Monday Malarkey - I'll bet you thought I was gone for good

Peeking in, here. I came to a decision about the blog but then didn't find the time to sit down and write, last week. So, here's The Plan for 2015:

I'll be doing a weekly update, a monthly reading wrap-up, and dropping by whenever I feel like it to do reviews or just prattle. Since I like the "Monday Malarkey" title and the "Tuesday Twaddle" I've used when I post a day late, I'll stick with using those if I manage to post. However, that's a loose plan. If I don't feel like writing, I won't. If I feel like writing 10 posts in a week, fine. If I feel like writing about writing, I'll shoot for doing it on Wednesday and call it "Writing on Wednesday" because those are the magical words that popped into my head ~*poof*~ when the idea came to mind.

On to today's post nonsense.

A number of Mondays have passed since I bothered writing down book arrivals. While not all that many books arrived over the holidays (relatively speaking), I did acquire plenty. For today, I'm just going to gather up whatever I recall having arrived and call it . . .

This week's arrivals:

• Anneville: A Memoir of the Great Depression by Thomas G. Robinson
• Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Kalish
• The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth  

Sensing a theme? If anyone can suggest some excellent first-hand accounts of the Great Depression that I haven't already discovered, titles and authors would be appreciated. I bought 2 of those above and got the third via Paperback Swap. More arrivals:

• Entertaining Judgment by Greg Garrett - I think this arrived during my break. I pre-ordered it when the author mentioned the book. I'm pretty sure he teaches a course at Baylor University on the same topic, how literature and film have effected our beliefs about the afterlife: heaven, hell, purgatory, angels, demons, etc. 
• North of Boston by Elisabeth Elo - Sent by a friend after I asked for suggestions of "edge of your seat" reading.
• A Deadly Wandering by Matt Richtel - An ARC sent by a friend
• I Love You Near and Far by M. B. Parker and J. Henry - The very last book I received from a publisher in 2014 (from Sterling Children's Books).
• I also got a box of books sent by another friend (not handy but I was particularly excited about Fourth of July Creek) and purchased a book for F2F group: Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison. So far, I'm not thrilled with the F2F read. It's a bit rambling. I set it aside and hope to get back to it in time to finish it for discussion.

Books I've finished in 2015:

• Soviet Ghosts - Rebecca Litchfield - A picture book of abandoned places in the former U.S.S.R. with essays about the fall of the Soviet Union. I purchased Soviet Ghosts particularly for the thought of using the photos as prompts for writing. I would have preferred that the text was about the abandoned places (info about the photos and where they were taken is in the back of the book) rather than history. Almost every page had some form of the word "ideology" at least once, if not repeatedly. The repetition quickly became tiresome. Yet, the text was interesting if a bit dry and I was in it for the photography, anyway. I'm particularly fascinated by photos of places that look like they were abandoned suddenly. Not all of them were due to the Chernobyl disaster and you have to wonder why someone would have walked away from a hot drink, leaving a uniform on a chair, books on a shelf, etc. Why did they simply leave so abruptly? That's where room for stories is born.
• 1963: The Year of the Revolution - Ariel Leve and Robin Morgan 
• I Love You Near and Far by Marjorie B. Parker and J. Henry

Currently reading:

• Entertaining Judgment by Greg Garrett
• Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
• Little Heathens (mentioned in arrivals, above)

I'm only about 100 pages into Parade's End and it's over 800 pages long, so I may be reading it for months. During Christmas break, I focused on classics and non-fiction. Some were sent by publishers and, since I'd committed to only reading books that really grabbed me, I loved everything I read during my break. But, I have to run, no time to elaborate. I'm currently working on making good habits and that means I have to do what I intend to make habitual every single day without fail. I've succeeded at writing every day, so far, but some of those other resolutions need a bit more work on the daily concept. Anyway, must dash. Happy Monday!

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