Slacker mom

Okay, I am totally embarrassed by the fact that my last blog post was in JULY...I have clearly fallen by the wayside in the whole book-a-month thing. That is not to say I haven't been reading--I have, and have been updating my librarything accounts and my iRead or ibook or whatever they're calling it now on facebook--but I haven't been reading on task, and I definitely haven't been blogging about the books. In my own defense I have been kind of otherwise engaged: I had a baby five weeks ago, and worked full-time up until the day before I gave birth (3 weeks early), and my husband was away in Alaska for almost 3 weeks during my 7th/8th months leaving me alone with my 3 1/2 year old while everyone I worked with went on vacation during the final throes of summer reading. Still, a deal's a deal and I clearly haven't been holding up my end of the bargain reading challenge-wise, so I need to somehow make myself feel better by confessing here, whether anyone actually reads this or not.

At this point I am so sleep deprived it's a wonder I read anything except bedtime stories to my daughter, but I am trying to get through a few things. I managed to get a copy of David Sedaris' newest book and am snickering my way through that ten pages at at time, or until I fall asleep. Before that I read Barack Obama's Dreams from my Father (which I started out of a sense of duty, but then got hooked), American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld (I love, love, love her!), Chelsea Handler's Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (again with the snickering, or in some cases, weeping with laughter), and now I am in the middle of listening to the final book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn.

Now, because I haven't finished this yet, I should probably not even say anything, but I had mixed feelings about this book because I didn't exactly love the previous books in the series. Bella as a character annoyed the daylights out of me, with all the swooning over Edward's marble arms, stony chest, blah blah vomit. She was such a totally dependent character, and her obsession with Edward seemed like the worst kind of teenage mooning about. Plus, I am firmly on the side of team Jacob, because Edward always seemed a little too goody two-shoes for my taste. Then, because I didn't read the book in the first week it came out I found out some key plot points--like Bella and Edward do get married, and she gets pregnant, and Jacob imprints on the daughter while she's still a fetus--so I debated whether I really needed to read the fool thing at all. But, I am reluctant to admit, so far this book is appealing to me more than the first three. I think it's better written than the previous books, and Bella isn't such a whiner in this one, at least not after she becomes a vampire. But I think my hang-up was that I didn't want her to become a vampire, but now that she has I realize it's more interesting this way--and Edward isn't such a Puritan with her anymore, which was also getting pretty tiresome. So, making a long story short, I'm enjoying it much more than I thought I would. Of course, because I am listening to it, I can only get through it so fast so it's a little slow going--I find myself looking for excuses to go on long car trips and I haven't had too many occasions to go anywhere while home on maternity leave. But I'll confess to being probably a bad mother--I do listen with my 3 year old in the car--the language is pretty clean, the sex is alluded to but never described, and she doesn't know what a vampire is yet, anyway. Plus, it puts her to sleep sometimes, which is a bonus.

Happy New Year!

It's official, the holidays are finally over. We had our last quasi-holiday (actually a double birthday party) over the weekend, so I can begin the detox process from all the cake I've been eating for the last month and a half. If I'm being honest I can't really complain about all the eating because right after Christmas I had an enforced cleansing/diet situation, by which I mean I had a stomach virus, so two days of no eating at all. I know, it's not healthy, but at least it was over quickly and I don't feel too much guilt about gorging myself on xmas cookies.
So this year I am choosing not to go the physical self-improvement route with my new year's resolution, but instead have chosen to rise to the book a month challenge thrown down by a fellow blogger. And true to her word the first month's theme was posted on January 1--the theme is, appropriately enough, time. So there are lots of choices and decisions to make. I would like to at least start this off on the right foot and not cheat by twisting whatever I am already reading to fit the theme, but here it is only the 2nd week of the year and I am already feeling behind. Lately I have actually been reading more adult books than children's or teen, so I think my final decision is going to be something children's, and I've got my eye on a couple of weighty non-fiction titles that I know will be good but will take me a while to get through--this is starting to sound like taking my medicine. My deal with myself with have to be this: if I do something boring and dense one month, I'll balance it out with fluff the next month.

BAM!

So I've been thinking about the future of this blog, and whether it will have a future going into 2008. As long as I was doing my learning 2.0 exercises I had ready-made topics for rumination, but I've been sort of deliberating about which direction I should be steering this thing. Ideally I'd like to talk about books, because if I get going about the day-to-day library stuff I'll just start complaining, and while that's fun for me I realize that it's not much fun for anyone else. Then, I went onto my library's blog today and heard about someone who is doing a Book a Month Challenge--one you sign up, on the first of the month you'll get the month's genre "assignment," and then you can read whatever you want and relate it to that genre however you see fit. And children's/teen books are allowed! The blog is http://bamchallenge.wordpress.com/ and since today is the last day of the year, I expect that before the end of the week I'll have my first assignment. I know you are probably thinking that reading a book a month is not exactly a stretch for a librarian, but you'd be surprised how little reading gets done some weeks--if it wasn't for my commute I'd have no reading time at all. So I'm starting out with high hopes and good intentions...