Day 292

I was sitting in traffic on the way home and was going to take a picture of the lovely fall leaves. But I got distracted with listening to Matt "reading" in the backseat, so I took a picture of him. I never did get a chance to take a picture of the trees before the traffic cleared up.

Day 278

Tonight I have a picture share of two of my guys kicking back and reading a story before bed. I'm not sure why the littler guy felt he needed to be read to in our bed, but he enjoyed it. It's the simple things some days.

Day 243

I have another book post today, but this one is a tiny bit different. I put Sophie Kinsella's Twenties Girl on hold a few weeks ago, and on a whim decided to put the CD set on hold also. I used to listen to a lot of books on CD when Paul was little, and basically didn't talk as much, because I drive around quite a bit to get kids to and from childcare.

After I found ways to finish listening to the book on CD I borrowed for our drive to my cousin's wedding, I thought I might be able to listen to an entire book that way. I'm almost done with the second to last disk and will probably be able to finish it in the next couple of days. Aside from the fact that I've really been enjoying the book, I also like the benefit of feeling like I can do other things while "reading".

I may have to see what other books I can get from the library to listen to. As a bonus, the audio book became available fairly quickly, and I'm still better than 100 people away from receiving the paper version.

Day 242

It seems like I talk about books a lot, but I mention this one because I finally finished it and it's only taken me about 2 1/2 months. It's Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and it's a really good book about censorship.

It was written more than 50 years ago, and has a lot of very relevant stuff to say about technology and how we can end up using it to busy ourselves with stimulation and not take the time to question and think.

It's actually a very easy read and less than 200 pages. The reason why it took me so long is I've been working on other things and have been getting to bed later than I should. So when I'd pick it up, I'd make it about a page or two before I was fighting to keep my eyes open.

I actually cracked my brother up, who originally mentioned the book to me, by telling him I had about a page and a half left. He thought it was pretty humorous that I could be that close to the end and just decide to save it for another day.

I really recommend this book. It's interesting to think about. I didn't do it justice with my description, so check it out for yourself.

Day 229

I'm still exhausted from our trip this weekend for my cousin's wedding. I don't know what it is about driving nine hours in one day, but somehow it wears you out. Tonight I decided I'd put one of the last CDs from the book I listened to during our drive home on my iPhone. I'm going to listen to it in bed as I drift off to sleep early.

Day 151

Before church this morning, I finished another book. This one was for our book group that met on the 15th, but I really liked this book and wanted to finish it. The book was Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos. It's taken me forever to get through because I've been unusually busy lately, but I'm glad that I did.

I also wanted to take this picture to play around some more with focus with my "new" lens.

Day 142

In a rare feat, I managed to finish a book. But not only that, I read the entire thing in 2 days. I'll have to admit that it wasn't a challenging read at about 170 pages with big type and lots of pictures, but I'm still strangely pleased with myself. I feel like I accomplished something.

Anyway, the book was Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking. I don't know if I would say that I recommend it per se because her language is pretty crass and she doesn't hold anything back. But if you have an even moderate interest in her life, then I think you'll find it an enjoyable read. I liked her wit, humor, and ability to laugh at herself.

I'm kind of wishing I had been able to see her show a few months ago like I had wanted to, but checking the book out from the library was much less expensive.

Day 87

In a small way, today's photo represents the choices I make. Pictured here are two books. One is the book I wanted to read and the other is the one I chose to read.


Not long after the beginning of the year, I started reading the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I started the fourth and final book somewhere around the beginning of the month. I do not get a lot of time to read. Actually, between a full-time job and being a full-time mom and wife, I do not have a lot of time to myself. The moments I do have are precious and few.

I try to stay active with the book group at my church. We meet once a month, which seems like a simple commitment, but I'd missed at least the last two meetings. This month I was determined to go. About one week before we were supposed to meet on the 20th, I still hadn't cracked open the book for the group, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. I knew that there was no way I'd have the time to finish Breaking Dawn and read this book. So about 150 pages before the end, I put down my fun book and chose to read the other book. I'm pretty pleased because I managed to get about two-thirds of the way into the book before our meeting.

Why write about all of this now? After our group met last Friday, instead of going back to Breaking Dawn and just returning Don't Let's Go to the library, I decided to finish the book from our group. I was finally able to finish it tonight. It really is an interesting book and a worthwhile read.

Breaking Dawn will probably not make it through the weekend before I'm done with it. I feel fairly proud of myself for having the discipline to finish what I started instead of opting for the more enjoyable read with my limited resources. But before you feel too sorry for me about putting a book down right at the climax, I am not quite disciplined enough to not skim ahead. ;)

I am considering starting to keep track of the books and possibly other things I've accomplished through out the year. Sometimes it gets overwhelming to think that I have so little down time. It'll be nice to keep myself in check by seeing that I am actually accomplishing something. I'm going to try to make it my goal to read one book a month - aside from the ones for our book group. We'll see how I do.

Day 55

School was unexpectedly canceled today due to a family emergency. I promised Paul that we'd go and do something fun. I was planning to take him to one of the bounce houses, but I didn't want to tell him just in case we couldn't get ourselves together quickly enough to get there on time.

It was driving him crazy to not know what we were going to do, so I asked him what he would find fun to do. He wanted to go to the library. Once he got the idea in his head, then that's where we needed to go. Momma didn't have a problem with it, since it's free and brought us close to the mall where I wanted to do a bit of shopping.

The pic of the day is of Paul reading at the library. He loves to look through books and could spend a great deal of time finding his favorite characters and stories.