Book report

I haven't been reading much lately, but what I've been reading (and listening to), while meager in quantity, has been great.

The last book I finished was Terri Farley's Seven Tears Into the Sea. It hasn't actually been published yet--I do Terri's website, and she sent me an advance copy because I'm going to be designing a new site for her. Terri writes the "Phantom Stallion" series of books, but Seven Tears isn't part of that series, it's a young adult fantasy, and it's wonderful!

It's about a teenager who goes to a beachside resort to help her grandmother, who owns a bed and breakfast. The girl spends the summer with her cat in a little cottage on the property where she used to spend vacations with her parents when she was a little girl. On one of those vacations, something unusual happened that caused them never to go back, and she's a little reluctant to go back now, but her grandmother needs her. She's afraid that the townspeople will think she's strange because she claimed she met a selkie on the beach that day seven years ago. But they don't all think she's strange. Some of them believe her.

It's a wonderful story, and I loved every word of it.

I'm currently reading Lawrence Block's latest Matt Scudder novel, All the Flowers are Dying, which I'm enjoying, although the narrative switches back and forth between Scudder and Elaine, his former-callgirl wife, and a serial killer, told from his perspective, which is a bit unsettling. But it's good, Block's stories are always good.

I'm also reading Perfect Circle, by Sean Stewart. I started it after getting a free "extended excerpt" download from Fictionwise for my PDA. I loved what I read, and was surprised that Fictionwise didn't have the full-length novel for sale. I ended up requesting it from the library.

Perfect Circle is about Will "Dead" Kennedy, who sees ghosts, and has since he was a kid. He's a divorced dad who's still in love with his ex-wife, just got fired from his last dead-end job (he got fired for eating cat food at his petstore job; he only did it to prove to the harpy who brought it back that it wasn't stale) and who wants nothing more than to earn enough money to take his daughter to Six Flags. Which is why he agrees to try to "exorcise" a ghost for his cousin. Not surprisingly, it ends badly . . .

As far as listening, I'm currently listening to Twisted, from Jonathan Kellerman. In a departure from Kellerman's usual Alex Delaware novels, this one is about Petra Connor, Kellerman's female detective protagonist from his 1999 novel, Billy Straight.

I just finished listening to another Terry Pratchett book--Going Postal. It's set on the Discworld, where the protagonist, con artist Moist Von Lipwig, has just been hanged. Fortunately (or unfortunately, perhaps), he didn't die, but was rescued by the patrician who runs the city and given the job of reinstating the Ankh Morpork post office, which has fallen into disrepair, being made redundant by the advent of the "clacks," the semaphore-based message system.

It starts out a little slow, I thought, but I was soon riveted by the story, which includes some quite wonderful characters, including golems and the woman who runs the golem employment office.

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Little altars everywhere

I had an awful lot of fun in the craft store this weekend. I can't even remember now what my reason for going was, but I ended up buying an armload of miniature cabinets that just really piqued my creative imagination. I bought too many of them, and I shouldn't have, but they were only 99 cents each, and a lot of the ones on the shelf were broken, so my thinking was that if I really loved working with them, I would end up not being able to buy any more, so I should get them while they were available. Especially since they were so inexpensive.

I wasn't able to do anything with them this weekend, because I spent basically the entire weekend doing website work, and the part of the weekend that I wasn't doing that, I was doing laundry, or cooking. Well, except for the time when I was in the craft store, of course . . .

Anyway, my idea is to make little altars, or shrines, I guess, out of them. Paint them, or stain them, or maybe collage them, and fill them with little, interesting stuff. I don't know, I won't know until I start on it, I guess, but I've got a shoebox down in the basement full of collage elements--pictures cut out of magazines, and foreign stamps, and things like that. And seashells. And I have a box of paints, and somewhere there's a box of dollhouse furniture . . .

I'm not sure what I want to do yet, but it's so exciting to get that creative flow going again, and I was sad that I didn't have time to do anything about it. And I probably won't this week, either, but hopefully next weekend I can. I did spend some time last night looking through a couple of issues of Somerset Studio. The thing I have to keep reminding myself of constantly is that art doesn't have to have a "reason." I keep trying to justify it, saying that, well, I could make them for gifts, but that's not necessary--art exists for its own sake.

I guess it's just hard to justify spending time on something that seems so much like play, when there are other things that need to be done, like cleaning the house or doing laundry, or doing work that pays. I was talking to a friend about it last night, and he said that play isn't just a luxury, it's a necessity, particularly for creative types, and I know that's true.

I've been struggling with some mild depression for the past couple of weeks, but the time I spent prowling around the craft store and dreaming of what I might make from these little wooden boxes was almost euphoric. Or obsessive. There's that, too . . .

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Herbal animals

I got quite a few emails and comments asking about Thumper the Aromatherapy Rabbit, i.e., where I bought him and if I knew if they were still available. I've actually got two of the little guys--one brown and one gray.

I bought them several years ago, and I can't really remember where, but I think it was either Bed, Bath & Beyond, or Marshall's. I couldn't find the exact one online (mine are filled with lavender), but these are obviously the same product: Animal Shaped Eye Pillows. They're really well made, and are so soft. I've never really used mine for their intended purpose, as eye pillows--I just like to hold them. Their floppy bulk is very soothing.

And oh my gosh! I was just looking at their other products, and they have little nightshirts for them! How cute!

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Lucky

So, since the sale was still on at the Penney's Outlet, we went back out there tonight and bought a new chair:

It was the same price as the other one, well, a few dollars more, but they had a matching ottoman, and with the discount it ended up being just a little over $100, which I think is a pretty good price. And it's comfortable! We put the other one in the living room.

I really did sort of hate to spend the money, but I did need a chair, and I spend almost all of my time at home either in that chair or in my computer chair, as does Bob in his office upstairs. And we bought him a new computer chair a couple of weeks ago. So we should be set for awhile.

He had kind of an unpleasant dental appointment today, so he didn't feel much like eating, but we ended up at Sweet Tomatoes so he could have a bowl of soup, and I had a big salad--our big night out. But it was fun. We do have a good time just hanging out together. So lucky.

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Addendum

Pyewacket seems to approve, too:

However, it really isn't comfortable for a human being, so we've decided to go buy what I had originally intended to buy--a comfy upholstered chair like my old one--tomorrow night. The sale is still on tomorrow. And we'll move this one to the living room, where we also need chairs.

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