort of atmospheric mysteries.  The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes, Don't Breathe a Word, The Cloud of Unknowing, In Search of the Rose Notes, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter -- all decent, dark mysteries.  I enjoyed them all, and would recommend any of them, but doubt I'll remember much about them in a few months.

One mystery that stood out, though, was Before I Go To Sleep.  It was awesome. The main character is a woman who, after an accident, cannot form new memories.  She starts keeping a journal of her daily life, and through the journal she starts to realize that things are not what they seem.  Granted, it's not a totally original idea; the Guy Pierce movie Memento did it better, and Fifty First Dates did it funnier.  Nevertheless, this book grabbed me and I couldn't wait to keep reading it and see what happened.  You can't ask for much more from a book than that.

We can put The Kingdom of Childhood in the category of Not At All What I Was Expecting.  An odd little book about a female teacher having an affair with a young male student.  For some reason I was expecting the writer to want me to be sympathetic with the teacher, and it took me awhile to realize she didn't.  In fact, I hated that teacher.  But the portrayal of the student was wonderful.  Overall, I liked it quite a bit, and as I write this, I'm realizing that there was a lot in it to ponder.  And I like pondering.

The White Devil was a book I had been looking forward to.  Justin Evans wrote one of my all-time favorites, A Good and Happy Child, and I had great expectations for his new one. I think my expectations were a little TOO great, because even though it was good, and spooky, and nicely written, I was kind of disappointed.  I wanted it to make me think, like Good and Happy Child,  and it just didn't.  It was a nice, haunted boarding school story, but I'm not dying to tell people about it like I did with Good and Happy Child (that one's a great read around Halloween, by the way).

I finally got around to reading another book that's getting attention from literary types, The Night Circus, and for once, I thought the literary types were spot on.  This book was fanTASTic.  I was terribly sorry to see it end. The basics:  two magicians stage a contest between their students, but don't tell them (or the reader) what the contest really IS.  They have to figure out the rules as they go along, and as you read the book, you have to figure out what the HECK is happening. It's hard to describe, but wonderful to read. It was one of those rare books that made me truly irritated that such places and people don't exist in the real world.  Trust me, you should read this book

It was hard to find a follow-up to The Night Circus. I tried to keep up the circus theme with The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb:  A Novel. It was a nice book, and it sent me straight to Wikipedia to find out everything I could about Tom Thumb, P.T. Barnum, and the title character, Lavinia Bump. There's not much to find out, actually, hence the title inclusion of "A Novel."  The author chooses to focus on the relationship between Lavinia and Barnum, so ends the book long before Lavinia's death.  I'm actually hoping she writes a sequel, her treatment of Lavinia as a character was so engaging. 

If you've stuck with me through all this wordiness, let me sum it up for you:  do NOT read The Last Werewolf.  DO read The Night Circus -- heck, you could even read it twice. 

On Stupid Book Covers

This past Sunday afternoon I had a rare opportunity to mosey around a bookstore with absolutely nowhere else I was "supposed" to be. Why I picked the worst bookstore in town for that outing, I don't know.

As I usually do, in recent years, anyway, I went to the sci-fi section first. I swear, every time I look around the sci-fi section of a bookstore or library I realize why I resisted my natural sci-fi leanings for so long:

It's the covers. Man, the covers of sci-fi novels suck. There are two kinds. Either a woman in a ren-fair costume with long, flowing hair and a heaving bosom, or a big bunch of spaceship and metal. Both equally embarassing.

On this trip, I was really excited to find a book by Robert Heinlein, since he's one of my favorite classic sci-fi guys, and a lot of his books are out of print. This was a single volume of two new-to-me novellas, one featuring a favorite character from some of his other novels. It seemed like a no-brainer.

But the cover? It featured an idyllic, Utopian landscape, with a man and woman dressed up like Trekkies lounging on the grass (the man in a Thinker-like pose), seemingly in earnest conversation with a short, furry and vaguely humanoid creature. In the background -- a huge spaceship.

Aside from the fact that I kept having to hide the damn cover everywhere I took the book, it totally ruined the reading experience for me. Because wouldn't you know it, I had to read about four fifths of that book before I got to the damn creature, and the whole time, all I could think was, "WHERE IS THE CREATURE?"

Sheesh. I might as well chuck it and read romance novels.

Books!

I don't know about you, but one of my favorite things about vacation (and then I promise I won't talk about vacation anymore) is vacation reading. I always use it as an excuse to go on a book-buying spree, and I try never to go on a trip of any significant length without at least four books, and truthfully, five or six is better. (Whoa, long sentence there.)

So with my vacation reading, and one post-vacation splurge read, I feel like I have lots to report.

The book I was most excited to read, and the one I devoured almost as soon as we got off the plane, was Replay, by Ken Grimwood. I have something of an obsession with time-travel novels and short stories; it all started with that damn Christopher Reeve movie, and just keeps going. This book was tons of fun and led to some great vacation conversations. It's about a man who is repeatedly sent back to himself at age 18 to live his life over again; he has full memory each time, so his experience build and build on one another. I spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out what I would do in such a situation. Think about it, it's a tough one.

My other reading selections were total vacation fluff. At least they were supposed to be. I made the mistake of picking what looked like a silly little fantasy tale, Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story. Sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? A story about Cinderella's fairy godmother and her life after Cinderella? Well, it was TOTALLY not HARMLESS at all. Turns out, it wasn't about a fairy godmother at all, and instead was about an elderly woman who has so much guilt over an incident in her youth that she goes crazy, lives a lonely life, and kills herself in the end! Yeah, that was NOT what I wanted out of vacation reading. Sheesh. I know I just spoiled it for you if you were planning on reading it, but I consider it a Public Service Announcement.

The other book I just finished, well, I'm not going to spoil it for you because it's part of a series by a pretty popular writer, and I don't want to put you off the whole series on the off chance that you plan to read it. Let's just say that I picked up what was supposed to be a lighthearted mystery, only to have the main character's husband DIE AT THE END. There's no other way to say it, that just sucked ass. I swear, I think I'm going to write the auther a letter, just to say, "Dude, what the fuck?"

Anyway, since my Spring fluff reading is getting kind of depressing, I think I'll just go ahead and finish that new Joyce Carol Oates novel that I got. You know, the one based on the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder? It should be a real laugh a minute.

I Think Someone Stole My Saturday

Oh, for pete's sake, it's Monday. I don't know how that happens so FAST! Here's some randomness for you and your own personal Monday . . .

1. At my Weight Watchers meeting tonight, I lost 1.2 pounds. Todd cannot understand the misery that comes with being told you have lost 1.2 pounds when you hoped for, at minimum, 2.2 pounds, which would put you into a "new" set of numbers, or, even better, 4 pounds, which would earn you another five pound gold sticker.

2. I have discovered that there is a strong inverse relationship between how hard I practice the violin and how happy I am with my playing during the week and how much I suck at my actual lesson. (Or is that a direct correlation? Anyway, if I do good during the week, I suck ass at the lesson.)

3. I have officially given up on finishing Todd's Christmas scarf this winter. Goodbye, poor beautiful, cable- and bobble-filled scarf, I will see you in the Fall and you will be ready for Christmas 2009, I swear.

4. Edgar Sawtelle never did start to suck. It was beautiful and heartbreaking right until the end. I balanced out all the heartbreak with the latest in a fabulous werecat series. Ah, trashy supernatural romance novels, how I love you.

5. In organizing some files at work this afternoon, I realized that I have been prosecuting the priest-stalker since August 2006. When I started her case, I wasn't even married yet. Sheesh, priest-stalker, can't you give me a break?

6. This Friday, the latest Joss Whedon show debuts on Fox. Who is Joss Whedon, you ask? He's ONLY the creator of the best TV show in the history of TV shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So I am sure you can imagine my excitement.

7. Little and I went to a "Solve the Sherlock Holmes Mystery" event thingy at the Frazier Historical Museum a few weeks ago. We failed utterly at solving it. I felt so guilty about our performance that I'm reading some Sherlock Holmes stories for the first time ever. He was a wee bit pompous, wasn't he?

8. After making fun of them mercilessly on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, I am listen to The Ting Tings incessantly. They make me want to put on my blue wig and dance.

8. I have a new dress from Old Navy that I got for $9.99, and it's totally cool. (Told you this post was going to be random.)

What's Making Me Cry More Than an Episode of Charmed

My name is Kara, and I am a compulsive book-club-joiner.

No, not the ones where you meet up with friends once a month and pretend to talk about a book while drinking wine from a box, but the ones where you get FIVE BOOKS FOR A DOLLAR and then have to buy two more to "fulfill your commitment." I've joined and gotten out of them several times, and they always get me back with that FIVE BOOKS FOR A DOLLAR promise. Seriously. Five books. For a dollar. Who could resist?

So the only problem with these book clubs is that you have to decline that "featured selection" every month or they send it to you automatically. I forget this sometimes. Okay, a LOT. And I get a LOT of books that I didn't mean to order; some are crap and some are pretty good.

Last month I got one such shipment of books and tossed them aside, but came back to them this week when I ran out of reading material. What I found was a book of such wonderful fabulousness that, even though I'm only halfway through it, I have to tell you about it.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. This is nothing I would have picked up on my own. I don't know if you've noticed, over there on the sidebar, but I tend to read a lot of books of the same type. A friend of mine told me that she was looking through the list one day and clicked on the one that sounded the least supernatural and sci-fi-ey, only to find that To Sail Beyond the Sunset is actually a sci-fi classic about time travel.

I don't think I can really tell you what Edgar Sawtelle is about. There's a boy who is normal in every single way except that he can't talk, can't make any sound at all. There's a dog-breeding farm that breeds dogs of no particular type that are all, every single one, extraordinary. There are dogs who can make murderers confess and dogs who can read sign language. There's a perfect little family, and each member has his or her own secrets.

This book is captivating. So much so, that a while ago, I was lying on the couch reading, and came to a scene so heartbreaking that I actually caught my breath, put the book down, sat up, reached for it, then decided I should do something else for awhile, because crying gives me migraines.

I've about reached the halfway point, so I suppose there's still time for the book to start to suck. But what I'm more afraid of is that it's not going to ever start sucking, and when I'm finished with it, I'm going to miss those damn characters like my best friend moved out of town. It's a perilous business, this reading of books, and you don't always come away unscathed.

Singin' the End of Holiday Blues

I suppose since I have to go to work tomorrow and work a WHOLE WEEK, as in five days straight without a day off, that Christmas is officially over. Here's some randomness to get me back in the regular blogging spirit . . .

1. I am not making resolutions this year, just sticking to my list of 101 things. There are a couple of things I want to do more of this year, like violin practice, baking, and making fun stuff, but no resolutions.

2. A church member this morning informed me that she was googling our church name and this site is one that comes up. Do you think that means I need to clean things up around here? Naaaah.

3. My lovely, lovely stepfather has been dreadfully sick and in the hospital since just after Christmas. Today, things seem to have taken a turn for the better, but it's been rough for him and my mom. If you are the praying sort, I know they'd appreciate it.

4. I discovered the Negotiator books over the holiday, and LOVED THEM. It's always great to find a book that you really like and then discover that it's the first of a series. I finished those up and have moved on to an earlier series by the same writer, The Walker Papers.

5. Those pecan squares I made for Christmas? The ones by Ina Garten, with nine sticks of butter? Totally not worth it. Next year I think I'll make just five batches of peanut butter kisses and be done with it.

This Was My Evil Plan All Along . . .

Yesterday, I received the following text message from Little:

"hey when can i borrow that Twilight book from you"

SCORE!!!!!

Chalk up one potential reading convert for me!

I Can't Believe I Read the WHOLE Thing

I had grand plans of super-cleaning my house this weekend in preparation for the Greatest Halloween Party Ever, but since Todd was feeling kind of sickly, I couldn't be bustling around the house making a lot of noise, could I? Of COURSE not. What kind of wife do you think I am?

So, instead of cleaning, I finished up Breaking Dawn, which concluded my whirlwind reading of the ENTIRE Twilight series, which I started on Tuesday. As in, five days before I finished them. All four books.

I feel vaguely embarassed by this, like I spent the weekend doing something shameful. Like surfing the 'net for porn, or campaigning for McCain or something.

But I have to say this: I loved, loved, LOVED those darn books. The teenage angst! The overly dramatic heartbreak! The barely-hidden message of morality! The vampires! The werewolves!

Oh, and I wish I was named Bella. I may have a child soon, just to name her Bella.

Now I'm totally all geeked-up and anxious for the movie, which comes out November 21, not that I checked or anything. I am SO making Little go with me for opening night. I might even wear fangs.



And in case you thought I spent the whole weekend with no intellectual stimulation, never fear, I rounded out my Sunday with The Incredible Hulk, Edward Norton version. And as much as I love me some Edward Norton, it still doesn't stand up to the wonderful Eddie's father himself, Bill Bixby.

Crap, I guess I have to go back to being an adult tomorrow.

Someday I'll Write a Real Post Again

Ack. Forgot to post. Here's an update:

1. Dropped off my Ky State Fair entries on Sunday, and am anxiously awaiting the results. I have high hopes for that blasted Christmas stocking.

2. Been totally captivated by the Olympics in the past few days. Seriously, is there anything cuter than that men's gymnastics team? So wholesome, so disgustingly all-American.

3. Changed my haircolor. Again. This change prompted the following conversation with one of my Sunday School students:
Him: Didn't your hair used to be black and white?
Me: Yep.
Him: Do you know that now it's black and purple?
Me: Yep.
Him: Why don't you have kids?

4. Signed up for Facebook. Apparently, I don't have any more high school and college friends than I did . . . well, when I was in high school and college.

5. Saw The Dark Knight and it was totally depressing. Heath Ledger's dead, Morgan Freeman's divorced, and Christian Bale is a DV perp. Saw Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants with Little, and it was much happier.

6. Finally gave into the summer reading temptation of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels. And, now I'm hooked. Darn those fascinating vampires!

7. Broken things around here are multiplying at an alarming rate: Both digital cameras -- broke. Laptop -- broke. Car -- broke. Sunglasses -- broke. (Okay, so that last one I broke myself in a snit when I lost my car keys AGAIN. None of the rest are my fault.)

What Can I Say, I Feel Random . . .

I had a blessed, state-sanctioned day off on Monday, for Martin Luther King, Jr., and then I took a blessed, my-boss-sanctioned day off on Tuesday for . . . well, just for me. So, that means that today is really Monday, which means it really has only been a few short days since my last blog post. Got it? (I think we've been through this before.)

It being Monday and all, I can only offer you some randomness . . .

Random Thing #1: After some big-time knitting over my long weekend, Clapotis is SO close to being done. I plan to wear it all next weekend with my shiny red quilted vest I got for Christmas. It just seems like a guarantee of a good weekend to go around wearing a red vest with a pink and purple scarf. The only thing that could make it better would be red cowboy boots.

Random Thing #2: I rode the bus to work today for the first time in awhile, and wouldn't you know, I picked the seat right behind the very, very mentally ill woman who kind of freaked me out staring at me and shaking her head and waving her arms. Then, she let out a big SHREWF (sort of a cross between a sneeze and a yell -- it sounded like a "shrewf" to me) on the guy in front her. He was a really uptight-looking dude (who is actually an attorney with my office, he just works in a different location), and he turned around, gave her this ridiculous looking shocked stare, and huffed off to another seat. It was one of the huffiest huff-offs I've ever seen, and quite amusing. I should start filming this stuff, really.

Random Thing #3: Yesterday I had an appointment with a trainer dude at the Y, to "set me up" on their computer program so I can track workouts, set goals, yada, yada, yada. (Or, "whoo, whoo, whoo" in courthouse-speak.) Things were going fine, until he asked me if I knew my current weight. I nodded, and we stared at each other for a minute, until he finally said, "oh, sorry," and turned his back so I could enter it in the computer. He was like, "really, I do this all the time," and I was like, "Dude, there are things even my HUSBAND doesn't know, and if I told you, I'd SO have to kill you and there are lots of big ol' weights around here with which to do so." That shut him right the heck up.

Random Thing #4: I've been meaning to blog about this for awhile, and was going to give it it's own post, but the Academy Award Nominations reminded me of it. If you haven't seen Juno yet, get thee to a movie theater STAT. I mean really. I know it's kind of chick-flicky, but it was so, so good, and if it doesn't make you laugh out loud at least once, well, then, you probably need to go eat a bran muffin or huff off with that guy from random thing #2, because I can't imagine what kind of person you are. I could get over my baby-ambivalence lickety-split if I could have a daughter just like Juno, and I'd want to be just like her parents. I've already invited Ellen Page to come live with us anytime, or just come over for dinner, so I will feel cool. (I'm sure she'll RSVP any time now.)

Random Thing #5: I just finished a terrific book, actually the second of a series, and I desperately want someone to talk to about it. Truthfully, I need someone to explain some of it to me. So if you or anyone you know is a big sci-fi/fantasy geek and has read Elizabeth Bear's Whiskey and Water, please send them my way. I'm a trifle confused.

Here's hoping for a quick return of the weekend!

J.K. Rowling, You're the Bomb!

So, all you Harry Potter fans out there. In case you haven't heard the news, it seems that Dumbledore is gay. Yep, straight from J.K. herself.

As I should have expected, this has raised the proverbial shit storm among all the Harry nay-sayers out there. You know the types -- the ones who said that the books promoted all sorts of horrible things, from witchcraft to disobeying one's teachers.

Then there are those who are mad because Dumbledore wasn't "outed" earlier.

I admit, I sat up and took notice when I read this news story, too, but for an entirely different reason.

My reason?

HOLY CRAP IS J.K. ROWLING AMAZING OR WHAT?!

Seriously, I know that she's not the most "polished" writer, and her plots have some holes, and there was a good bit of "deus ex machina" in that last book. But the way she has built up such a complete world in her head, the way she KNOWS that Dumbledore is gay because, well, because he just IS and there's no way around it?

That is quite impressive to me. And it makes me wonder just how much there is in her magical little world that we'll never know; answers to questions that we'll never think to ask. It makes me want to strap her down and MAKE her write more books about Harry. And Ginny. And Snape. And yes, about Dumbledore.

I'm a bit ashamed to say that I had never really considered Dumbledore's sexuality, but learning that he's gay seems right to me. Poor Dumbledore, it's a shame he couldn't have had a wonderful counterpart to fall in love with -- a Grindelwald type, without the bothersome evilness.

Dear Lord, I am SUCH a geek. Must try to hide that better in my next post.

So THAT's What It's Like to Finish Something

Okay, as promised yesterday, I give you . . .

The Ultra-Ugly, Loud and Obnoxious Granny Shawl!


I am "sort of" pleased with the shawl. I like that I made it up entirely, all by myself. Yes, I know granny squares have been done before, but I really "winged it" on the construction.

I also really liked how all the colors looked together. I was really trying to put squares together from my stash with colors that I thought would look hideous next to one another, but was often surprised by how interesting some of them came out.



Having said all that, I think I'm going to rip the thing out. Not the squares themselves, just the sewing them together part. When I tried it on, the look I got was less Retro Hippy Girl and more Actual Granny. When Todd tried to figure out how to use it for a Halloween costume, I decided it needed some alterations.

I'm thinking that I will replace the white seaming and border with black, use a softer yarn for that to give it better drape, and do a slightly more traditional shaping -- more triangle, but not exactly triangle. Hopefully I'll accomplish that this weekend and can post an update next week.

In literary news, (and continuing with the "finishing" theme of this post) I absolutely had to force myself to finish the book I've been reading, A Thread of Grace. For those of you who have listened to my endless lectures on how The Sparrow is The World's Best Book Ever and I Do Mean Ever, this was by the same author, and boy, did she let me down.

This one was not about interplanetary Jesuit travel, but about how Italians worked to hide Jews from the Nazis during World War II. It took me about 300 pages to get the characters straight and actually care about any of them, and by page 310, most of them were dead, dying, or being tortured. Uplifting stuff, that.

And nary an alien or spaceship in sight. Bummer.

Some Ramblings, and a Book Review in Pictures

So much of my life has been defined by books.




I remember when Sunday was the longest day ever, because it was the day the public library was closed, so there was no hope of convincing anyone to take me there.

I remember that my mom bought me all the Judy Blume books, even when they were banned in most libraries (although she wouldn't let me give them to my friends for Christmas, in case their parents didn't approve).

I remember the third grade, when I had to have surgery on my tongue (no, I'm not kidding), and this horrifying prospect was made bearable by the fact that I got to buy three -- count 'em, three! -- new books for the hospital stay.

Do you ever find yourself thinking about someone you used to know, and about something they said or did, and then realizing they are not someone you know at all, but a character in a favorite book? I do that ALL the time, and it's weird, I tell you. I cull through my collection at least once a year, but there are many, many books that I will keep forever, because getting rid of them would be like losing a part of my family.

Today, I was finally able to talk to a good friend about my most favorite book in the whole world, The Sparrow. If you have read and liked this book, I consider you an immediate friend, the kind of person I can have a serious conversation with. I think everyone in the world should read it. It makes my chest kind of ache to remember it. I've threatened to make reading it a condition of probation in all the cases I prosecute. (I swear, one day I'll do it, so watch out, criminal underbelly of Louisville.)

All of that to say this: I read a fabulous book while I was on vacation, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. It made my chest ache a little, too. And since I finished it, the characters are still with me, just hanging out, in my head. It was just magical, and beautiful, and I think will always remind me of the magical and beautiful places I went.

This picture reminds me of the book:



And so does this one:



And this one (in a scary kind of way):




Anyway, just read it. Or read The Sparrow. Or read whatever it is you like to read, even if it's -- gasp! -- non-fiction. You'll be just ever-so-slightly different afterwards; and you'll have a whole slew of new friends.

No Spoilers Here, and That's a Promise

Well, I finished the book. Stayed up till 5:30 this morning reading the first two-thirds, slept for a few hours, then finished the whole kit and caboodle about an hour ago.

I'm not going to post any sort of review or discussion. If you're not a Harry Potter fan, I've bored you enough in the past few days, and if you ARE a fan, you're probably still reading it yourself and/or likely have better insight than I do.

All I'm going to say is -- I liked it. Okay, I loved it. And I'm already looking forward to an annual re-read, much like I do with the Chronicles of Narnia. J.K. Rowling, go have yourself a butterbeer, or a martini, or whatever it is you like; you deserve it.

As for myself, I SO need a nap.

Very Surreptitious Friday Fripperies

Hello? Is it safe?

(creeping on tip-toe into the blog)

(whisper) Okay, I'm still pretty afraid to be here right now, what with all the spoilers, but wanted to pop in for some Friday Fripperies.

In anticipation of all the reading let-down after this weekend, I've been playing around with the What Should I Read Next site. Kind of fun, and has given me some suggestions of books I hadn't heard of before, which I take as a good sign.

Oh, and for those of you actually in Louisville (not you terrible horrible comment-spammers who have been dropping in lately -- I KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND I'VE LEARNED HOW TO DELETE COMMENTS!) I just have to note that Hedwig and the Angry Inch will be at Actors Theatre, September 11-30. When a friend of mine left me a note at work about this, I think I actually squealed. I ADORE this movie, and listen to the soundtrack at least once a week. (Todd and I tried desperately to think of a song from it that we could play at our wedding reception, but I couldn't come up with one that I could listen to in the same room with my mother.) I am SO tempted to buy a Hedwig wig for the occasion.

Happy Friday!

Guest Post From My Inner 12-Year Old

Ack. Just Ack, and Harumph, too.

I'm sitting here, utterly terrified to go beyond my own blog into the wilds of the internet for fear of accidentally reading Harry Potter spoilers, which have already leaked, you know.

Shoot, now that I think about it, I'm really quite afraid that some rogue Harry-hater might leave a random comment on my blog telling me the ending.

People, I would cry.

My current plan involves extremely limited news access until Midnight on Friday, at which time I will go to the Dirty Kroger by my house (the bookstores aren't safe, I tell you), buy the book, and STAY UP ALL NIGHT to finish it before Time magazine puts the ending on the cover or something crazy like that.

So, in honor of this occasion, I thought I would put forth my own predictions -- PREDICTIONS, mind you, which are very, very different from SPOILERS, in that I am not actually friends with J.K. Rowling and haven't read the leaked pages (which purportedly include a lurid sex scene with Harry and Ginny -- odd departure for Ms. Rowling, I must say).

While I haven't written a dissertation on ol' Harry or anything (and yes, I've heard of some who have), I have read them all several times and I do have a few predictions, all of which will likely be wrong.

1. Harry will die. I think it's necessary. And I'm actually okay with this; I think it's vastly preferrable to Harry having to give up his powers or pulling a Frodo and withdrawing completely from normal life.

2. Hagrid will die. This will make me cry, and I hate it, but it's what I think. I just love that big ol' lug.

3. Ron and Hermione will both live, stay together and likely name their first-born Harry.

4. Hogwarts will reopen, but Harry won't return as a student.

5. Petunia will be revealed as a very cowardly woman who nonetheless loved her sister very much and has acted accordingly. (No, I'm not sure what exactly that means, it's just a feeling I have.)

6. Voldemort will be finally and irrevocably vanquished, all Horcruxes destroyed, etc., etc. Evil snake guy, poo on you.

7. Snape. What to say about Snape? Interesting how the most unlikeable character in the whole series also turns out to be the key to everything. Like Harry, I hate him enough to believe that he is evil. But I can't believe that Dumbledore was that wrong. So I -- reluctantly -- have to say he will turn out to be good. Good in the slimiest, ickiest, nauseating-est way possible. Greasy, nasty GIT (one of my favorite British words ever) -- poo on you, too. Even if you are "good."

What a let-down this will be when it's all over. I will probably pop in tomorrow to post some Friday Fripperies, but otherwise, I am UNDERGROUND from this point on. Battoning down the hatches, burying my head in the sand, etc., etc.

Be careful out there, everybody.

A Return to the Blogosphere

Gracious! It's been awhile, hasn't it? Would you believe that I've been faithfully blogging every day, only to have my computer eat my posts?

I didn't think so.

Okay, so I took a small break from . . . well, . . . everything. Much needed and greatly enjoyed.

Todd and I spent the weekend before the 4th in Cincinnati, relaxing and having a great time. We stayed at our greatest new discovery, The Gaslight Bed and Breakfast. This was absolutely the best B&B I've stayed in. It's in a cute, funky neighborhood full of Indian restaurants, and the owners are a nice couple with a bunch of dogs who make a killer breakfast. By a stroke of luck, we had an entire floor to ourselves, including our bedroom, bath, kitchen, living room, and this terrific porch:




Perfect for drinking cold beer and reading a good book.

What good book would that be, you ask? Well, my book of choice for a holiday weekend was the latest Charles de Lint, Widdershins. If you've never read any Charles de Lint, then by all means, get thee to a bookstore and get started. He's just beautiful and magical, with characters you'll wish you could be friends with in real life. Seriously.

We also decided to satisfy some curiosity and rent recumbent bikes and head out to the Loveland Bike Trail. Before you read any farther, I must warn you, this is a terrible picture that I am highly ashamed of, but I believe cold hard proof is needed if you are to believe that I rode 28 miles ON A BIKE:




One of my favorite parts of the bike trail is seeing all the lovely spots where my dear husband used to play as a child:




Why, yes! That IS an abandoned mill! Just the place you would want your own children to play, isn't it? I'm sure it looked much safer back then.

After all this fun, we came back home where I proceeded to spend two days lazing in front of the TV, finishing up Widdershins. On the actual 4th, this handsome fellow graced us with his presence for dinner:




He was quite the charming guest, providing dinner music and even letting his parents come along.

I have to say, it's been quite the rude awakening, coming back to regular life. Luckily, vacation is just around the corner!

Book Talk

Good grief, has it been 6 days since my last post? Say it ain't so!

In my defense . . . well, I have no defense. I spent Derby Weekend unhealthily engrossed in the "Undead and Unwed" series. Seriously, people. High-falutin' stuff.

But, I have to say, while my Derby Day reading marathon may not have been that high-falutin', it was highly intertaining. Fascinating stuff, really. If I am to die suddenly, I SO want to come back as the Queen of the vampires. And since I also watched "The Queen" this weekend, I can tell you that the Queen of the Vampires has a lot more fun than the Queen of England. (Not that Prince Phillip wasn't Mr. Hotty-pants back in the day, but immortal, he ain't.)

I don't feel the slightest bit of shame for my fluff reading, because I just came off of reading a much more serious book, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It was fantastic; so much so, that I decided it should be the first book review here on Around the Subject.

Ahem. (Serious literary content to follow.)

I stumbled across Haruki Murakami when I accidently (darn those book club return cards!) purchased Kafka on the Shore a year or so ago. Since I bought it, I went ahead and read it. I really enjoyed 90% of it. I thought it was inventive, had the right bit of dark humor thrown in, and I was actually pretty excited to come across a new-to-me fantasy/sci-fi writer. Then I got to the ending, and, well . . . it didn't end.

Murakami totally left me hanging. Characters just disappeared without developing further, plot lines just stopped, and there was absolutely no explanation for the probably supernatural events. I was not amused.

Then, a few months ago, while lurking around on Altdotlife, I read a bunch of stellar reviews of Murakami's other works, so I gave it another try, in the form of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. (Which gets points for a fabulous title, by the way.)

This one was much better. It had an odd little dual story line going on that was hard to figure out, but not TOO hard. And -- BONUS -- it had an ending! Not a wrap-everything-up-with-a-neat-bow a la the Charmed finale, but an ending nonetheless. It explained just enough to leave me feeling satisfied with the plot, but left enough questions that I could still ponder it after I was done.

So, moving on (and with much more enthusiasm), I bought The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. And loved it. Really -- Loved. It.

I would have trouble describing the plot of the book. The simplest explanation would be something like this -- guy quits his job, his cat runs away, his wife leaves him, and he spends the next few years trying to figure it all out.

But that doesn't tell you anything. Reading this book was like becoming someone else -- with no explanation, no back-story, no hologram named Al, nothing. You have to live this person's life as it comes. People come in and out of that life and you learn some things, but not everything, about them. Your life takes some twists and turns, and some of them are amazing, but some are almost dull. And in the end, all you understand is that you don't understand much.

And -- I can't stress this enough -- the not understanding? It's OKAY! If some weird shit goes on that you can't explain, at least it's interesting, and at least it's not some lame-ass hokey explanation like in Vanilla Sky, or some dull pure science thing (because even though I know evolution is true, you have to admit Creation would be a lot more fun).

I don't think Murakami is for everyone. I think you have to at least be open to the fantasy/sci-fi/magic realism genres. But if those are the kind of things you like, even just on occasion, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle should be on your list.

Here endeth the serious literary content. Humor to resume momentarily.