When the shock wears off I'm buying a book

Holy mother....I was playing the evil little game/reality check hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea, how much $$$ did I spend on books!!!

Oh it's bad folks...it's really bad.

I went into this thinking that I would be impressed with myself. I mean honestly I didn't start buying books until March 1st. I had a deal with my husband about that and I actually kept it!!! It was a big deal for me. I had March 1 circled on every calendar I own. So imagine my shock when I added up everything and the total was.....


$92.30

In one month!!!! One month where I completely held back on my book buying madness!

What's worse is I was just at Bibliophile by the Sea and Diane has only spent $91.88 all year! Oh Diane you are so much smarter with your money. You have spent less than me (barely) but you have bought more books...so many more books! I need to take a lesson from you. My goal for this month is to spend less than you.

I just need to get over the fact that on every day off I have I find myself at the bookstore. It is the only place I enjoy in this town. And what do I do when I go to the bookstore, look around, and know that I can't leave with anything? Panic, hyperventilate, cry. I go home in a deep lonely hole of depression and sit on the couch looking at my bookshelf knowing that my books know they won't have any new company so they are sad and I am sad that they are sad and all of this sadness can only be healed by one thing...a new book. So I go to the store and buy one and it's painless and all is right in the world and suddenly I realize that I am such a drama queen. Next time I'm not going through all this "oh I'm saving money bull" because I know in the end I will break down and buy the stupid book so I may as well skip all the dramatic wallowing/rationalizing and just buy the book to begin with.

A Cold = A very grumpy and lazy Jessica

Ahh folks let me tell you how NOT FUN it is to be sick.  Okay so I'm sure you are all fully aware of this fact but I feel like it has been so long since I have been sick that I forgot.  What's worse is it was just a really bad cold so I couldn't even claim something like the flu or H1N1 that was sure to draw sympathy.  I mean seriously...a cold...get over it Jess.  But let me tell you I was sucking!!

I fell asleep at work!  Shhh don't tell.  I work from home for a reading program and we are in the slow season right now where I am just answering customer service calls...so it was Saturday and I mean come on I'm sick on a Saturday and I have top work...from home, that's just a tease...the couch is right there.  I was just resting my eyes for a moment and it wasn't until the obnoxious buzzing that means I have a call coming in woke me up and I looked around trying to remember where I was that I realized I had fallen asleep!!  It was pitiful.

Moral of the story is I have been sick and anti anything that requires me to focus so my blogging and reading has fallen behind.  I think I finished one lonely chapter in a book and that took me about an hour because I kept forgetting what words meant, you know those big words like "the."

The good news is I was finally able to start thinking again today and even read a few more chapters in Lord of the Rings.  I'm almost done...which is good because the month is over so it is time for me to move on to the final book.  More on that tomorrow...or the next day...

Teaser Tuesdays

Thank you MizB for hosting Teaser Tuesday.

-Grab your current read
-Open to a random page
-Share 2 teaser sentences from that page
-Make sure you don't include any spoilers

Check out Should Be Reading to read more Teaser Tuesdays.

Your peers when you're a teenage will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now.

-page 102
The Girl Who Chased the Moon
by Sarah Addison Allen

Mailbox Monday

Thank you to Marcia at The Printed Page for putting on the weekly Mailbox Monday, a place where I discover so many wonderful new books.

Check out her blog and post all the new books you acquired last week.


The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw (ARC from Doubleday via Shelf Awareness)

From the author's website:

Marcella di Pavarese Atkinson has always longed for love, warmth, understanding. Seven years ago, she believed she had found it, although illicitly, with Cecil McClatchey–a married father of two, and a longtime summer acquaintance from Cape Cod. But on the night their romance abruptly ended, Cecil’s wife was found dead, and Cecil died soon after, an uncharged suspect. Now Marcella lives alone, divorced, estranged from her teenaged daughter, and hobbled by her grief and guilt.

Meanwhile, Cecil’s grown son, Jed, returns to the Cape for the summer for the first time in years, with his sister and her young children. One morning, in an upstairs closet, he finds a bathing suit he recognizes as Marcella’s–a relic, unbeknownst to him, of his father’s affair. A hunch, his years-long hunger for answers, and the memory of a teenaged crush send Jed looking for her. But when Marcella and Jed, to their deep surprise, fall into a passionate affair of their own, they must hide it from their families and also begin, reluctantly, to look more closely at the past. What they find is shocking, heartbreaking, and, perhaps, the beginning of healing; but as they confront their shared pain, a crisis is brewing in the present that will force them, and us, to think about the very nature of love.

Lyrical and sensuous, The Swimming Pool is about devotion in all its forms: between spouses, lovers, siblings and, especially, between parents and children. It is a story of how our most essential connections entwine, in the most surprising of ways, and how they endure.

Committed - Elizabeth Gilbert

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
By Elizabeth Gilbert

Faced with the possible deportation of her love, Filipe, Gilbert has come to the conclusion that she must again get married. This is something that neither she nor Felipe thought they would do again. Having gone through an awful divorce (as witnessed in Eat, Pray, Love) Gilbert is very skeptical of the institution of marriage.

I think this is the reason I love her. I can relate to her. Although I am married and haven’t personally gone thorough a divorce, I was definitely jaded by my parents divorce and decided early on it is much better to be happily divorced than unhappily married. Yes, I am married, but I made sure that nowhere in our vows did it say anything about “till death do us part” because I just don’t believe it. My husband is fully aware of my “issues” (both with marriage and otherwise). I have to admit part of me hoped that Committed would bring me some reassurance, and it kind of did. Gilbert seemed to jump into her research with a clear plan to “figure it all out.” One of my favorite lines is after she is talking to her mother about things given up for marriage as opposed to things gained.

Therefore, the tidy ultimate conclusion is…???
It was slowly becoming clear to me that perhaps there was never going to be any tidy ultimate conclusion here. My mother herself had probably given up long ago trying to draw tidy ultimate conclusions about her existence, having abandoned (as so many of us must do, after a certain age) the luxuriously innocent fantasy that one is entitled to have mixed feelings about one’s own life.

In Committed, Gilbert bounces back and forth between her stories—including conversations with people she met while waiting for Felipe to be allowed back in the United States and her extensive research on the subject of marriage. I found it fascinating to learn about the various histories and different rituals in other cultures. Gilbert has an incredible talent for recreating her conversations and adventures and I enjoyed every minute of it.

**Source: Personal copy bought with personal money.

LOTR Readalong - The Two Towers: Middle

Here we are with another check-in for the LOTR Readalong. Teresa at Shelf Love is hosting this month, check out her post for some discussion questions. I am through the first half of The Two Towers (also known as Book 3) and I think my love for it has gone to a whole new level. I am so addicted and I love it.

As I have mentioned before, I have seen the movies in pieces on TV, some parts multiple times, but I don't have a great memory of most of it. Sadly, I have a feeling that this book is going to ruin the movie for me. I know that this book differs the most from the movie and I am so in love with the book I am already appreciating what I remember of the movie less and less.

I knew I loved Merry and Pippin but I didn't realize how much I was going to miss them while they were with the Ents and we were with the rest of the company. I was so happy when they were finally reunited. I love the moment we find them guarding/sleeping/smoking. They are so chipper and in the loop. I love that they have information to share with the rest of their company.

Then there are the Ents. Oh how I love the Ents. Fangorn and all his Hrum Hooming is glorious. And his list of all the creatures he knew of that didn't include hobbits was priceless. I think that was one of my favorite parts in the book. I hope they find their Entwives because I don't know how that part of the story ends and I really want them to have some happy Ent lovin'.

I am sad that Book 3 is over and I am moving on from the Ents for a while but happy happy joy joy it's Gollum time!!

Mailbox Monday

Thank you to Marcia at The Printed Page for putting on the weekly Mailbox Monday, a place where I discover so many wonderful new books.

Check out her blog and post all the new books you acquired last week.


Mrs. Somebody Somebody: Stories by Tracy Winn (win from Library Thing's Early Reviewers)

From Amazon:

Winn's excellent debut collection centers on Lowell, Mass., as it evolves from a booming mid-century mill town to its scrappy contemporary incarnation. What remains constant are the characters, who cycle through the stories as they age, etched memorably by Winn, who nails a diverse swath of American life over some 60 years. In the title story, Stella Lewis navigates through often dicey situations at Hub Hosiery, a factory where she makes a close friend and learns the power of union allegiances. In Blue Tango, lovesick Dr. Charlie Burroughs, a Korean War vet, returns to his wife; in the following story, Glass Box, Winn portrays the marriage from Charlie's wife's perspective. Later, Winn checks in on the next generation of the Burroughs family, mired in frustration and longing. We also get to know factory workers and families affected by wars—from Korea to Iraq. Though Winn's prose sometimes gets away from her, her firm command of narrative and her ability to evoke emotion puts this high on the list of must-read story collections.