Updates

July Recap 2014

2014 07-06 Beach Reading!In case you missed it I’ve surpassed FOUR years of blogging this month! I’ll include links at the end of this post to all four posts, but whoa—four years is a LONG time! Personal and work life have been busy/great and straining, in that order, and I think that’s where I’ll leave it 😉 I’ve unfortunately not made any progress on my 30 x 30 list, but oh well I’ve been too busy doing other things! I’ll definitely have to make an effort in August. (But I did get another Beach day in!)

Books and the Bookish
The most exciting thing to note is on Friday of my celebration week I announced a new podcast! And miraculously I was able to get the teaser/intro episode recorded, edited and on the website so I could start the slow process of getting it on to iTunes! (It doesn’t take that long, but why waste a first episode getting it on there when I can delay and create MORE fan-fare for the first episode—to the mortification of my friend Caroline :-D)

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Updates

November 2012 Recap

I hope all you American’s had a Happy Thanksgiving and everyone else had a warm(ish) November. It’s starting to get really cold here and although I’m loving it, I was not ready for this weather. I can’t believe December 1st is tomorrow and December brings my birthday, Christmas and New Years are all flying up fast. Here’s my last monthly update of the year!

Once again this month I have another awesome Tweet to share. Katherine Winter, author of Annabel responded to my response to her novel on Twitter. Awesome, right? Once again just to reiterate, sometimes you just have to love social media.

Recent Acquisitions (Yes, still a library :-D)
I didn’t go on a book buying ban like I should have, but I of course have brilliant reasons/excuses. However, I am rapidly running out of excuses/reasons – my to-be-read bookshelf is officially overflowing, I only have one Groupon left and only a bit left on my gift card!

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Updates

October 2012 Recap – Part 2

As promised here is Part 2! I’m seriously facing a book buying ban after this last stint! Almost all of those below were purchased in the last 10 days! (The top left photo was purchased at the end of September just after I finished writing my recap. Needless to say I’m excited about the purchases and still have money to spend at a couple of local bookstores!

Recent Acquisitions (Don’t I sound like a library?)

Well there goes, saving any money – but I will say I was really good about not spending too much…I was going to list all the books out, but decided not to. You can click on the pictures to see what they are. I did get two in the top left photo for October and November book group (The Talented Mr. Ripley and Get Shorty) and a Pulitzer Prize Winner (The Stone Diaries) and the top right photo has one book on my Classics Club list (Down and Out in Paris and London) and one Booker Prize Winner (Midnight’s Children). The bottom left photo has this year’s Orange Prize Winner (The Song of Achilles). And in the bottom right I picked up both the Edith Wharton books I want to read from the festival (Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence), another Pulitzer Prize Winner (Middlesex), a book that’ll make Alie happy (Twilight) and I got 1Q84 for helping out (I wanted to pay for it but they wouldn’t let me).

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Updates

October 2012 Recap – Part 1

I apologize in advance, this is a doozy! So much happened in October.  I planned on it being one really long post, but after my weekend book purchases, I finally decided to break it into two posts, but there are LOTS of pictures! The five parts of the two posts are: personal update, quick Boston Book Festival recap, Literary Others recap, new books purchased (entirely way too many), and last but not least my regular monthly challenge recap.The first three are in this post and the last two are in the post tomorrow.

But first check out this awesome tweet:

Yes – that is ‘the’ Michael Scott, author of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series. Someone tweeted my review to him and he apparently read it and tweeted me. You have to LOVE social media, sometimes. I’m still grinning about this.

Personal Update
As said above, it’s been a hell of a month. First with the happy news, I’m midway through my third week at my new job and I love it. Not only is it in a beautiful part of Boston/Brookline (left), but I’ve been given a lot of freedom and independence to build a student giving and young alumni program and to offer input for other things as well. I’m excited about the next few months and am really looking forward to the future!

I’ve also spent some time volunteering and supporting my local library! We went to a benefit at a local restaurant and I won a $50 LLBean gift card! (Bought a new belt and someone a present with it.) I also volunteered to help set up the book sale (schlepping lots and lots of boxes full of books) and I helped break it down as well. It was great because I got to peruse a lot of the books and I had my eye on a few, but showed some restraint 😀

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Updates

Lunch Break Interlude II

So it never fails that as soon as I post an update about what I’ve been up-to I realize there’s more to add! I could do a weekly recap or even stick to a monthly update – but I know I won’t.* Instead you get these random clumps of posts which are sort of like my personality – intense one minute and completely withdrawn the next. If you’re interested in my internal dialogue read the end of this post – if not just read the next two paragraphs 😀

I mentioned this in the April Update, but two weekends ago Tom and I took his nieces and met my sister to paint pottery.  Well, we were able to pick up our pottery this past weekend and the picture is to the left! 1) It’s a picture using Instagram on my new iPhone I got that weekend; and 2) it’s inspired by UNC – if you can’t tell from the colors. We went up for another reason, but I have to wait to post that picture.

We again stopped by the Used Book Superstore as they were having another great sale!(40% off all used books – and 50% if you used your own bag or didn’t need a bag.) I was very good and made a list of books to look for and only purchased three.  Michael Blakes’ Dances with Wolves for May Book Group and George Orwell’s 1984 and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Other Plays for my Back to the Classics and The Classics Club Challenges.

Other than that – I’ve just been chugging along.  I’m most of the way through Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn and am debating on what to read next. I really want to re-read The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, but think I might save those for summer reading by the lake.

Click here to read my aside…