Not much going on.

January 7, 2008

Luckily, I got over the worst of my cold by resting all weekend. Devin, on the other hand, just started feeling sick yesterday and is recuperating at home, today. Ever since I read all of His Dark Materials right after Christmas (I had previously read Northern Lights, which I refuse to call The Golden Compass, which is it’s US title, because it makes no sense, since the only time the alethiometer is referred to as a “compass” is before Lyra even knows it’s real name) I have been trying to get Devin to read them. Normally I wouldn’t even try to push such a heavy tome on him (the three-book compendium is damn near a thousand pages) but since he barreled through all of the Harry Potter books over a single week in June (before the last one came out), I figure that he can manage His Dark Materials.

And he is managing it, and enjoying it, which is far more important. He’s already half-way through The Subtle Knife and I’m positive that he’ll have them all done by the time I get home today. I have successfully turned my husband into a reader!! Imagine me consumed with paroxysms of joy.

One of the many posts that I have started, and not finished, talks about everything that I have going on right now. All of which was put on hold when I came down with this flu/cold/cough bug. The bets news of all is that today is Day 14 and I’m absurdly proud of myself. We went to quite a few holiday parties, including a New Year’s Eve party, and I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol. Yay me.

I felt well enough yesterday to go to Target and was reminded why Target is a bad, bad place for me. Apparently, our Target is competing with a neighboring town’s Super Target that just opened, so our Target has clearance items in every section of the store. Clearance sales are my form of crack. Although I have gotten better since I used to be one of those die-hard clearance junkies–the person who will buy any worthless thing on clearance because it was just too damn cheap to pass up. Even though when I came home with two new purses and two new tote bags (all under $14 a piece!), Devin had a bit of a fit because he’s under the impression that I already have enough purses and bags. He should just be grateful that I’m addicted to purses and bags on clearance and not expensive shoes (or shoes of any kind, really… I hate buying shoes).

Randomness: If you are bored and want to read about a minor scandal in the Romance Novel World (yes, we Romance Novel Readers have our own World), check out Smart Bitches Who Read Trashy Books. The Two Bitches who run the site (Sarah and Candy) have uncovered signs of plagiarism in the wretchedly awful books by Cassie Edwards. Apparently, the woman lifted entire paragraphs and sentences from research materials and used them mostly as dialogue in her novels. Edwards writes awful Historicals based on the lives of the Native Americans. (Can you tell that I hate her books? I hope so because they are bad. Native American Historical Romance has never been an interest of mine but, even if it were, I would not stoop to reading Cassie Edwards. I tried to slog through the first chapters of one of her books while I was still working at the bookstore because I wanted to see if she was as bad as everyone says and yes, she is a horrible writer. And an even worse plagiarist, apparently, since the Bitches only had to plug some of Edwards’ “writing” into Google and they immediately discovered the source materials for many of Edwards’ passages. Idiot plagiarist doesn’t even understand the Power of Google. The Bitches have contacted Edwards’ publishers and I cannot wait to see how they explain this one away.

And you’re very welcome for giving you a scandal that doesn’t have the name “Spears” anywhere in it.

I’m hoping to do a massive update to my Now Reading sidebar/plug-in thing because I really need to log the insane amount of books that I read over the holidays. I also need to just suck it up and list all of the romance novels I read because, let’s face it, I read a heck of a lot of romance novels. I’m really into British-based Historicals right now. Full of Dukes and Viscounts and what-not.

And I’ve taken so much cold medicine that my brain is slowly beginning to shut down and I need to get some work done before it deserts me completely.

Posted in My So-Called Life