Monday Malarkey

Recent arrivals:

• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
• The Summer of Broken Things by Margaret Peterson Haddix
• Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return by Martin Riker, and
• Boom Town by Sam Anderson - all purchased
• Shockwave by Jack Heath - from Sterling Children's Books for review

Three of these were on my wish list but I bought Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return after reading a short story by him in the Short Story Advent Calendar, which is not pictured but which also arrived during my blogging break. The Summer of Broken Things was a dollar store find. 

Books finished since last Malarkey:

• One Day in December by Josie Silver
• The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L'Engle
• A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
• A Little House Christmas by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride
• A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

Most of these were very short (the Christmas books). One Day in December and Cold Granite were around 400 pages or a little over. So, not bad for about 11 days. Ditching the blog to read when you're slumpy always seems to work for me.  

Currently reading:

• How to Walk Away by Katherine Center
• 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar by Hingston and Olsen

I've wanted to get a Short Story Advent Calendar since Nat, formerly of In Spring it is the Dawn blog, talked about hers, several years ago. And, I cannot even begin to tell you how fun it is breaking the seal on a short story (or two -- I got mine a little late, as it came from Canada) each day. It's one of the highlights of my day. I'm also really enjoying How to Walk Away and I've been laughing at myself because I never noticed the plane on the cover till I started reading the book — just the flowers. A plane crash is the inciting incident so it's rather important. 

Posts since last Malarkey:

• A Castaway in Cornwall by Julie Klassen (book review)
• Trumpocracy by David Frum (book review)

In other news:

I'm working on thinking through my reading goals for 2021 and so far there's only one thing that's important to me: I want to stop buying books for the entire year (well . . . with a couple exceptions, like books by friends) and read off my shelves. I haven't got any blogging goals, yet. Still pondering. Admittedly, I bought at least two of this week's arrivals specifically because I'm about to stop buying books and wanted to make sure I got them before the end of the year. Neither of the two family members I told about this non-buying goal believe I will succeed. They have good reason to feel that way. 

Movie-wise, we've watched a bunch of Hallmark movies, at least two episodes of The Mandalorian, one of Life on Mars (we grew tired of it in the middle of the second season and took a break but we're back to watching it), and Persuasion, the 2007 version starring Rupert Penry-Jones as Captain Wentworth. We also got 2/3 of the way through Romancing the Stone but we'll have to finish that up tonight. Both of us decided we were too tired to finish the entire movie. 

The only other news is that we still have shelves and boxes of books crammed into a couple of our rooms because of the leak that damaged our living room flooring (did I tell you about that?) but it looks like the two boxes of flooring left by the previous owner are going to cover the damaged bits! Yay! We didn't think we had enough till we moved the shelves but there was no damage beneath them. Oddly, there's damage on either side. We still haven't figured that out, but it's mostly replaced and the leak has been repaired so maybe we'll have those shelves back in place by Christmas. 

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