Monday Malarkey - Sunshine, books, cats, new bookshelves and bookmark fun

Ah, back to normal weather after last week's surprise dusting of snow.  It's been sunny and mild with gorgeous partly-cloudy skies for several days, now.  Loving it, even though I'm not a fan of the spring pollen.  It took me several days to recover from our weekend of finishing up the old house for the market; I was so sore from painting and scrubbing. So, I can't say the week started off being a productive one but it ended up that way, after I joined in on the 40 Bags in 40 Days challenge, which the husband found exciting. Although he introduced chaos into the equation (he was completely unwilling to focus on a single room at a time), we got a lot of cleaning accomplished and some clothing bagged, books to trade or get rid of boxed.

This week's arrivals:

• Straight Man by Richard Russo via Paperback Swap (on the recommendation of a friend from my hometown, with whom I've just recently reconnnected)
• Child Witch Kinshasa by Mike Ormsby from the author
• To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris from Little Brown via Shelf Awareness

Last week's posts:

• Shadows in the Sun by Gayathri Ramrasad (review)
• Two minis: Spy Smuggler by Jim Eldridge and Nick and Tesla's Robot Army Rampage by Pflugfelder and Hockensmith (reviews)
• A History of the World with Google Earth by Penny Worms, illus. by Wm. Ings (review)

Argh, that's all!  I meant to post a lot more but I was a wreck so I guess I should be happy I managed as much as I did.  I didn't even manage to post a Fiona Friday pic on the wrong day!  Here's your apology photo . . . 2 cats for the price of one:

Books finished:

• Goodnight Songs by Margaret Wise Brown - I actually read Goodnight Songs the moment it walked in the door and listened to the CD the next day. I merely forgot to write it on my calendar so I'm claiming it as one of last week's reads for the sake of having a place to link up on my list of monthly reads.  Review forthcoming.
• The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena - I can't wait to babble about this one, actually.
• Logopolis by Christopher H. Bidmead - a very old Dr. Who book, not fan fiction but a novelization of the 4-part serial starring the 4th Doctor, Tom Baker. 

Currently reading:

It changes from one day to the next; I'm not very focused, lately.  But, this morning I woke up early (strange - usually, it works the other way around, after a time change) and read a number of entries from Children's Wartime Diaries: Secret Writings from the Holocaust and WWII, ed. by Laurel Holliday. Consequently, I spent the morning swimming in tears.  I've been reading from Children's Wartime Diaries for weeks because it's rough reading and I can only usually stand so much at once.  But, I'd like to finish one of the three non-fiction books I have going, so I'll continue on with the reading and, hopefully, finish it tonight. There's no entry in my sidebar because I couldn't find an image of the book online, so I'll photograph it if/when I review it.

In other news:

I spent an evening making goofy owl bookmarks, last week, (mostly using pre-made stickers) and some time laminating them on another day.  Fun!  And, I've been loading books in the library closet.  Did I tell you about the library closet shelves?  I don't recall.  I suggested that we should take advantage of the high ceilings in our closets and thought it would be a good idea to build in additional shelving that went to the ceiling. Husband disagreed with the concept of built-ins, partly because he would be the one who had to do the carpentry and partly because he didn't want to make a permanent alteration to the house. Instead, he came up with the alternative of purchasing some Billy bookshelves from IKEA, installing them and raising the top shelf.

The closest IKEA is a 6-hour drive but he just happened to know someone who was planning to make an IKEA run, so he sent along the money for shelving with his friend and put the shelves up in a single day.  I've been loading them, off and on, since.  And, as much as I dislike particle-board shelving, I must admit I'm very happy to have those extra shelves to help me get books off the floor and figure out which titles I need to part with.  I have a terrible tendency to build little towers of books here, there and everywhere.

Hmm, I guess that's all the news, bookish and otherwise.  Our F2F group leader thought all the recent suggestions I solicited sounded depressing, so I'm still looking for suggestions. If you can recommend an upbeat book worth discussing for our May meeting, please let me know!

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.