Monday Malarkey

I don't have any good book stack photos, this week, so you get cat:

I'm amazed that Isabel found it tolerable lying in the sun. It's been so hot I can barely endure sitting near the window with the blinds drawn. Izzy was beneath my desk, incidentally, lying on an old foam exercise step.

This is my only arrival for the week:

In This Proud Land by Roy Emerson Stryker and Nancy Wood is a book of photos taken during the Great Depression. Apart from some introductory material and captions, there's very little text. I doubt I'll bother reviewing so here's a peek inside:

I altered the color a little so it looks fresh and new but this particular book is older and a little yellowed. I purchased it secondhand.

Oops, another used book just arrived in the mail so I have no photograph of it: Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans. I bought it because I loved Crooked Heart so much I wanted to read more by Evans. Their Finest Hour and a Half was longlisted for the Orange Prize, which comes as no surprise to me as Lissa Evans' writing is stellar. Like Crooked Heart, it is a WWII novel.

Posts since last week's malarkey:

• Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans (review)
• Fiona Friday - No photos, please (cat photo)

Not a big week for blogging.


Books finished last week:

• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 

My reading has clearly been pitiful, quantity-wise, although I've enjoyed what I've read, recently. I blame the heat and a little eyestrain. I've found that I'm having trouble focusing (in both attention and vision) when I sit down to read. As long as the heat persists and until I can make it to the eye doctor to get some reading glasses that work, I'm guessing my reading will continue to be slower than normal.

Currently reading:

Nothing. But, I'm planning to return to Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, the book of children's letters written during the Depression, now that I've finished All the Light We Cannot See. And, I may dip back into Pamela. I've also decided this is probably a good time to read some short stories, since it's taking me forever to get through anything (this being the second week in a row that I've only read one book), so I'm going to give Neil Gaiman's Trigger Warning a go.

In other news:

You've probably spotted the change to my header. I gave it a lot of thought and decided I wanted a sleek, minimalist, bookish look so I took some old books off the shelf and staged them in a way that I thought would fit my goal. I'm happy with the results. Although my subheading spills over the books a bit because I enlarged my font when I changed the template, after removing the word "family" I think it looks better. I took "family" out of the subheading because I really don't tell family stories or post family photos, anymore, at the guys' request.

My blog plan for the week includes writing reviews of Brutal Youth and All the Light We Cannot See and coming up with a list of interview questions for my Q/A with Anthony Breznican. If anyone has questions they'd like me to ask Anthony about Brutal Youth, please let me know. I'll be happy to add them to my list.

The only other news I have is about a side project I'm looking forward to starting. A local storekeeper who paints old furniture, frames and other decorative items has closed her shop and will instead have a small corner in a local antique store. So, she had a closeout sale, last week, and I bought a chair to paint:

I've been having a great time gathering design ideas. Even though I haven't even de-glossed the chair to prepare to paint it, yet, Huzzybuns has seen the images of my favorite painting ideas and is already calling it, "Your hippie chair." I can't wait to get started. I have always desired to paint a chair, just for the fun of it.

That's all for now! Have you read anything brilliant, lately?

©2015 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.