Monday Malarkey - Bad week, good week

Isabel displays how I felt, last week:

Last week was a pretty bad week, at least at the beginning, in case you were wondering about the lack of posts. When it rains heavily, our internet service hiccups so badly that it's often not even worth bothering to try to get online and we had storms, storms, storms (which also meant migraine trouble). I also had a blog issue I had to deal with and since the "hide" button seems to have disappeared, I temporarily set the blog to private mode while I was making sure I had caught everything that needed to be fixed. If you know how to remove a blog from view at Blogger without going to the extreme of changing the privacy setting, please let me know.

Later in the week, the weather cleared up (again, good and bad -- without rain, we also lost the cloud cover and breeze) but by then I was so weary from attempting to get online that I decided not to bother with reviews.

Last week's arrivals:

• Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters from Children of the Great Depression, ed. by Robt. Cohen, and
• Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard - both via Paperback Swap

Posts since last week's malarkey:

• Fiona Friday - Those eyes (cat photo)

Books finished last week:

• Extreme Food by Bear Grylls
• Black Box by Julie Schumacher
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck

I decided to go ahead and bulldoze my way through Extreme Food but it wasn't anywhere near the cringe-worthy read I expected, in the end. Yes, there are times he talks about really disgusting ideas for meals (worms and eggs cooked together -- I don't like eggs on their own so they wouldn't be much help in disguising the taste of worms -- and other bugs and slimy things) but there was less of that than anticipated and I learned a few things. Chief among them was how an alligator kills people with a "death roll". Coincidentally, there was just an article about a man saving his son from an alligator in the news, today. So glad that story had a happy ending. 

Here's that story about a father saving his son from an alligator attack.

Black Box is a book about a girl who is going through severe depression but it's told from the viewpoint of her sister and I think that gave the book enough distance to keep it from being depressing, itself. I particularly liked the ending.

I haven't actually finished The Pearl but I'm about to, as soon as I finish up this post. There's yet another storm brewing. I'd better hurry. I can already say The Pearl is my least favorite Steinbeck but I do love his writing style. 

Currently reading:

• Child Witch Kinshasa by Mike Ormsby

No Pamela, again, but I keep telling myself I'm going to get back to finishing Pamela, eventually. Child Witch Kinshasa is a chunkster so it may take me all week, depending upon how much reading time I manage to squeeze in. Usually, when I'm reading a chunkster I add some other reading material to give me the occasional break but I haven't chosen what I'll read after I finish The Pearl.

Must dash. Happy reading!

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