I’ve been thinking a lot about the connection between books, movies, and television this weekend.
I got started when I started watching the TV show Parenthood, which I just recently found on Netflix Instant. A couple of the early episodes of the first season have a small sub-plot connected to William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury – there’s a plagiarized essay about the story and a cute scene where one of the characters (Sarah, played by Lauren Graham [aka Lorelei Gilmore on Gilmore Girls]) starts dating an English teacher who also loves the book.
September was a slow, slow reading month around these parts. And I started out so optimistic about my reading plans, too. I started the month with a list of nine books I was hoping to get read. I actually got through six books this month, which is not nearly the pace I was hoping for. Only three of them were books from my possible list (those in bold), but that’s ok — to do lists were meant to be ignored!
Yesterday, I finally finished a book. And then I started and finished a second book. It was a good book day.
Finishing a book shouldn’t be an exciting occurrence for a book blogger, but it was a big deal for me since I hasn’t finished a book since I read The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach over Labor Day weekend. I went 12 full days without actually finishing a book, which is entirely out of character. It’s not that I wasn’t reading. In fact, it felt like I was reading quite a lot. But I was also switching books constantly because I couldn’t quite get into anything I was reading.
I was going to do a Sunday Salon post about how I didn’t do any reading this week and setting some personal reading resolutions. But I started watching a live stream of the September 11 ceremony in New York City and now it just feels strange to do that.
Florinda (The 3rs Blog) wrote a lovely TSS post today about how September 11 reminds us of how important it is to connect with others, which is true. It’s not a day I ever want to spend by myself, or one where I don’t want to take some time to see how other people are remembering, reflecting, and honoring others.
Since August is three-fourths of the way through the year, it makes sense to do some bookish stats updates. But instead of doing and entire breakdown of genre, book source, author gender, year, and everything else, I just want to look at something I’ve been curious about: my ratio of fiction to nonfiction and how that’s changed through the year.
At the end of August, I’d read 74 books total. That puts me on pace to read 100 books this year. It’s above where I was last year at this time (72 books), but in 2010 I ended up reading 109 books total. So if past trends continue, my reading could speed up in the fall and put me over the 100 books for the year mark.
As promised, I finally have enough of my stuff put away that I can show off some pictures of my new library/office in our house. The photo above is a view of the living room while standing on the stairs to the second floor. The front door is to the left, and my library is to the right. You can see one of my bookcases right behind my awesome reading chair.
Sophisticated Dorkiness is now officially coming to you from small town Minnesota.
Things have been quiet around here for the last several days because Boyfriend and I — with the help of family and many great friends — were in the process of moving 425 miles with a U-Haul full of stuff and one cranky cat. We left Madison on Wednesday, arrived at our new home on Thursday, and have been settling in ever since.
Thank you for hanging in there with me while blogging takes a back seat to major life changes. I don’t like putting the blog on hiatus, but I just can’t seem to find the inspiration to puts words together, and I’d rather not post than post things that aren’t good.
It seems like everything in life has become a numbers game… how many days until X, how much will Y cost, how far until we get to Z? In that sense, here’s some of what my life has been like lately…
So, I have some big news: I took a new job. In about three weeks Boyfriend and I will be moving nine hours away so I can take it. It feels enormously big and terrifying and exciting and awesome all at the same time.
The job is to be the editor of the newspaper in the town where I went to college, Morris, MN. I was actually living in Morris when I started this blog about three years ago, but shortly after moved to Madison to start grad school. I went to grad school in order to get a job exactly like this one, so this new job is a great opportunity for me. I know this is a job that I can do really well, and I can’t wait to get started. On the other hand, I love Madison and am going to be really sad to leave here. Emotionally, I’ve been up and down about everything all week, but mostly up 
Oh, Sunday, here you are again. While I’m happy to be here at my computer, drinking tea and eating cherries (well worth the $9 I spent on them at the grocery store yesterday), I’d rather be where I was last Sunday about this time — sitting on a beach chair with a book and a view of the lake.
I spent last weekend at my family’s cabin for the fourth of July, and it was awesome. I finished three books over the four-day trip, went swimming, ate delicious food, and got to spend an entire afternoon cruising around the lake on a boat, alcoholic beverage in hand.
