The Heart is a Lazy Blogger

To any and all loyal readers, please excuse my recent blog negligence. To explain:
1. I work in retail at a large independent bookseller.
2. I manage the children's department of said bookstore. In addition to the wide array of books we carry, we also feature a huge variety of toys and merchandise for babies to teenagers.
3. It's the holiday season.

So please forgive me if I'm a bit slow to update the page. I promise, I'll be adding a bunch of posts late this week/early next week, especially as things slow down at work.

But right now, I admit, I'm a little booked out. I need to recharge my reading buzz, refuel my writing tanks, then I'll be back full blast. Hopefully my metaphors will improve as well!

Read recently:
- Lips Touch:Three Times by Laini Taylor
-Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
- Horns by Joe Hill (long awaiting follow-up to Heart-Shaped Box, out in February)

It's hard to turn the page when your fingers are frozen...

We have held off turning our heat on, fearing overwhelming gas bills in addition to the large electricity tab running every month. But the cold has proved itself a constant, and our efforts to stave off the chill in our apartment have gone largely unrewarded. This morning, the space heater, which I have taken to snuggling like a romantic partner, broke down.

So it's me, a heating pad, a sea of blankets, and an effort to read without exposing my fingers. Maybe the Snuggie people have it right - I am having trouble moving my arms without losing some of the blanket's protection. Still, I will not pay twenty bucks to wear a robe backwards, even if it means reading underneath the blanket... and missing out on a cool and useful complimentary booklight.

This week has been a fairly good one for reading. I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go last weekend, followed it up with the surprising The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, Francisco Stork's follow-up to this year's acclaimed Marcelo in the Real World. I'm now a bit more than halfway through Michael Adams' funny and brisk year-long quest to find the worst movie ever made, Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies. Adams' doesn't have the innate charm of other year chroniclers, notably AJ Jacobs, and the heart of the text doesn't completely make-up for the format's limitations, but still, it's an easygoing, even compelling study of what makes a "bad" film and what makes a truly terrible film, told with enthusiasm by the likable Adams.

If I don't freeze to death, I'll finish that one today. Then it's back on kids' upcoming releases. There's a new one coming out by Esperanza Rising author Pam Munoz Ryan that I've got to check out, and several from Random House that look great. I also might give Scott Westerfield's Leviathan a shot. I've been in a bit of a steampunk mood, ever since discovering this fantastic Etsy shop, but because I'd have to finish The Court of the Air to read its just released follow-up, maybe I'll stick with the new Westerfield.

And of course, there's always book #2 in the Shelf Discovery Reading Challenge. Oh, and I have to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid before Mother-Daughter Book Club on Thursday.

So much to read, so little time, so little heat. Let's hope that gets fixed soon.