Monday Malarkey - Back to blogging and an apology cat

Hello, I'm back! Did you miss me? There's a little camera shake in this photo but I like the angle so I'm going to leave this shot here rather than switching to the clear shot from a boring angle:

Recent arrivals (top to bottom):

• The World According to Bob by James Bowen - purchased
• Mendocino Fire by Elizabeth Tallent,
• Forgotten by Linda Hervieux, and
• All the Stars in the Heavens by Adriana Trigiani - all from HarperCollins for review
• Elwood Bigfoot: Wanted: Birdie Friends! by Jill Esbaum and Nate Wragg - from Sterling Children's Books for review

The World According to Bob was sort of a whim but kind of not. I've been considering it for quite some time. As it turned out, I bought the wrong book. I meant to get the first book about Bob, the cat who saved a homeless man from a self-destructive spiral. I'm reading The World According to Bob now, though, and I don't think order really matters, at least to me. I knew the backstory, already. I've read about James Bowen and viewed a video of him with Bob. I will probably go ahead and buy the first book soon, though.

I'm not a Trigiani fan and didn't actually request All the Stars in the Heavens, but I may go ahead and read it, since I enjoyed The Shoemaker's Wife. We shall see. I'm guessing HarperCollins ran out of the book I requested and tossed the Trigiani in, instead, although I've occasionally just gotten titles I thought they sent by mistake. Hard to say what happened at the envelope-stuffing end.


Posts since last Malarkey:

• What the cat saw and a break to heal - I did get some routine maintenance done (clearing out the email in-box -- which has emails dating as far back as 2008!), but most of the week I avoided the computer. Not a bad thing, really.

Books finished since last Malarkey:

• Your Alien by Tammi Sauer and Goro Fujita
• Sloth Slept On by Frann Preston-Gannon
• Zack Delacruz: Me and My Big Mouth by Jeff Anderson
• Elwood Bigfood: Wanted: Birdie Friends! by Jill Esbaum and Nate Wragg
• Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie by Lauren Redniss

I've temporarily set aside The Dust that Falls from Dreams because I didn't manage to read any more of it, this week, and I want to start over from the beginning. But, when I picked it up to restart I was not in the right mood and it's a bit of a chunkster at over 500 densely-packed pages. I'm going to need to be invested in that book when I start. What I read I loved, so I'm sure I'll return to it soon.

Since it was a low-concentration week (partly because I had trouble sleeping with a brace on my wrist), I opted to read mostly children's books and a graphic biography. I found Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie particularly difficult to set down . . . so I didn't. I finished it in one sitting and ended up reading later than I should have. I have no regrets.


Currently reading:

• The World According to Bob by James Bowen

I've dipped into my book of letters written to Eleanor Roosevelt during the Great Depression, occasionally, but that's best taken in small doses. I also finished reading the "book of my heart" (written in the late 90s or early 00s -- I probably mentioned that, last week), which started out good but went downhill. I can see why I abandoned it in spite of knowing how it was going to end, but the distance of years definitely helps. There's one character that will have to be cut entirely -- she totally bogged down the story -- and I presume I didn't realize that, at the time. At any rate, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed reading my own writing and how much has changed since I wrote the book. At the time, landlines were still common, rollerblading was still a fad, though fading, and my characters mostly listened to music on CD.


Because there was no Fiona Friday, I offer you an apology cat photo:

I thought it was pretty funny the way Isabel cuddled up to this garden glove, which Fiona likely knocked off the nearby table.


In other news:


Taking off a week has naturally thrown me further behind on reviews. I'm fascinated to find how little this bothers me. Since I changed my approach toward blogging, early this year, and did that catch-up post that filled in where I'd skipped reviews, I feel much more relaxed about blogging. Plus, many of the books I've read recently are children's books and I'm planning to do a Children's Day, soon. That always allows me to knock out a bunch of books in a single day (and it's also very, very fun).

But, I do hope this will be a good blogging week.

I don't sign up for challenges, anymore, but I'm excited to find that Andi and Heather are hosting the RIP challenge at The Estella Society, this year:

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril X

I'll be reading along casually, since I like ushering in the fall with a few creepy/atmospheric reads. Are you joining the RIP X challenge?


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