Saturday, December 5, 2009

Month in Review

It was a dark and stormy afternoon as yours truly cast about aimlessly for something to post on, having planned through yesterday but no further. I looked at other people's blogs but didn't find any help there. It's way too soon to blog about how I have nothing to blog about.

Then it hit me: I could resurrect one of my many, many abandoned features!

Without further ado, I present: NOVEMBER IN REVIEW!

As a personal aside, did this month go by in about five minutes for anyone else? I was shocked when Thanksgiving came, stunned to be filling out my paperwork for work and realizing that the pay period ended in December and that my end-of-year callbacks had come around!

I only read three books in November, but they were all pretty good. Lisa Jewell's Ralph's Party was a proto-Jewell (her first novel) but still enjoyable. Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was amazing, as beautiful and evocative as its title and also an interesting document of a long-gone lifestyle. Where You Once Belonged by Kent Haruf, was good too, lean, mean and nothing but action.

I tried to read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and am appropriately ashamed of my inability to get into the book. I abandoned it at around page 35 or so, despite the fact that I was about a quarter of the way through this extremely short novel.

I visited the library twice. I was pleasantly surprised to learn how inexpensive the hold fees are, but dismayed at the larger trend of lack of respect for the purpose of the library and the other patrons that are using it. I guess it fits right in with lack of respect in the stores, on the road, on the telephone, and even in internet comments (though I'm happy to say, only once here. If you're reading this, you're statistically a higher caliber of person than those that go to craigslist to swear and make racist remarks. Good on you).

I did well with my blog, making 13 posts and hitting all the BTT's. I still rarely get comments and I'm not sure what to do about that, but oh well.

All in all, November was a short, rushed month. I still have quite a bit of reading from my two library trips and am working on an interesting one right now. I think I'll get back to it!