Bookish News

I read an awesome book yesterday, which is why I failed to write a blog post--I was reading. Reading always wins out over other activities. There Will Be Lies by Nick Lake* was absolutely fantastic.

I had not read Nick Lake's other books, so I went in expecting his work to be good. I had no idea how good. Wow. Read this one. The protagonist, Shelby, starts off by being hit by a car on her way out of the library (something that nearly happens to me weekly, due to the blind corner cars whip around onto the library's street). Then, her mother picks her up from the hospital only to whisk her off on an impromptu vacation...not giving her any explanation as to why. In the days that follow, the world as Shelby knows it ends--and that's all I'm going to give you. 

I especially liked the way the dialogue was written, without quotation marks. It was different and incredibly effective, though I won't tell you why because you need to read the book to find out for yourself.

I'm also in the midst of reading Tunnel Vision. It's such a great thriller, I'm finding myself taking breaks from reading it because there's just too much tension for one anxiety-ridden Laura to handle. It is so, so good.

Jake Lukin comes home from school one day to find a DARPA agent in his room. They've found out his big secret, he can hold an object and "tunnel" to the person it belongs to. You can imagine how attractive that is to DARPA--and the CIA, FBI, NSA...you name the acronym, they want Jake. Before he can blink, he's leading a double life, tunneling to find kidnapping victims, terrorists, and spies. Jake's whole family is in danger because of what he can do, and soon he's wondering if he's really working for the good guys after all.

Basically fantastic. You should read it.

Not only is it an amazing thriller, the characters are so well written. SO well written.

Meanwhile, I just found out about this and I cannot wait.

FINALLY I get a sequel to The Rook. I have been waiting for SO LONG. It looks like I'm waiting at least until June, but I can handle that for more awesomeness from Daniel O'Malley. Really. Here's the Goodreads page for more info. In the meantime, if you haven't read The Rook, add it to your TBR list at once.

* Some of you who follow YA lit--or the ALA--might remember that Nick Lake won the 2014 Printz Award for his novel In Darkness.

Finding the Right Planner

This just in (again): my part of Indiana has nothing.

Mum and I went to look for a planner, thinking Staples would have something in the way of organizers, only to discover that we were completely mistaken, because Staples only sells toner and printer ink now.

I remember when Staples used to be cool.

They were selling organizers, but they were all made of plastic. The plastic binders came in two colors: black, and for the fashion-forward female businessperson, red. All were bulky, giant, and only one came in the correct size, black plastic.

I am sorry, it is not hard to make an organizer nice. Just use quality materials, like reinforced fabric or leather, and you have two options that will fare well with extended use. Plastic, if it ever looks good, only does so until you drop it for the first time, at which point the cover tears or cracks, or the sprayed-on color scrapes off. If you never drop it and treat it with the utmost care, it still only lasts a few months before you've over-filled it and the strap stretches, it starts to crack from environmental exposure--the transition between cold and hot--or it just falls randomly in half like a three-ring binder of mine did once in the middle of the hallway of my college's administration building.

Never mind that a plastic organizer is an environment-killer and a fabric binder, especially one made of natural fibers, does not rip giant holes in our ozone layer and leave our children and grandchildren frying like bacon on the ravaged surface of our once-habitable planet. Heck, make the cover out of bamboo. What do I care. Just not plastic. And no calling it "vegan leather" either. This marketing does not work on me. If it is vegan, it cannot be leather. Call it what it is: plastic, and be ready to drop your price by half, because I am not paying $80.00 for a plastic planner.

So, defeated, Mum and I went to Steak and Shake for food, only to discover relish that may or may not have been poisonous. Mum was horrified, insisting that relish like this was probably going to give us cancer. She was probably right. No vegetable has ever been this color before unless exposed to high levels radiation. Relish should not match a traffic light.

And then I went home, watched my laptop crash multiple times due to Windows Update (thanks so much), and shopped online. I had narrowed my planner choices to three. One was a Filofax, which I would have loved but just couldn't afford due to the fact that the one I liked cost $76.00. Nope. Maybe someday when I invent something life-changing or am hired Librarian of the World and given several million dollars outright and a giant pay raise. The other was a Day Timer that was subdued but was made of not plastic. Sadly, it was almost as expensive. The final choice was a Kikki-K Time Planner...

kikki.K Medium Time Planner, otherwise known as the prettiest planner ever.

This is a Lilac Medium Time Planner, which just-so-happens to be 50% off right now. Also the original price is in Australian dollars, which means just paying with US dollars is like getting another discount. The size is almost the same as Filofax's Personal dimensions, meaning the impulse-bought sale planner pages from MissTiina will fit perfectly.

So, I got a planner and a bunch of matching accessories for half the Filofax price. This made me a happy Laura. Considering that I'll be able to keep using this planner instead of ditching it after a year, this will be the only big planner investment I'll need to make.

Plus think of all the cute stuff I can put in this.

I'm calling this a Valentine's Day present to myself, because I am eternally single and am unlikely to get a present from anyone else. This will make Valentine's Day less nauseating, as I'll know I've got a fancy coming in the mail soon!

Let's Get (Re)Organized

I have been drooling over fancy planners for quite some time. I thought at the beginning of the year that I should start one, but I wasn't interested in buying one that I couldn't refill, and I couldn't find one in stock online. Then I discovered MissTiina on Etsy. She sells digital calendars, tabs, and pages that she's designed, and I fell in love. She also has Unplan pages, that let you fill in dates as you need to. This is similar to my Frankenplanner from last year.

The Frankenplanner worked--to an extent--mostly due to its size. It was so large, I couldn't carry it with me, nor could I put it away anywhere in my room without putting it on the bookshelf or with the files in my closet. This put it out of sight, out of reach...and eventually out of use. I realized when I started the planner hunt this December that I needed something that could easily live in my purse. MissTiina has page sizes that are small enough for a little binder. This was just what I wanted. Nothing made me happier than ordering a pre-made planner instead of obsessively gathering printables from around the internet. Plus, MissTiina has a Valentine's Day sale going on. I love me a sale.

I went to Hell** after work to buy the tiny binder to put my pages in...and of course they had nothing. Literally nothing--the only binders they had were HUGE three-ring binders. Also, the whole office supply section had been trashed either during or after inventory, so if they had something, it was underneath a metric ton of displaced merchandise.

I left.

I spent my night looking up different planner covers online. Of course, I fell in love with the most expensive thing, a personal-sized Filofax. This is mostly because people have done such amazing things to make their Filofaxes pretty. They use them like mini-scrapbooks or smash books. I love that. Seriously, do a search on Pinterest and check out how gorgeous people make their planners.

Now, it is stupid for me to spend that much when I don't know how good I'll be about actually keeping up with using a planner, but I do want something in the same size. This means a trip to Staples (the closest office supply store) tonight to see what I can see. Hopefully they'll have a reasonably-priced planner I can use while I see how well I like carrying a planner around.

I'll only have more use for one of these when I start up online grad school in the near future, to keep track of what I've done, what I need to do, what's on the syllabus...so I also want one that won't break into pieces with extended use.

Given my two requirements: low price and durability, I can confidently say I won't find anything to suit. We'll see.

* I wasn't given anything for this post--except the current 40% off sale you can get using the code WITHLOVE, good until February 15th.

** Walmart

Weirdness

It is weird dream month or something, because last night I dreamed that I had to rescue a former co-worker from certain death by enlisting various library patrons to help me track down the guy who had kidnapped her.

Eventually, a kid who always used to use the computers told me the right house, and I singlehandedly went into the kidnappers house, told him to let her go, and drank a cherry Pepsi. Also everything flooded.

This thrilling rescue was brought to you by a hostage crisis on MASH and an abundance of stress.

Haunted?

I have been like a day behind in blog posts all week, and I'm not even sorry. I've been busy devising various future plans, and they involve school supplies and almost NO CHANGE, so there is no down side.

However, while making up a dramatically awesome five year plan, I have done some other stuff.

I found curtains for my bedroom at Target, then had to drive to a second Target in order to get four panels for my two windows. Two panels per window = curtains. I don't know why people don't just sell them in two packs. It would make life so much easier. Who wants just one panel? People who like the effect of having a sheet tacked to their window?

I finished this sweater and modeled it badly, then blocked it. It's drying next to our dehumidifier down in our creepy ice-cold basement. It is so cold down there, I didn't bother checking how dry it was this morning, because I wanted to avoid the cold. Check out my Instagram (link on the sidebar) for terrible pictures.

I'm nearly done with Hilary Mantel's second Thomas Cromwell book, Bring Up the Bodies, which is as excellent as Wolf Hall was. These books are a commitment, they are not light and airy reads, but they are not to be missed. I look forward to seeing how the BBC has adapted Wolf Hall for television later this year!

And, on a completely unrelated note, I had the world's most freaky dream last night, which is as follows:

Mum, The Brother, and I were going to Chicago on a trip, but the weather was sucky, so we had to stay overnight in a house. The house belonged to my former high school choir director. It was a nice, giant house, but the first thing the owner said to us when we walked in was, "Be careful, this house is crazy-haunted." 

And it was. From the second I walked in, it seemed like this specter was targeting me. Words appeared on walls, objects flew toward my head at high speeds, photographs tumbled off shelves as I walked by...it was creepy. We decided to leave because for some reason, my family didn't want me to be murdered by ghosts, so we packed our stuff. Then, the ghost actually appeared in front of me to impart wisdom, because it wasn't just your garden-variety ghost, it was my future self, haunting this house in order to meet with my current self and give me insider-knowledge about the rest of my life. 

Ghost-Laura even gave me a fountain pen, some stationary, and a few ancient Egyptian artifacts, because why not? Apparently the only way G-L thought I would pay attention to her was if she scared the living crap out of me. So, I don't know what that says about my psyche, but probably nothing good.

The first thing I did this morning was tell Dad the dream, and he laughed so hard, it gave him a coughing fit. He also said he could tell I was a librarian from the dream. I don't know what that says about librarians, or me, but there you go.

No pictures today because I'm too lazy to find them.

FINALLY

At long last, I have a date for my surgery.* February 18th, I will NOT have to drive as far as Jen and I did for the consultation with the doctor, instead only about an hour from home. Here's hoping the surgery isn't at like 8:00 AM or something, I'd like to stop at the bookstore before the surgery, so I won't terrify small children and the elderly with my swollen upper lip AFTER the surgery.

No way am I not going to a bookstore.

I also was informed that I get to eat and drink normally before surgery, so I will be in a much better mood going in, because breakfast. Also maybe lunch. Mmm...lunch.

I told my supervisor at work about the time, and she instantly asked if they were taking off another one of my moles at the same time. Apparently, in the world of moles, the one on my lip is less-visible and horrific to onlookers than the one at the side of my nose which is of no health concern at all. Discovering this has had a devastating effect on my self esteem,** but no, just the one is leaving me this time. Maybe another day I'll have my new least-favorite mole removed. There's always something, isn't there?

Meanwhile, let's enjoy my new hat.

* This is a minor one, the removal of a stupid mole, and therefore no cause for concern. Just cause for celebration, because the annoyance of its existence will finally be over.

** Really, what doesn't?

Snow Day

Yesterday, the library had a snow day. This worked out well, because there was no getting out of my driveway if the library had been open (unless someone had let me borrow their sleigh and reindeer).

So instead of leaving the house, I knit a sock.

Morning, as you can tell from the lighting. Note how not-at-all grainy the picture is. This is what day is.

Night. Note the grainy photograph, the darkness, the not-quite-focused air of craptitude. This is what night is. 

The yarn is Cascade Heritage Prints in Clouds. Size one needle, my own toe-up pattern with an afterthought heel.

"But Laura!" You say, "Didn't you do ANYTHING but knit yesterday? What is wrong with you? Are your hands shriveled into wasted claws of agony?!" 

Well, actually, I DIDN'T do anything of use yesterday. I mean, I o washed clothes. I vacuumed. I sorted a few drawers so I could close them again. I began to tame the stash of yarn I have heaped in a corner on the floor, but other than that, I really just knit and watched hours of Miss Marple because I love her.

And I dredged up a few old projects and finally finished these socks.

Again, somebody needs to take pictures during the day, when there is light. What the heck?

The yarn is Madelinetosh Tosh Sock in Molly Ringwald and the pattern is Spring Shoots from Socktopus: 17 Pairs of Socks Worth Showing Off, and I completely failed at these. Not because they were a hard knit--they were really fun--but because I looked at them and decided point-blank that I would not weave in the ends or graft the band for the cuff, tossed them in a drawer and there they sat for FOUR YEARS.

That's really shameful.

This year I plan to finish--or frog--all the projects I have sitting in drawers. I have planned this for many years. It works like this: I decide to tackle this challenge. I finish a few things. I start a few new projects. I fail to finish them. They go in a drawer. I end up with the same problem, with new projects, every year. 

But really, this time, I'm going to do it. I will finally succeed by going deep into the UFO pile and taking care of the gravity well itself, the UFOs that are drawing other projects toward them, creating a quantum singularity in my closet that nothing can escape. It will be just like that episode of Star Trek: Voyager when they looked into the singularity and saw Voyager reflected back at them, only with more yarn.