What I've Been Reading...Books!

Since I have the tendency to go through books at an alarming rate, I am always borrowing ones from Erin. Most recently she got me started on the George R.R. Martin series, A Song of Ice and Fire. It was a little mind boggling at first thanks to the 9 million characters. I spent the first 50 pages of the first book, A Game of Thrones, going "wait...who the hell is that??". It doesn't help that each chapter is from a different character's perspective and that there are several characters with similar sounding names.

I was complaining about it to a friend who is also reading the books and said, "you know it would really help if they had some sort of chart or detailed descriptions in the back explaining all of this..." He said, "oh, mine does, but I have a hardcover, maybe the paperback is different.." so I complained some more about the fact that the paperback readers got shafted. Three days later the book happened to fall open to a page near the back that had pages and pages of descriptions of EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN THE BOOK. Um, yeah.

Note to self: next time, don't just look at the very last page in the book. It might just be the chapter from the next book in the series. But before that, there might be an entire appendix explaining all of the characters just to make you look like an idiot.

I borrowed the first three books from Erin a few months ago, and I am almost done with the second, A Clash of Kings. I don't read nearly as much as I used to, but Monday nights and Saturday mornings have become my reading times. On Monday nights Anthony likes to do this terrible thing to torture me. Something that makes me question why in the hell I ever wanted to date him in the first place. He likes STAR TREK. (shudders) And not even the old cheesy ones with Patrick Stewart, a man who manages to bring a bit of class to even the dorkiness that is Star Trek. Anthony is such a big geek that he watches the new Star Trek. Oh the horror. Since I actually do like him for some strange reason, and throttling him with my bare hands or throwing heavy objects through his large and expensive TV in a Star Trek induced rage aren't really good options...

I escape upstairs to the bedroom to read on the bed and snuggle one of the cats. Or to the bathroom where I draw a nice bubble bath, light a few candles and drink tea while I read. Usually also accompanied by a cat dipping his paws into the water and shaking them off, in order to fling as much water as possible all over the bathroom. The most recent bath also involved Ra climbing onto the few square inches of my chest that weren't submerged in the water and balancing there for no apparent reason. And people wonder why I don't want children. All I have to say is there is no way I am willing to give up my uninterrupted reading and bath time. The cat can always be locked out of the bathroom and left to fend for himself.

On Saturday mornings I get up at my usual time (9am) and come downstairs to curl up on the couch to read for an hour or so while Anthony sleeps in. Once it's finally warm out I will probably go out to the screened in porch, or the deck or the balcony off the bedroom to read. We don't have a single bit of furniture for any of those spaces yet. But I do having a hanging basket chair at my parents' house that will probably go on the porch. Eventually all three places will be nice little retreats for me to read on. I have a vision in my head of the porch with linen curtains billowing in a breeze and the basket chair with a comfy cushion to curl up in while I drink iced tea and listen to the splashing of my fountain. I want to sit on the balcony at a bistro table sipping coffee made in my French Press while I read. I want to lay on a nice fluffy beach towel on the deck reading for a few hours, moving only to stay out of the sun. After all, what self respecting bookworm like myself would be caught dead tanning. I like my pasty whiteness thankyouverymuch. After all, the light reflecting onto the pages from my face make it SO much easier to read...