Sunday Salon: Hello, Bosch

-
The Sunday Salon.comSundays that follow Saturdays when I work the reference desk are the best, most restful Sundays. And today is one of those blessed Sundays.

Reading
After work yesterday I started The Black Echo, the first mystery in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch police procedural series. Friday night I watched the Amazon pilot for Bosch, and I really liked it. I'm often intimidated by long-running series, but so many people have raved about these over the years, I impulsively bought the first six Bosch novels in Kindle bundles when they were on sale....four years ago. At least I'm finally getting to them!

One of the big changes I made when I found out I was pregnant was cutting way back on review books with specific dates. I wanted to spend these last few childless months reading whatever struck my fancy. I'm really enjoying this freedom to read, and I'm actually reading more. I'm currently three books ahead of my two-book-a-week goal pace. It's also opened up the time to tackle a long-running series like Michael Connelly's, in which there are currently eighteen titles. I'm still reading plenty of review books, but I am loving the freedom to read the ones I want to read most when I want to read them.

Watching
I'm still marveling about how good Short Term 12 was. It's a film I hope finds a much larger audience because it's one of the best I've seen in years. Take the time to watch it, and then come talk to me about it! My devotion to it has kept me from wanting to much other serious films, but I'll have more film reviews later this week.

Life
Mr. Nomadreader and I celebrated our eighth and fourth anniversaries Friday. We got married on our fourth anniversary, and I still can't quite believe we've now been married longer than we were together before we got married. Celebrating while pregnant was certainly poignant, even though the actual celebration is still to come. We don't buy each other birthday or anniversary presents. Instead, we do what we love best: travel, eat, and drink. We haven't been able to take a trip for our anniversary each year for the past few years, but we do still go out for a fancy dinner and drink a lot of wine and martinis. Obviously, there won't be much drinking this year, but I'm still looking forward to dinner at one of my favorite Des Moines restaurants this week.

Pregnancy
I'm officially in my second trimester! This week I woke up before my alarm more than once, which means I'm sleeping only nine or ten hours night. More importantly, I don't feel like a zombie who is only sleeping four hours a night, even though I'm sleeping twelve. Of course, I also had my first night where I had problems getting comfortable because of my growing belly. As everyone has said to me, as soon as you celebrate the disappearance of one pregnancy system, another one is there to take its place. I'm also eating the portions of a normal person again. One of the things I've missed most is breakfast, as my stomach was most irate in the mornings. I'm used to having bacon and eggs every morning, and I really hope I can get back into that habit this week.

The blog
I seem to have fallen into the habit of blogging every day. I'm not entirely sure how long it will last, but I still have thirteen read but unreviewed books and three films to review, so there's enough content for at least the rest of the month. I also am not informally scheduling reviews. I try to review things as close to the release date as possible, but if I sit down to write a review and don't have much to say, I'm giving myself the freedom to sit on it for a few days. This year is definitely teaching me a valuable lesson: being more relaxed about blogging actually has me reading, watching films, and blogging more.

The rest of today
After I finish this post and write a review for tomorrow, I'm making bacon and eggs for a late breakfast. Then I'm snuggling in with Harry Bosch for the rest of the morning and afternoon until Mr. Nomadreader gets home from work.

Now tell me: what are you reading today?
As an affiliate, I receive a small commission when you make a purchase through any of the above links. Thank you for helping to support my book habits that bring more content to this blog!

Comments

  1. BooksnycFebruary 9, 2014 at 3:39 PM

    Glad you are feeling better - there is nothing worse than overwhelming fatigue. I used to read the Bosch series but stopped (no idea now why) at some point along the way - thanks for the reminder about the series!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Happy reading!

Popular posts from this blog

book review: A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

-
Image
The backstory: A Dangerous Place  is the eleventh historical mystery featuring Maisie Dobbs. My reviews of the other eleven (plus Winspear's stand alone historical novel) are in my Book Review Database . The basics: Set four years after the last Maisie Dobbs novel, Leaving Everything Most Loved , in A Dangerous Place , we meet up with Maisie in Gibraltar in 1927 during the Spanish Civil War. She gets off her England-bound ship in Gibraltar because she's not quite ready to return. Note: this review contains spoilers about what happened in those four years of Maisie's life between books, all of which are revealed in this novel's first thirty pages.  My thoughts: Sunday I wrote about the Maisie Mail I received. These postcards appear in the book itself, along with many others. After setting the stage in Gibraltar in the opening pages (Maisie stumbles upon a dead body), Winspear recounts the last four years of Maisie's life in the form of postcards, letters, an...
Read more

book review: Run by Ann Patchett

-
Image
The backstory: After loving State of Wonder  ( my review ), I set out to read all of Ann Patchett's books. The basics: Run  is the story of the Doyle family: Bernard, an Irish Catholic ex-mayor of Boston, his deceased wife Bernadette, their adult son Sullivan, and their two adopted college ages sons, Tip and Teddy, who are biological brothers. My thoughts: I'm beginning to think Ann Patchett is my soul sister. Her writing reaches me deeply, and I've adored everything she's written. It was a special treat to read Run , the novel of hers I knew the least about going in. Although I had the framework of two of her novels and one memoir, I didn't know what to expect. Run  isn't as universally loved as some of her other works, so I was particularly curious to see how it measured up. Admittedly, Run  started off slowly for me. It took two chapters to really get into the heart of the story, but once it happened, I was hooked. One of the things I love most about ...
Read more

book review: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

-
Image
The backstory: Gilead  won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2006. The basics: As Rev. Ames nears the end of his life in the 1950's, he begins a letter to his young son because Ames realizes his son is too young to really know him. Gilead  is that letter. My thoughts: Gilead  is a novel I'm been meaning to read for years. It's a character-driven, Midwestern narrative by one of our best contemporary writers. It should be a novel I love, yet I struggled to finish it and admit I was wowed by neither the story nor the writing. Gilead  seemed almost stream-of-consciousness at first. I appreciated that Robinson jumped right in: this novel is a letter from father to son; the reader's ignorance of these two characters is not the focus. As the novel progressed, more details began to be filled in, and the reader begins to understand the characters, setting and purpose. I enjoyed the ...
Read more