I stayed up WAY too late last night study­ing pro­gram­ming. Yes, for fun. That’s my idea of fun, any­way. I’ve been yawn­ing all day as a result, and I should already be in bed tonight because I need to be up ear­ly tomor­row. So this will be brief.

I’ve been enjoy­ing cor­re­spon­dence with a dear old friend over the last few days. Isn’t love­ly how, with some peo­ple, you can be out of touch for a decade and pick right up where you left off as if no time at all had passed?

I got to vis­it both a book­store and a library today. I’m a hap­py bib­lio­phile 🙂

Plinky asked, “When was the last time you vis­it­ed a library?”

Library books.

About a month ago, when I renewed my Gwin­nett Coun­ty library card so I could check out dig­i­tal items from that library. Dekalb Coun­ty’s library does­n’t have e‑books yet, and they make up 99% of my book read­ing habits these days.

I adore libraries. I have good mem­o­ries of them that go back to being 5 years old or so and vis­it­ing a Cobb Coun­ty library branch that had a play­ground as well as a good chil­dren’s sec­tion. Mom was will­ing to take us there pret­ty fre­quent­ly over the next three years, since the books kept me busy and the play­ground kept my sis­ter, and even­tu­al­ly my broth­er, busy.

One of the first things I do when mov­ing to a new place is find the clos­est library and get a card. Any time I see a new library, I want to stop, even if I can’t get a card. I’m just curi­ous as to what THIS one will hold, what it’s like inside. I adore the peace and qui­et, the rev­er­ence for learn­ing in libraries. They’re love­ly retreats, but most could use more com­fy chairs.

Plinky asked, “If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell? Food? Cloth­ing? Books?”

Book­store (IBC)

Books and needle­work items! My for­mer part­ner and I used to dream about open­ing a com­bi­na­tion book/stitching/gaming/coffee shop.

Of course, inde­pen­dent book­stores are near­ly dead, and even Bor­ders is dead now thanks to Ama­zon.

Lit­tle needle­work shops have almost total­ly dis­ap­peared, because they can’t com­pete with the prices Michael’s and Joann Crafts can offer, or pro­vide the same range of prod­ucts that inter­net shops can pro­vide.

I’d need a part­ner to run the gam­ing side, and I doubt there’s a whole lot of prof­it for that. The one gam­ing shop I ever vis­it­ed reg­u­lar­ly was The War­room in Nor­cross, and it is long gone. The peo­ple who ran that place cer­tain­ly seemed to know what they were doing.

Cof­fee shops have to com­pete with Star­bucks, but that part was less for itself than as an adjunct to the rest. They only seem to have any hope of suc­cess if they have some kind of spe­cial draw, like live music (which I love any­way)

We talked about com­bin­ing our pas­sions know­ing that any one of those things would­n’t stand alone, and think­ing that per­haps they could make it in com­bi­na­tion.

We knew it was a dream, though — just a dream, noth­ing more. It would take a lot of cap­i­tal to even start such a thing, much less keep it going. Then there was the lit­tle mat­ter of me being 1) dis­abled, and not up to work­ing even a part-time job, much less putting in the hours it takes to mak­ing a go of a small busi­ness; and 2) an intro­vert who does­n’t deal with a lot of peo­ple well.

It’s good to have dreams, though.

Ghost Sto­ry: A Nov­el of the Dres­den Files by Jim Butch­er
My rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars

Of course I (along with all Jim Butch­er’s oth­er fans) have been absolute­ly dying to read this book ever since fin­ish­ing Changes. Sam Chupp and I have been talk­ing about how there could pos­si­bly be anoth­er book that occurs after Dres­den’s death. Of course, the novel­la includ­ed in Side Jobs: Sto­ries From the Dres­den Files was very good and got along quite well with­out Dres­den, but that prob­a­bly was­n’t going to work for an entire nov­el.

Sam has­n’t even start­ed Ghost Sto­ry yet, so I can’t gloat at home. I was actu­al­ly right in some of my spec­u­la­tion! I’m being non-spe­cif­ic so as to not give too much away, even though I am hid­ing this review behind spoil­er warn­ings on GoodReads in case he does read it and remem­ber what I had said (which is high­ly doubt­ful). But I feel like brag­ging some­where, so you, dear read­ers, have to put up with it.

Jim Butch­er deserves major praise. Ghost Sto­ry is amaz­ing. Dres­den has become such a pow­er­ful wiz­ard that few ene­mies are tru­ly a chal­lenge, and wip­ing out the entire Red Court with one spell was an amaz­ing feat. What do you do for an encore to that? Hav­ing Dres­den imma­te­r­i­al and oper­at­ing with­out mag­ic does seri­ous­ly push him, and that makes for a fas­ci­nat­ing tale. Being able to keep a series fresh in its thir­teenth vol­ume says a lot for Butcher’s tal­ent. I think Ghost Sto­ry is the best Dres­den Files book yet, and I’m look­ing for­ward to book four­teen even more!

View all my reviews

Katie seems to be feel­ing a bit bet­ter. She slept through most of the day, and just got up a few min­utes ago (right at the end of my and Sam’s date) feel­ing like she could eat some­thing. Sol­id food, even! That’s progress. Since she did­n’t have any antivi­rals, I don’t think this was real­ly the flu. She should still be much sick­er if it was. I’m not at all unhap­py about that.

ETA: This oth­er­wise cryp­tic post was a response to a Plinky prompt that asked what book I’d take if I were called to jury duty today. I can’t imag­ine why their “share with blog” func­tion does­n’t include the prompt!

I would­n’t wor­ry too much, as I can be fair­ly sure that I’ll nev­er be PICKED for jury duty. Last time, they asked, “Does any­body here have any prob­lem with uphold­ing ANY law?” I said yes (there are some real­ly stu­pid laws on the books!) and was imme­di­ate­ly dis­missed.

Part­ners in Neces­si­ty is long, and it’s good “com­fort read­ing” for me (one of the few books I ever re-read).

If I were ever actu­al­ly put on a jury, though, I don’t think I could pos­si­bly car­ry enough books with me unless I had a Kin­dle.

Um, I’m want­i­ng some­thing to read, and the libraries are being very slow about ful­fill­ing my hold requests, so I’m look­ing for old stuff that’s good and prob­a­bly on the library shelf just wait­ing to be loved. I think I might try some Jane Austen, as I recent­ly real­ized that I nev­er have, but the excerpts I’ve seen are wit­ti­er than I expect­ed. I’m not fond of romances or “chick lit” or such things, which is where I’ve place her books.¹

If I’m going to try them, where should I start? Any oth­er authors/books you think I should try?

I don’t care to read doom-filled, depress­ing sto­ries. There’s enough of that in the real world, and I can always go look at the news. I want to read about smart, like­able peo­ple doing inter­est­ing things while ban­ter­ing wit­ti­ly. Humor is impor­tant, but goofy slap­stick non­sense loos­es me. I HATE HATE HATE “do some­thing obvi­ous­ly stu­pid, try to get out of the result­ing mess” plots.

I’ve read Lois McMas­ter Bujold, thanks 🙂 Well, all the Vorkosi­gan uni­verse stuff, any­way. Her fan­ta­sy books have nev­er inter­est­ed me, for some odd rea­son.

Thank you 🙂

I had a pain doc­tor appoint­ment last week, but was­n’t up to going. So Sam resched­uled it for me, and I head­ed across town today.

Appar­ent­ly this was the day for “fit­ting in” every­body who has can­celed an appoint­ment in the last God­dess-knows-how-long, because I arrived to find no park­ing (even on the street in front of the prac­tice). Patience was reward­ed, and I got a spot that opened up as some­one left, and was still 20 min­utes ear­ly for my appoint­ment.

I was seen short­ly before the woman who came in after me, after stop­ping to glare at me from her street­side park­ing space (hey, it was­n’t as if she had been in the lot wait­ing or any­thing!). Her appoint­ment was actu­al­ly 15 min­utes before mine, so I have no idea why they saw me first.

Still, I was very glad to have my a back-up ebook on my PDA, because it took over 2 hours to get out of there. They usu­al­ly run absolute­ly on-time, so I only had one “nor­mal” book with me, and I fin­ished it.¹ That office is always so over­heat­ed, so I was real­ly dozy by the time I left.

Sam and I agreed that I had no busi­ness dri­ving very far, so I got some fruit and water and went to his work­place. I had a brief nap, then he was off work and we were off to fill my pre­scrip­tions. We com­mit­ted naugh­ti­ness by grab­bing piz­za for din­ner, but it was yum­my naugh­ti­ness.

This is the man’s “Old Farts” gam­ing night, when he meets up with some of his bud­dies and they play what­ev­er they can agree on. The girl is going out with friends to see Watch­men (again), so I think I may be going to bed ear­ly.

First, I need to close some tabs in my brows­er, but I want­ed to share the links with you! (You’re SO lucky!)

Elf Detec­tion 101: How to find the hid­den folk of Ice­land.
Read the sto­ries on the Neb­u­la bal­lot!
It’s Read An eBook Week! So cel­e­brate by down­load­ing some of the free eBooks list­ed on their site 🙂

Like urban fan­ta­sy? Want to win a $25 gift cer­tifi­cate? Go vote in the Urban Fan­ta­sy Land Read­ers’ Choice Awards, then post a link from your own blog/site.¹

More specif­i­cal­ly (I hope), some­thing in it. Not Sam, hap­pi­ly, but every time I go in there, I’m all stuffed up with­in a few min­utes.

We keep that room closed and have a win­dow a/c unit in there, because the house a/c just does­n’t keep up so well.¹ I’m won­der­ing if there’s some­thing about the air not cir­cu­lat­ing to the rest of the house that’s caus­ing dust to set­tle in there?

The cat is sel­dom allowed in the room at all, and we don’t have any oth­er pets. There aren’t any plants in the room.

We haven’t been using the air clean­ers, because I can only get their fil­ters by mail-order and just did­n’t get around to get­ting new ones. I guess I need to order them and see if that helps.

Bah.

In nicer news, the girl and I went to the nice library today. I had gone through my “to-read” shelf at Good Reads and request­ed a bunch of books. More of them than I expect­ed came through all at one time, where­upon I learned that they allow a max­i­mum of 75 books to be checked out at once. Whoops! I had to put two back.

I have plen­ty to read now, though!