"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Sunday Salon, the first of 2016

Snowy Idaho, photo by P. Kinkela, used with permission
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Weather: Cold, but no snow or precipitation. The above photo was taken by a friend. She lives in Northern Idaho. As you see it is quite snowy there. Bad weather is projected for Oregon where my sister and her husband live. They will be driving home through it. Update: after this blog post was published it started to snow. We have a nice white world right now.

Company: The week after Christmas brought company our way. First Don's dad and his wife came for a few days. We mostly visited and ate. Ha! Kay and I did make our way to a used book store where she bought quite a few books, some for her little lending library she operates in her front yard. Secondly, my sister and brother-in-law and their little dog came up for New Year's Eve and to watch the Alamo Bowl together. The game was an epic fail but the company was good.

Books: Even though I had lots of time off I didn't read as much as I would have liked. The books I finished over break were---
  • El Deafo by CeCe Bell---a graphic memoir about growing up deaf. Very sweet.
  • The Next Big Thing by Richard Faulk---a nonfiction book in short chapters about inventions/things/concepts which have really turned things around in history. Some of the funny chapters were "teenagers"(who knew they weren't called this until the 1930s?); "the Segway" (Did you know the owner died in a Segway accident?); and "microbiomes" (Gross info about the way to replace the bacteria in your sick and ailing gut. Let's just say, it is a crappy solution.) 
  • The Uses of the Body by Deborah Landau---a poetry collection. I didn't care for it at first because I couldn't tell where one poem ended and the next began and the lack of punctuation but once I got past that i found a type of charm in the poetry and I enjoyed several of the poems.
  • A Jane Austen Christmas: Celebrating the Season of Romance, Ribbons, and Mistletoe by Carlo DeVito---not an especially well edited book but I enjoyed learning a bit of new info on my favorite author. This was the only book I received as a Christmas gift.
Currently reading:
  • The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. I am making slow, but steady progress on this book which I am reading for the Classics Club Challenge. Progress: 52%.
  • Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead. This is my current audiobook which I really didn't listen to the whole break so I will get back to it tomorrow as I head back to work.
Today: Taking down Christmas. We spend all the time in early December putting up the Christmas decorations and then we have to put everything away a month later. But I prefer to do this before I go back to work, which happens tomorrow. I think I will use it as an excuse to play Christmas music for one more day, too. Update: It is 1:30 PM and we have almost completely finished taking down the decorations. We just sat down to watch the Seahawks game felling quite accomplished.

Frozen: This video seems perfect for this frozen week. I'm guessing you've already seen it since 74 million people have viewed it, but it is worth a second look:


Resolutions: A few generic goals for me in the year...
  • Move more
  • Play more
  • Call friends more often/socialize more
  • Dream
  • Seek the positive

May 2016 bring you good and happy times!

6 comments:

  1. I try to avoid making resolutions, because I put too much pressure on myself. But I do like the general nature of yours. Have you looked outside today? I think you brought us the snow!

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  2. I thought about taking our Christmas stuff down, but we ended up doing some other things today, and therefore never got to that. I like having things up through Epiphany, anyway, but once I am back to school it is hard to find time to get the holiday stuff put away. I already know what I'll be doing next Sunday afternoon!

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  3. Those are all great goals for the new year! I love the start of a new year and will sit down to set up my annual goals this week - still trying to recover & catch-up up after a LOT of traveling. We got home Saturday night after a week away so no one had the energy or motivation to tackle the Christmas decorations yet! In fact, our living room floor is still covered with gifts, wrapping, boxes, etc. because we left the day after Christmas. Next weekend...

    You only got 1 book for Christmas? Wow. We give each other lots of books every year! I got 3 new novels and 2 new cookbooks :)

    I've been wanting to read El Deafo & didn't realize there was a new Rebecca Stead out - I need to get busy on my 2016 reading goals/challenges, too!

    Happy New Year!

    Sue

    Book By Book

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  4. Nice resolutions. Is it still snowy where you are? Happy 2016 to you too.

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  5. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. It's always a process, isn't it? Well, I find it is anyway.

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