Earlier this year, I talked about cleaning out my bookshelf.
It hasn't gone very well.
Yes, I've been reading, but not necessarily the things I'm supposed to be reading. I did start with my bookshelf, and then I decided I wanted to read all the Harry Potter books, from one to seven, in one go. Those were still at my parents' house, so the next time I went home, I brought them back with me. Going through my mom's bookcase to extract the Harry Potter books, however, I discovered a couple more of my books that had migrated and hadn't made the move with me. So those came back home with me as well, along with some books she had picked up that she thought I might enjoy.
Then a friend lent me P.S. I Love You. She's borrowed a handful of my books and still has them, months later, which I'm fine with, but I wanted to read P.S. and get it back to her.
The other thing about living in Lloyd is that if you can prove residency, you get a free library card. For the past couple of years, I've been using a TAL card — Total Alberta Library card — which gives me free access to any library in Alberta, but only allows me five books. I used to cheat the system a bit; I would get five books from Edmonton's libraries and then go out to St. A to get another five. This worked out OK, usually there were a couple of duds in my 10-book pile I wouldn't get through in a week and a bit (going to the library nearly every Saturday was part of my summer weekend ritual).
So I thought this would be great, having a free library card. The problem is there is no five-book limit, so I've been taking out a lot of books, more than I can read in a week. Not to mention if I'm reading library books, I'm not reading the ones on my shelf.
And there's also Twitter. I've mentioned before that I would really appreciate it if people ignored my favourites list — right now it's a mix of things I want to read later, things I have read and want to save but have no other place to save them, and tweets I've saved for later use in the online paper.
So even though I had a couple of things to do today, I've spent a lot of it on my couch, reading. My Twitter favourites nearly hit 200 recently, and while I cleaned that out last week, it's creeping up again, so I cleaned it out, again. Following is a list and links of what I'm reading. :)
(Note: these are the good links. Links I'd favourited on Twitter and have since read and decided are not worth anyone else's time are not included.)
Hamlet of Hairy Hill fading slowly into Alberta's past — I love rural stories, and the photographs that accompany them. Slowly, I'm also learning to love living in a rural community.
How many ingredients are there in a McDonald's McRib sandwich — All I have to say is, I'm so glad I'm a vegetarian.
Ten Edmonton haunts to put you in the Halloween spirit — I know Halloween is over, but I love Edmonton's history; I think they've done a much better job of keeping it alive than Calgary, and one of these times, I'm going to go on the cemetery and/or ghost tours that they offer (to be fair, I haven't been on any tours like that in Calgary either).
Linguist tries to rescue language — a quick, interesting read.
The crash, the boys and the game (and part two) — be warned, I cried reading both links. That probably has to do more with the fact some stuff has happened in my life recently and I'm the girl who now can't get through anything remotely sad without smudging her mascara, but still. Also, when I saw the news of this when I was in Edmonton, being a journalist, my first thought was, 'I know someone at the paper in GP.'
Taming the devils, demons and pumpkins — a very long read and not very succinct, but the message behind it is still very interesting and a good debate.
David Carr: The news diet of a media omnivore — I love poking around other journalists' brains, and this is a very fun read.
Sense of place, Edmonton — more than anything, I like the digital interactivity that it would have taken to put this project together. I really like Edmonton, but I'm discovering that the places I like, I always go back to. When I lived there, my usual haunts used to take me through Old Strathcona, Whyte Avenue, Jasper Avenue and the river valley. My running route used to take me through what I guess is kind of the south, southwest portion of the Oliver neighbourhood, but I went up to 124 and 106 (which looks like it's actually in Westmount or Queen Mary Park, even though I saw signs for the Oliver pool?) last time I was in Edmonton, looking for a shop someone had told me about, and found a whole different part of Edmonton that I really liked. So I like the city, but I think there's more that I could find to like about it, which is why seeing some of these pictures is cool.
The Second Second Date Story — a pretty quick (and cute) Longread.
The state of copy editing and how it affects writers — a roundup of copy editing talk, all pretty short, but with some linguistics thrown in there too. Kind of interesting.
Line editing, a guide — I actually found this through another tweet I had favourited that turned out to be not what I thought it would be. But I kept clicking on internal links at the bottom of the page, and found this.
There are more favourited tweets, but those are the most recent ones I had to sort through. I do this pretty regularly, as the editorial staff also has to list some of their favourite links for the online paper each week. (They're scattered throughout the paper, every paper, if you're looking for some more interesting reads, links and videos.)
In more tangible form, this is what I've gotten through that is staying on my bookshelf:
-Something Remains
-Crow Lake
-The Farther You Run
-He's Just Not that Into You
-Scribbler of Dreams
-The Lottery
-If…
-Jude
-From Anna
-Listen for the Singing
-Plain Truth
-House Rules
-Rainbow Boys
-Story Building (textbook from school that we used in profiles class)
-All seven Harry Potters
-My Posse Don't Do Homework
I also read Gordon Korman's No Coins Please, which is in the "donate" pile, but I'm thinking of moving it to the "maybe donate" pile — I mean, yes it's a kids' book (but so are some of the other books I've listed above) and it's a simple read, but it's Gordon Korman.
I'm in the middle of reading Wish You Were Here, which I picked up last year at the Winston Churchill Square during EPL's summer book sale, and will most likely go back into the donate pile, and the Great Typo Hunt, which is great once you get into it, but I've put it down and need to get back into it (that will be another blog post entirely when I'm done reading it).
This all of course, doesn't include the library books I've been reading. And I know my friend has books I want to borrow, but there's so many books and so little time. So if you've got reading suggestions for me, leave them here. I'll get to them….eventually.
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