What I'm reading

I used to read a LOT -- normally over a 100 books a year, at least since I started keeping track. Over the last few years, though, that has gone down considerably, I guess because I converted a lot of that reading time over to time spent on the internet. I've kind of gotten to the point where I feel guilty for sitting and reading, feeling that I should be doing something more productive. But on the other hand, I feel kind of guilty for not reading, too. It's a vicious circle.

Over the last couple of weeks, and particularly this past weekend, I made up for it a little bit, though. There were several books that came out that I was very excited about, and I pre-ordered them in ebook form, a couple from Amazon/Kindle, and one from Fictionwise.

I also picked up a few books this weekend from the library. Our library recently went through a renovation, and for the last few months the library has been operating out of a storefront in a strip mall. The new, improved library opened up the first of October, and I checked out the "new books" shelves over the weekend and got several things that had been on my wish list.

Bob was out of town, on a fishing trip to the lake, so I spent quite a bit of time reading. I went to Jason's for a late lunch on Saturday, took a book with me, and basically moved in for a couple of hours. Then on Sunday, I never even left the house. It was cold and rainy, and I spent a large part of the day on the bed, reading. It was great.

What I've been reading:

Juliet, Naked:, by Nick Hornby (ebook from Fictionwise)
Most of Hornby's books involve music (for instance, "High Fidelity"). "Juliet, Naked," is about a singer-songwriter--Tucker Crowe--who hasn't been doing any singing, or song writing, for decades, but is still the focus of a group of obsessed fans, and one in particular, a British fan, who is so obsessed that he makes a trip to the United States to stand outside some of the places that the singer had frequented. In fact, the book opens as the fan and his girlfriend are visiting, and taking photos of, the restroom that figured prominently in the singer's folklore. The fan, Duncan, asks his girlfriend, Annie, to take a photo of him pretending to use the urinal.

Then, shortly thereafter, Duncan falls into a relationship with a woman that he works with, and he and Annie break up. "Juliet" was Tucker Crowe's most famous album, written about a woman that he idolized; "Juliet, Naked" is the "unplugged" version that may or may not be an actual album. In a sequence of events that have more to do with some kind of gentle revenge than anything else, Annie starts an email conversation with Tucker Crowe that ends up being more than either of them expected . . .

A wonderful book. I devoured it.

Vicious Circle, by Linda Robertson (paperback from the library)
This was my Sunday book, the one that kept me reading in bed, reading in the bath, reading in my chair, until I finished it. It's one of the witch/werewolf/vampire genre that are so prevalent recently. Persephone Alcmedi is a witch who supplements her income by kenneling werewolves in her basement during the full moon. One of her werewolf friends is murdered, and she is hired to investigate the crime, which turns out to be not as simple as it first sounded. Even without the murder, her life had been getting complicated--first, her grandmother is kicked out of her nursing home and moves in with her, then she finds out that one of the werewolves, a tattooed, pierced lead singer in a heavy metal goth band, has a very strong crush on her.

I really enjoyed this book, and am looking forward to two more books in the series, due to be published next year.

Rough Country , by John Sandford (hardback from the library)
This is the book that I took to lunch with me on Saturday. This is one in the Virgil Flowers series rather than Sandford's more usual Lucas Davenport books. Virgil is on vacation, taking part in a fishing tournament, when he gets a call from Lucas that a woman has been shot at a nearby resort, and is asked to go take a look. He does, and it turns out that the resort is a woman-only resort--not specifically lesbian, but mostly. It turns out (as it always does) that there is more there than meets the eye, and Virgil ends up investigating the murder.

I always enjoy Sandford's books, and this one was especially enjoyable.

A Touch of Dead (Sookie Stackhouse: The Complete Stories), by Charlaine Harris (ebook from Fictionwise)
This is a collection of Sookie Stackhouse short stories that have been printed in anthologies over the years. This one was a little bit disappointing in that I had read all of the stories already, but I got it at Fictionwise on a 100% rebate promotion, so it wasn't really a loss. The stories are good, and I like having them all in one place, I would just have been happier if they'd been new to me.

The Mall of Cthulhu, by Seamus Cooper (ebook)
I actually picked this one up in the library, and I looked it up at Amazon on my iPhone to read the reviews. I found that the Kindle version was only $2.99, so I went ahead and bought it.

Ted, a barrista at a chain coffeeshop in New England, is still trying to get over the horror of killing a group of vampires when he was at college ten years ago. During that massacre, he saved the life of Laura, who is now an FBI agent. Laura is basically Ted's only friend, since he can't talk about the vampires to anyone else. They aren't actually a couple, since Laura is a lesbian, but they might as well be, bound together as they are.

Ted accidentally finds out about a plot by a group of Cthulhu worshipers who intend to awake the Old Ones and bring about the end of civilization as we know it, and Laura, by virtue of her connection to law enforcement, tries to help stop them. This one is especially fun if you have any knowledge of the old H. P. Lovecraft "Cthulhu Mythos" stories, but it isn't absolutely necessary.

Upcoming:

Demon Ex Machina, by Julie Kenner (ebook)
I've been kind of saving this one. I adore Kenner's "Demon Hunting Soccer Mom" series, and this is the latest.

New Amsterdam, by Elizabeth Bear (ebook from Baen)
I'm not totally sure about this one, but I read the sample chapters and, since it was a $5.00 download, went ahead and got it. It's kind of a steampunk/vampire/detective story that reminds me a bit of Kage Baker's novels. I like Elizabeth Bear; I don't generally like "historical" fiction, but we'll see.

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Electricity

Last night was strange. I got home and pulled into the driveway, and hit the electric garage door opener, but it wouldn't open. I thought maybe the battery was getting weak, so I tried it again, and then I held it up to the windshield and pushed it, but no luck. So either the batteries were too weak, or the door was broken. So I parked in front of the garage door and walked around the house to let myself in the front door, and hopefully open the garage from the inside.

When I opened up the front door, I reached in to turn on the light, but it wouldn't come on. The house was completely dark. I thought, aha, the power is out. We had had a pretty severe storm early in the day, so that made sense. So I walked back out to the car and got my computer and purse, locked the car, and came back inside the house. As I walked up to the house, I looked around, and it looked like there were lights in other houses, so it wasn't a neighborhood-wide power outage, anyway.

I knew where a flashlight was--on the table in the living room where Bob drops his keys--so I got that and looked around. The clock on the coffeemaker was on, and the clock on the microwave, and I opened up the refrigerator, and it was on, too. But no lights. I thought I might as well go down in the basement and try flipping the breakers, and as I started down the stairs, I tried the light just for kicks, and it came on. Hm. So I came back into the main part of the house and tried the lights there, and nothing came on.

Okay, so I had power in the basement, and some things were working in the house, but no lights. I went upstairs--we had power upstairs, the lights came on, no problem. So there was power in the basement, and power on the second floor, but nothing on the main floor. Or, no lights. Since it seemed so random, I went around and tried things, and the lamp by my chair where I normally sit came on. But that was the only light on the first floor that would come on.

I called my dad--Bob was working late--and asked him if there was anything I could do besides flip the breakers, and he said to look for a reset button on an outlet somewhere. He also suggested I call Bob's dad and ask him, since he had built the house, so I called him, and he said to try flipping the breakers, and also there should be a GFI (ground fault interrupter--I looked it up) somewhere in the house and I should try resetting that. I knew there was one on the first floor half bath.

I took my flashlight into the bathroom and tried pressing the reset button, but nothing happened. I pressed it a few times, then gave up, and went down to the basement--nice now that the lights were on--and flipped all the breakers, but nothing happene there, either.

So I sat down in my chair by the one light on the first floor and read until Bob got home. He had called to say he was on his way, so I told him what was going on, and when he got home he tried all the things that I had tried with the same result, nothing.

Bob said that he thought maybe the GFI had shorted out, so he was going to try replacing it, but by then it was about 10:00, and too late to go buy one. We were standing in the kitchen talking, thinking about what to do, and I was saying how odd it seemed that the coffeemaker, microwave, and refrigerator were all working, and I just idly turned the knob on the electric stove to see if it was working, too, and the lights came on. Um. Okay. I turned the stove off, and the lights went off. I turned it back on, and the lights came on.

Not really a long term solution, but interesting. Bob went back in the bathroom to try the GFI, and it worked now, and the lights stayed on, without having to turn the stove on. There was still something weird, though. When I ran the garbage disposal, the kitchen lights flickered; it reminded me of the old Frankenstein movies when Dr. Frankenstein flips the switch on the monster and all the lights flicker and blaze.

Bob was off today, so he bought a new GFI and installed it (and he said he only got a little electrocuted), and now everything seems fine. I don't know whether something got struck by lightning or whether it was just a coincidence, but it was sure weird.

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I can work tomorrow

I stayed late at work last night to finish up some stuff. We normally have a staff meeting on Friday afternoons at 3:00, then everyone starts leaving when the meeting is over. We didn't have a meeting yesterday afternoon, so I used that time to try to get some work done in the quiet, without the telephone interruptions. I usually don't work late when Bob is waiting at home for me, but he went down to the lake this weekend, so it seemed like a good opportunity. By the time I got home it was nearly 8:00. I was looking forward to making a sandwich and sitting down in front of the television for some mindless entertainment, but there was nothing but static on the television.

Frankly, at first I thought I'd hit a wrong button on the remote, I've done that before, so I checked the television upstairs and it was just static, too. And there was no internet connection. So I called the cable company and after some investigation, they said that everything looked fine until about 4:00 Friday afternoon, when we suddenly lost connection.

The guy on the phone asked me if we'd had any yard work done or anything like that, and I said I thought from the chemical smell that they'd fertilized today, but I didn't think they'd mowed the grass. In any event, something had happened, so he said someone would call me today, Saturday, to make an appointment to come out and fix it. He said it might be Monday before they could get out.

Today I was out having lunch at Chipotlé when my phone rang. It was the cable company saying that they could have someone out between 5:00 and 7:00, which was great, since that meant I wouldn't have to stay home from work on Monday. I ran some errands, and got home a little before 5:00. The doorbell rang at about 5:30, and when I answered the door, the guy on the porch said, "Cable Guy!"

He went out back and looked around, and called me to come look. There was a new wire running across the yard that I hadn't seen before; apparently our neighbors had had something done and the wire was running across (and apparently going to be buried in) our yard. After a little more investigation, the cable guy came back to tell me that it looked like another cable company had come in to install cable at our neighbors' house and had simply disconnected everyone else that had cable running through the box behind the houses and just left it that way. The way he described it, they just pulled out all the cable connections--three other households--and connected up theirs.

I said, well, I guess you'll be coming out to repair the others, too, and he said he supposed he would. After he was finished connecting everything back up, and I had checked to be sure the televisions and internet were working, he went back to the truck and got a disposable camera to document the evidence. He said that was so we wouldn't get a bill for the repairs. Hard to imagine that people do stuff like that, but I'm sure it happens all the time.

Since I couldn't watch any television shows, I watched one of my Netflix DVDs -- The Rocker. I liked it. It wasn't a great movie, but certainly enjoyable. The other Netflix DVD I had in the house was M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" about a family fleeing from a deadly virus. I only watched about ten minutes of it before jumping up and turning it off; I don't know, maybe it would have been okay, but the first part of it looked so gruesome that I didn't have any interest in waiting to find out.

I looked through my own DVDs to see if there was anything else I wanted to watch, but decided to take a book up to bed instead.

Today, not knowing if I was going to have television and internet or not, I went to the library and checked out a stack of DVDs:

• Feast of Love
• Martian Child
• P.S. I Love You
• The Girl in the Café
• Happy Accidents
• No Reservations

I have freelance web work I should be doing, but I think I'll go watch a movie and work tomorrow!

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Wacky

People had recommended Janet Evanovich's "Stephanie Plum" novel series to me before; my hairdresser being one. I'd resisted them, mainly because when I read the jacket blurbs they sounded so wacky, and I'm not really a fan of wacky. Or, I don't know, maybe I am, but I think maybe the sounded like the kind of southern-fried wacky that I'm definitely not a fan of. Like Fannie Flagg, maybe, or the cozy mysteries that are just too far off the top, and reading the jacket copy of the Plum series--Grandma Mazur and Lula and Ranger and Diesel--makes them sound awfully silly.

I guess, like anyone, I have my own standards of what kind of things I read, and what I would consider wacky. I'm sure my reading style would be considered very wacky by a lot of people. I like vampire or werewolf novels that don't take themselves too seriously--I love Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse "Southern Vampire" books, and I used to love Laurel K. Hamilton's books until they turned into softcore porn. A recent favorite is Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series. Mercy is a werewolf (actually a "walker") who owns an automobile repair business. Another favorite series is Kim Harrison's "The Hollows" series about Rachel Morgan, a witch who, along with her living-vampire partner Ivy and sidekick Jenks the pixie, runs a private detective service in Cincinnati.

Oh, and Julie Kenner's "Demon Hunting Soccer Mom" series about a woman who gave up her demon hunting vocation to become a suburban mom, but is dragged back into that world again and again. I've also read a couple of Kenner's young adult books, "The Good Ghoul's Guide to Getting Even" and "Good Ghouls Do," both dealing with a teenage vampire and how she deals with her day to day existence.

And I guess I should mention the Twilight series, of course, although really, those are more teen angst than vampire novel, although I confess I still haven't made my way through the first one. I have all four of them on my iPhone in both ebook and audio book form, I just need to get through them . . .

Anyway, Stephanie Plum. It's one of those times when I'm truly happy to never have read a series, because of the run I'm having going through it now. I've been listening to the audio books of the series all summer. I started with "Seven Up" in June, just finished "Finger Lickin' Fifteen," and am currently listening to "Plum Spooky," a "between the Plums" book, all of which have been devoted to specific holidays ("Plum Lovin'" for Valentine's Day, "Plum Lucky" for St. Patrick's Day, and "Visions of Sugar Plums" for Christmas). Being a huge fan of fiction set at Christmas time, I had listened to the Christmas one a year or so ago, and enjoyed it, but just never got into the whole series until now.

Reading some of the reviews on Amazon, I see that a lot of people criticize the novels, saying that they're "all the same." Frankly, I kind of like that. I like the familiarity of the characters, and the comfort of knowing, more or less, what's going to happen. You can be pretty sure that one or more of Stephanie's cars will either catch fire or blow up, that she'll either move in with Joe or move out, that Grandma Mazur will cause a scene at the funeral home, and that Ranger will come to her rescue at least once, and she still won't sleep him.

I still have the first six to read or listen to, but they're not narrated by the same person (Lorelei King), so I'll probably just read them rather than listening. After three months of non-stop Lorelei King as Stephanie Plum, I don't think I could listen to someone else.

I was looking at the Audible.com website tonight and see that Ms. King also narrates the Mercy Thompson books, which was a nice surprise. Maybe I'll spend my next Audible credit on one of them.

Here are the release dates for some of the series books that I'm looking forward to in the coming months:

• Rough Country - John Sandford - 9/29/09
• A Touch of Dead - Charlaine Harris - 10/6/09
• Demon Ex Machina - Julie Kenner - 10/6/09
• Evidence - Jonathan Kellerman - 10/6/09
• Nine Dragons - Michael Connelly - 10/13/09
• Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris - 10/27/09
• U is for Undertow - Sue Grafton - 12/1/09
• Black Magic Sanction - Kim Harrison - 2/23/10
• Silver Borne - Patricia Briggs - 3/30/10
• Changes - Jim Butcher - 4/6/10

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Happiness: Media

I have quite a few productivity blogs in my blogroll, and I also have a few that are mostly devoted to happiness, the major one being The Happiness Project. I've been doing a lot of work in that realm lately, i.e., happiness, visualization, that kind of thing. It's been on my mind a lot. This morning when I was catching up on my blog reading, I made some notes about the things that I've been doing lately that help keep my spirits up.

Audible.com

I don't watch or listen to the news, especially local news. My days are tremendously improved now that I listen to audio books on my commute rather than listening to the radio. I've noticed that when I'm between books--when I've finished one and don't have another on deck, or if I have a bad CD, so can't listen, I start out my day in a bad mood. This is HUGE for me. It may sound silly, but I think if you figure out something like that, you go with it.

I get audio books on CD from the library, and I put myself on waiting lists for the ones I want. But sometimes I can't find anything I want, and none of my requested ones are available. I can't make myself buy audio books on CD from the bookstore, they're WAY too expensive. So I sprung for a one audio book a month subscription to audible.com. It costs $15, which is much less than audio books cost in the stores, and considerably less than the regular price for a downloadable audio book.

I still agonize over the choice of what to spend my credit on, and sometimes, if I've had good luck at the library, a few credits will build up. I try not to use them for books that I know I can get at the library, if I just have patience, but sometimes I'll use one for a book that I just don't want to wait for.

I used to burn the audio books onto CD, but my laptop doesn't do a very good job on audio CDs lately, for some reason, so last weekend I bought an iTrip. It's a gadget that allows me to listen to audio from my iPhone through the car's speakers. Sometimes it's a little difficult to find a good frequency ("What's the frequency, Kenneth?"), but overall I'm very happy with it. It was a little bit of an outlay in the beginning, but I'll save money by not burning CDs.

I'm currently working my way through Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. I started on 7, I think, and I'm listening to 15 right now (Finger Lickin' Fifteen). I have Plum Spooky to listen to next. I haven't decided if I'm going to go back and listen to the earlier ones, since they have a different narrator, one that I don't like as well. Maybe I'll take a break and listen to the Twilight books, then come back to the Plums.

Netflix

I used to have a Netflix account, and I loved it, but I started feeling like it was an indulgence that I couldn't justify, so I cancelled it. I don't watch much television, and I don't really watch many movies, but I love them. When I have an evening with no commitments, and Bob is out of town, I'll often go to Blockbuster and browse through the new release movies, and rent a couple. But then what sometimes happens is that I'll get home, get involved in something else, and end up not watching them. Then I have major guilt for not watching them, and feel pressured, and watch under deadline (the due date/time), which is horrible, since watching a movie is supposed to be a treat, and relaxing.

But I still love movies. I usually buy the ones I want (if I can find them on sale), but sometimes I'd like to see something that I'm not sure I actually want to own. So I recently re-enrolled in Netflix. The plan I got is about $15 a month for unlimited movies, with two out at a time. And I just discovered that they have certain movies that you can watch on your computer immediately. I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. last night and watched Beverly Hills Chihuahua and I'll Be There, two movies that were on my queue. This is included in my subscription, and it was wonderful! All I had to do was look at the list of available movies (in my Netflix queue, they're marked "Play") and choose one, and after a brief browser plug-in download, it started playing.

Tonight the plan is to watch Saving Grace, one of my favorite British comedies.

Books

I love books. I love to buy books. I love to browse in bookstores. I love Amazon.com, GoodReads, Library Thing, etc. I hate to pay full price for books, though, so if I'm going to buy a book, I try to use a coupon or Amazom credit. For some reason, even though I'm enrolled in their frequent reader program, Borders has stopped sending me coupons. I've written to them several times, and they say everything is set up correctly, but I just don't get them. So I looked around, and found DealsPlus. You can sign up for the coupons you're interested in, and get a daily email with available ones. They're posted by regular people (i.e., not by the stores), so they don't always work, but I do at least feel like I've made an effort to save some money by using a coupon if there's a book I can't get at the library, or don't want to wait for.

Also, I do like to support authors and bookstores, and don't allow myself to feel guilty about buying books. There have to be some limits!

Ebooks

With eReader for iPhone, Fictionwise, and the Kindle for iPhone app, I can have an entire library with me all the time. Right now I'm reading Good Ghouls Do, by Julie Kenner, on my iPhone. I read the first book in this series, The Good Ghoul's Guide to Getting Even, on it, too, and was able to get the second book immediately.

While I'm all about instant gratification, I don't buy ebooks books on impulse. If I'm interested in a book, I usually get a free sample from Amazon first, and only rarely buy full price books. If I'm going to buy something full price, I try to hit a Fictionwise sale--they quite often offer a 100% rebate on new releases, so if I pay, say, $9.99 for a book, they give me back $9.99 to spend on something else. I also download almost all of the free ebooks that I run across. I have a huge library of unread books and magazines, plus a few of my favorite books, so I never have to be without something to read.

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