Monday Malarkey

Happy New Year! I hope the holiday season was refreshing for you!

Recent arrivals:

• Dune by Frank Herbert and 
• Lonely Planet's Best of Ireland - both Christmas gifts
• Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin - A gift to Husband but I'm intrigued and might sneak off with it.
• Fortune Favors the Duke by Kristin Vayden - from Sourcebooks for review

Didn't I say I was done receiving books for the year in 2021? Again? I think I did. Well, wrong again. Of the three books I received, the travel guide was the only surprise. I knew the romance was coming and I'm the one who put Dune in the cart and said, "You're buying me this for Christmas." Husband said, "OK," but he made me wrap it. Ireland was where we were planning to go on vacation in 2020. At the time, friends had recently been there and we borrowed their guide books but they just sat on the entry table. And sat. And sat. Our friends literally moved away because everyone was teleworking, anyway, although Husband still sees the friend he works with when he's in town and we eventually returned their books. So, now we have our own travel guide to read while we await the end of the pandemic. 

Books finished since last Malarkey:

• In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren
• The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar, ed. by Alberto Manguel
• The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
• Dune by Frank Herbert

I may just do a single wrap-up post for my final books of 2021. We shall see. I've had the computer unplugged for the better part of the last week and before that I was locked out of my email account for about 10 days, so I have a bit of catching up to do on other computerish things, in addition to blog posts. At any rate, all of the above were great. I had a bookmark in The True Believer for literally months and decided I absolutely had to finish it up before the year's end. Dune was my first read in 2022.

Currently reading:

• Fortune Favors the Duke by Kirstin Vayden

I just started this one. It's my last requested ARC and I have some that are unsolicited that I'd like to get to, soon, but otherwise . . . well, I'll save my goals for later.

Posts since last Malarkey: 

• The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan (book review)
• Merry Christmas to all! (cat photo and good wishes)

In other news:

Oh, hmm, let me think. I know we watched some movies but I can't remember them all. I needed the help getting revved up for Christmas, although I finished shopping early in anticipation of the supply chain problems that never actually materialized — at least, not with anything we were buying. 

One movie we watched was The Bishop's Wife, an old Cary Grant movie I've never seen. We enjoyed that. We also watched A Muppet Christmas Carol. I really wanted to watch Scrooged but couldn't find anywhere that it was streaming for free. We own it on DVD and have since located our copy but couldn't find it at the time, so it's going into the family favorites file to make it easier to locate (a little drawer of favorite movies). We also watched a few Hallmark movies but I always have trouble recalling the titles. And, then we had an Aussie movie weekend that went splat. We only managed to watch two movies: Rikky and Pete and Sirens. We watched the first episode of Around the World in 80 Days on PBS, yesterday, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I've always loved the David Niven version — in fact, it was a childhood favorite. But, it's been a very long time since I read the book so I can't tell you how close or far from the storyline it's strayed. 

I also both reread A Christmas Carol by Dickens and attended a local performance with former blogger Brittanie. A link to her blog, A Book Lover, is still in my sidebar but the blog has been inactive for a few years. It was a fantastic production and so good to see Brittanie in person after 2 years of pandemic!

Most of our movie time was recovery time because we spent a good portion of our Christmas break madly cleaning, decorating half-heartedly, and then madly cleaning, again. In between cleaning binges, we would occasionally sit down to watch TV and then go right back to work. 

We had literally no guests for Christmas and were a bit glum about that, so when I realized even the son who lives 30 miles away was going to hang out with his in-laws on Christmas Day, I came up with a plan. Why bother having a delayed Christmas dinner? Instead, we dropped off the family's gifts, ditched the plan to get together, and spent Christmas Day outdoors. We had a picnic on our porch and then went to the Cypress Swamp and a bird sanctuary. It was a gorgeous day — shorts weather but it didn't get as hot as predicted — and we were happy getting out. It was surprisingly crowded on the Natchez Trace for a holiday. Maybe because the Omicron variant had a few people cancelling their get-togethers? Humorously, I didn't even realize son and daughter-in-law had gifts for us; they eventually showed up with those.

At any rate, Christmas turned out to be much more fun when we decided to just make it an escape day, so . . . warning to my kids . . . we may just skip Christmas in the future and spend our day picnicking on the porch or visiting local sights, again. 

Next up . . . goals for 2022. 

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