FolioFiles

Mondays have a terrible reputation, and it’s not entirely fair… but at the same time? It’s Monday’s fault that my weekend is over. So how can I be anything but a bit resentful?

At any rate, it’s been another big week since the Readathon, with lots of planning and hoping and planning some more. I’ve officially become a fan of Lost, and we’re about halfway through the first season, maybe a bit further? on DVD and streaming Netflix. If you have a Wii, PS3, or Xbox (I think), you must request the disc to stream from your TV; it makes Instant Play a whole new feature, I swear. In the world of reading, I’ve got three books “actively” in progress, with two others in not-quite-abandoned states of partly-read, and still haven’t made my way over to my catalog to finalize all of the owned/lost/new since summer additions and tags. But, the weather is finally allowing for some fire pit action in the back yard, the beach is beckoning, and it’s baseball season! The Red Sox are playing crap baseball, but they only have one day off in the rest of April, so we caved and paid for MLB TV and watched them this weekend. We also managed to get some sightseeing in with a dear friend visiting from Chicago yesterday, and took lots and lots of pictures; tourist days are fun!

How’s everyone’s week kicking off? Anyone else do anything fun this weekend?

I am so fortunate to live in a city with so many independent bookstores still in business. I could probably name off ten before I’d have to stop and think, but my favorite by far is Dog Eared Books on Valencia Street in San Francisco, along with Red Hill and Phoenix, its sister stores in Bernal Heights and Noe Valley, respectively. Between the three, I have hardly ever been at a loss for a book I’ve wanted or needed, and the used prices can’t be beat anywhere except at thrift stores. They also hold events at all three locations, which I’m hoping to take advantage of with Rachel this summer; yayyyy, bookish adventures!

For this mini-challenge, we were asked for the first book we ever truly loved. This is such a hard one for me, as I have loved books for truly as far back as I can remember. The earliest, though, was probably a Little Golden Book, and the one that comes to mind first is The Poky Little Puppy. I’d go with either that or The Monster at the End of This Book, which popped into my head fractions of a second later. Both are books I’ve repurchased as an adult; regardless of whether we ever have a family of our own, I want to own them :)

This was a simple challenge for me, though I hate to spoil part of the story for anyone, soooooo, I’m only going to post the cover here, and will put details of who and why in the comments. If you’ve not read Tipping the Velvet, I recommend you DO read the book, and do NOT yet read the comment(s) on this post! :)

For the cover mini-challenge, here are my selections:

Scary:

Serial Killers by Brian Innes

Disturbing:

Sniper by Pavel Hak

Beautiful:

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Vibrant:

Fablehaven – Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

Moving:

Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity

I think they’re mainly self-explanatory, though the last one is probably unfamiliar to most, if not all, of you. It’s moving because of the profound impact some of the pieces in the anthology had on me, both the first time reading it about six years ago, and this most recent time last year.

Just a quick check-in post; I can’t believe it’s already 3pm! Rachel’s on movie #5, and I’m about a hundred pages into my second book, Gathering Blue. We’ve been snacking since breakfast and are about to do frozen pizza for lunch, which will hopefully give us a bit of pep rather than making us feel sluggish :) She’s been doing curls with the free weights every so often, and I’ve done leg lifts and crunches while reading in the bedroom (except when Xander jumped up and got all comfy on my tummy; I know he would have been a bit put out if my knees kept coming at him).

I think I hear the timer on the oven – lunch time! Be back in a bit with the latest readathon progress :)

I remember this challenge from last fall, and so almost didn’t even think about participating this time around; as the host says, you can spend ages agonizing over it if something doesn’t jump out right away. This time, though, the first two were on my stack, and the other sort of stuck out directly in my line of sight on my shelves, so here’s my contribution!

“I am the messenger, gathering blue tales of the city.”

And now, back to my book, for real this time!

Just a quick update; I’m about a third of the way through Magical Thinking, which has proven to be a great first read, and Rachel’s on to movie number two. She just took a break to put breakfast together for us, as we were both getting a little rumbly in the tumbly :) The end result? Amazing bagel sandwichy goodness.

Bagel, egg, bacon, and muenster for me, swiss for my girlfriend (hers will be the actual “sandwich” – I’m doing mine open-faced so it’s easier to eat while reading :) SO GOOD. And now, back to reading :) Hope you’re all having a great time!

The second mini challenge is about our kickoff strategy – what we’ve got set up to make the start of the readathon cozy and well-stocked for the first few hours’ reading. We prepared a pot of coffee last night so all I had to do this morning was hit brew, and Rachel will be making breakfast sandwiches after the end of her first movie. We’re starting the day curled up on the couch; see that lil spot in the crook of her arm? That’s all mine :)

The picture links to Rachel’s movie blog, which she’ll be updating throughout the day with reviews of the films she watches over the 24 hours of the readathon. And now, I’m only 20 pages into my first book; must stop getting distracted by the movie and get to it! Happy reading, all!