What are you reading?

I have no idea how many books I've read in my lifetime. Hundreds, maybe thousands? Who knows. I probably have over a hundred sitting on bookshelves at home, all but a small pile of them finished (the rest are in the queue). No, I retract that. My husband has a good number as well, and there are plenty of his that are not in my list of books to read. We have overlapping taste in fiction, but his taste in Sci-Fi/Fantasy is sometimes a little (or a lot) darker than mine. I may get to them in time, though.

I am going to attempt to track for the year what all I'm reading. I've not done this since probably middle school when the recommended book lists were always full of things that I'd finished in elementary school, while I was raiding my mom's bookshelves, hiding some of the off-limits ones under my bed or in desk drawers so she didn't know I was reading them (sorry Mom!). Anyway, it ought to be interesting at the end of the year to review what all I've read. Children's books do not count (though some of the Spanish-language ones I read fall into the juvenile category..but they don't have pictures!). Cookbooks also will not count (though some of mine are more general non-fiction than just recipes--I'll make a judgement call if one like that comes up!).

I will read just about genre of fiction, with only a few exceptions of authors or books that I am not interested enough to finish. I'm not such a big fan of nonfiction, unless it covers something that I'm really interested in. Otherwise it feels like writing a reasearch paper. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain was a great read--one of the few non-fiction books I've truly enjoyed.

Here's the start of my list for 2008:

Recently Finished:
World Without End by Ken Follet.

In Progress:

• Goodnight Nobody, by Jennifer Weiner


• Ciudad de las Bestias (City of the Beasts) by Isabel Allende--this one is temporarily halted as my copy is defective. A chunk of pages in the middle has been replaced by a duplicate of later pages. I.e. the pages go 1..79 to 279..3xx back to115...to the end (repeating the 279... section). Must remember to call/write the publisher and see if they're willing to send me the missing section or something.


• Children of Hurin by JRR Tolkein. I've stopped on this one for now, can't get into it.

I will have to list my upcoming ones later--I can only remember 2 or 3 of my pile!

Suggestions and comments are welcome

Dust bunnies

I have listed my first ever (two first ever) auctions on Ebay. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. More ambivalence than anything else.

I'm not attempting to make a career out of this or anything silly, just clean out some closets. I have nearly 6 years worth of a sewing magazine called Burda sitting in my office/sewing room/blackhole that I am hoping to find a good home for. The magazine is really neat--published in Germany (they print it in a bunch of languages, mine are in English), it's a fashion magazine that includes the patterns for dozens of items featured in the magazine. The clothes are always a bit fashion forward and the pictures are georgous, and the magazine is full of neat articles on travel and various people in the fashion industry (not necessarily the ones we'd hear about on our side of the pond either). A subscription costs something like $60 a year, but each magazne has 30-50 different sewing patterns in it.

I loved reading these things every month when they would come, but only attempted a small handfull of items from them. Mostly they were full of beautiful designs that were horribly impractical for my lifestyle--lots and lots of tailored jackets and trousers and dressy separates that would have looked comical in several of my jobsites (which are generally full of frumpy men in jeans or ancient khaki pants, one of them where we all wore shorts and sandals).

Anyway, enough of the sales pitch. I do still like to sew, but have found precious little time for it since Charlotte was born (in fact, my last magazine is dated 5/04..3 months before she was born). It doesn't help that sewing machines make noise, and my sewing area shares a wall with her headboard, so basically I can't sew whenever she's asleep. There's no time in the day when she's awake that I can find more than about 30 seconds to do something childfree, and inviting small children to "help" in a hobby that involves tiny pins, needles, rotary cutters, tissue paper, and scissors is, shall we say, unadvisable. My sewing tables are currently the landing zone for whatever junk has been tossed in the office to be put away "later".

Long story short (too late!), I'm attempting to clean up my junk. I tossed my 10 year old dressmaker dummy (formed to my body out of duct tape, and displaying a waistline and bust that I won't see again in quite the same proportion without surgery) into this week's trash. I sorted all my magazines, and have listed '98 and '04 (both partial years...I only have 5 months of each) on Ebay. I hope they sell. I'm not expecting a positive return on my investment, but if I make $5 on each batch, I'll be ecstatic. I will list the other years once I see how this goes. I have a rickety chest of drawers crammed full of fabric that is going next--I intend to ask at daycare if they want any of it for crafts, otherwise I'll load the large pieces up and head them for goodwill (if they chuck it, I'll never know).

If anyone is crafty and wants any of this stuff, it's yours. I am certainly not getting rid of my machines or anything like that, just fabric and magazines that are collecting dust and reminding me of projects I never made.

For the curious, here are the links to my two auctions:

1998 Burda World of Fashion

2004 Burda World of Fashion

The Next 20 Years

I'm 30. Yes, I've been 30 for 9.5 months now, so it really shouldn't surprise anyone, especially not me. But most of the last 9.5 months have been spent worrying about other (much smaller) people, most especially Trystan, who sent me to the hospital on my 30th birthday with false labor (actually, real labor that sort of stalled out).

I have a few New Year's resolutions, but they're pretty predictable, and a lot boring. But, I realize lately that most of my bigger life goals have already come to pass: graduate college, career, house, marriage, kids. Now I need to come up with a few more things for my life's to-do list.

Here are a few things I would like accomplish by the time I turn 50:

• Get another college degree. I'm not sure in what yet. The easy choice here would be a Masters in Computer Science. Other options I've kicked around: Culinary school, art, maybe writing (that's the newest addition to the list).


• Learn another language well enough to read a book or newspaper un-translated. Verbal conversations are optional :) I started French once in college, but had no time to follow up. I had some trouble because I kept mixing up the French and Spanish, and I wasn't impressed with the teacher.


• Get my eyes fixed. Contacts suck. Glasses are annoying. Both are expensive, and rather dangerous to do without. Maybe this year or next...


• Do some genealogical research. Some of my relatives have done a bit, and maybe one of these days I will attempt to track down what they have, but I'd especially like to learn more about my paternal grandfather's family.



• Travel more. I haven't ever spent much time outside of the Midwest, and my list of things to see is extensive:
  
  • Latin America, all of it. Ok, that's silly. Just most of it. I loved visiting Teotihuacan and Chichen Itza. I'd love to see Machu Picchu, and any other ancient ruins I could get to.
  
  
  • Italy-at least Rome and Venice
  
  
  • France, at least Paris
  
  
  • Spain, basically all of it
  
  
  • UK, Ireland: London, Wales (my maiden name is Welsh, we think), Loch Ness, Stonehenge, Dublin, castles, more castles, more castles
  
  
  • US:
    
    • The northeast, any part. Except for about 36 hours in Boston for a job interview, I've not been closer than DC.
    
    
    • The giant sequoias
    
    
    • The Grand Canyon
    
    
    • The Pacific Ocean. I spent 2 or 3 days in Los Angelos interviewing at USC my senior year of high school, but I only saw the campus and the airport.
    
    
  
  

I will attempt to revisit this list at some point. It's a pretty tall order as it stands, given that we also have two children to raise to quasi-adulthood and send off to college over the next 20 years. Perhaps I should add "win the lottery" and "hire a staff" to the list.