1. Do my homework (I have an assignment due for Data Modeling and Design)
2. Finish Faithful Place
3. Start The Hunger Games
4. Exercise
5. Grocery store
6. Blah blah other boring things
7. Oh, also SLEEP

Aren’t I forgetting something? Oh, yeah.

8. GET MY NAILS DONE

How could I forget about that?  Something of such global importance?  Silly me.  I also don’t remember what the other boring things were (#6), so I’m considering them done.  But look how productive I was!  Homework, reading, and sleeping.  Good for me.  And the gym.  Better for me.  Poor John is still miserable (and he has to go to work today – poor John, indeed).  He spent most of the weekend resting.

I am going to finish The Hunger Games before I tackle the rest of my busy day.  OR…I could go to the store now and get my one chore out of the way early…  Decisions, decisions.

I spent the entire day in a tiny little room with my boss (plus an hour and a half each way in a car with her to get to that tiny little room).  I need some space.  I need some alone time.  And I need some sleep.

You know what’s awesome?  Tomorrow’s Friday and it’s the beginning of a three-day weekend!  You know what’s awesome-er than awesome?  The first season (well, the 2005 season) of Doctor Who arrived in the mail yesterday!  With extras and commentary and lots of hours of Doctor and Rose goodness.

Does anyone know where we can find the last season of Torchwood (the season set in the US) online?  It was on Netflix for a little while, but it’s gone now.

My plan for the weekend:

1. Do my homework (I have an assignment due for Data Modeling and Design)
2. Finish Faithful Place
3. Start The Hunger Games
4. Exercise
5. Grocery store
6. Blah blah other boring things
7. Oh, also SLEEP

John and I have finally decided to put our Kindle to a real test.  (He has downloaded a couple of free books, but I don’t know if he finished any of them.  I haven’t played with it at all.)  We keep hearing good things (or good enough things) about Stephen King’s latest book, and since we don’t have any overwhelming desire to own a hard copy of it, we’re going to buy the e-book.  And then possibly fight over who gets to read it first.  I might lose that fight, though.  I just started reading Faithful Place (Tana French – SO good), and I really like it, so I might not be available to start a new book for a little bit.  Life is hard.

Also hard – fighting off this cold or allergies or whatever the hell it is.  It’s annoying.  And I’ve discovered that, aside from the miseries of actually being allergic to, like, everything that has pollen or dust or mold, it’s super annoying when I can’t tell if I have an actual cold (in which case I’d stay inside and be miserable by myself so I don’t contaminate others) or if I’m just reacting to the ridiculous weather.  I mean, really, 60 degrees in January?  That’s crazy.  So if it’s just allergies (and I suspect it is since, aside from congestion and stuffiness and other uncomfortable things in my head, I feel fine – if only I could live without my head for a few days), I can tough it out and continue doing normal social things.  So I’m off to the gym.  If it turns out this is an actual cold, the gym will kill me and I’ll collapse into bed.  Good plan.

I finished reading Orson Scott Card’s Hidden Empire yesterday.  There are times when knowing more about an author makes reading their books more enjoyable.  There are times when knowing more about an author makes no difference whatsoever to how you feel about their books.  And there are times you wish you could unlearn things about an author because you were SO much happier reading those books before you knew what you know now.  Orson Scott Card falls into the third category for me.  In high school, when Randy badgered me into reading Ender’s Game (I have no idea why I needed badgering, but thank you for doing it), I didn’t know anything about him (OSC, not Randy).  I LOVED Ender’s Game.  I still really like it, and I like all the sequels.  I’ve read just about every novel OSC has written, and with the exception of the Homecoming series and maybe one or two others, I really liked them.  Later, I found out OSC was Mormon.  Not a big deal – an author’s religion is completely irrelevant to me.  Knowing that, though, made me notice that it comes through in his Alvin Maker series, but those books are still fantasy (alternate history with magic), and I like them.  His religion, his feelings about religion, come up sometimes, in some books, but they don’t get in the way of suspension of belief.  Usually.  Yes, one of Ender’s parents is Mormon and the other is Catholic and that’s why they want more than their allowed number of children and yes, the government in the book is painted as evil for hating religion (and other things).  It’s still part of the story, and when I first read it (the first few times I read it, probably), I didn’t see that plot point as anything other than a plot point.  I can still NOT view it as something planted by the author for a reason because it serves the story.  It helps that the vast majority of his books take place in the past or in the far future.

A few years ago, I found OSC’s website.  He writes a weekly column called “Uncle Orson Reviews Everything”, and for a long time, I enjoyed reading it.  At least, I enjoyed reading it when he was reviewing books and movies and restaurants and random products.  I like his writing style, and I’ve found that I like (and often love) books that he recommends.  Sometimes, he discusses politics and world events.  I can’t read him when he discusses politics and world events.  I see red.  He’s a Democrat who hates Democrats.  He thinks global warming is the left’s religion.  He – no, that’s not my point.  My point is that I know this about him now.  And I can still dismiss it when he’s writing science fiction or fantasy that takes place in the future or the past or in nothing resembling real life.  But Hidden Empire (and Empire, which came out a few years ago) takes place in the immediate future.  I don’t remember having as much a problem with Empire, but with Hidden Empire, I couldn’t go two pages without being hit over the head with his worldview.  Right, people who believe global warming is a problem secretly want a third of the world’s population to die.  Sure, only Christians would volunteer to help the sick and dying.  The action was good.  The preaching was not.  I was disappointed.  End of review.

I started to quote bits of OSC’s latest reviews as examples of what makes me want to tear my hair out, but reading those articles is making me crazy, so I’ll just link to a couple.  You can read them if you want to.  Then breathe deeply.  He gets into politics in this one from 9/15/11 and there’s a section on Herman Cain in this one from 11/3/11.

And so I leave you with the most awesomest thing ever: a flowchart that walks you through the top 100 science fiction and fantasy books, as listed by NPR a few weeks ago.  Apparently, since the list is just that, with very little detail to guide readers new to the genre(s), the helpful people over at SF Signal created this flowchart (which is the most awesomely wonderful thing and I want a big poster of it).  And now there’s an interactive version!  I was directed here by this post of John Scalzi’s, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you that my list of books to buy grew three sizes based on NPR’s list and the comments from John Scalzi’s readers in this post on his site.  You know, in case you’re interested.

My favorite tweet today:

My favorite reddit…thing today (it’s actually from yesterday, but it kept me amused today, too):

Must go.  If I stay here any longer, I’ll eat the entire container of rice pudding.  (John’s brilliant idea – who gets a craving for rice pudding, of all things?  So good.)  Anyway, I’d like to pretend today’s odd day never happened, so I’m going to take my book and go to bed and start fresh tomorrow.

We bought two more bookshelves last weekend (the two in the middle, not that it matters) and brought down the two that were in our bedroom.  Those two are on the opposite wall from these.  They’re all 100% full and I’m using three shelves of the bookshelf to the right of the TV in the other room (that used to be the living room).  The four bookshelves in the library (which used to be the dining room) have been emptied of fiction and are slowly being filled with non-fiction books from upstairs.  I moved my little desk (which used to be Dad’s little desk) into the bay window in the library so there would be room for another shelf in the dining room.  Got all that?  There might be a quiz.

Now for the compromise, since as I mentioned the other day, I’m not completely sure I like having all the books forced into a line.  (Where are their souls?  Down with conformity!)  Tell me what you think.

If I had another wine rack, I wouldn't need to do this. But I kinda like it.

They’re not the greatest pictures (I’m not the greatest photographer, to say the least), but you get the idea.  The only thing I’m not crazy about is how the books behind the vases and the pictures and the bottles of wine are hidden.   I know they’re there, but the casual browser (because so many of those come waltzing through my home – this is somehow not a real concern now that I’m writing it down) does not.

Do you like it?  Do you hate it?  Indifferent?  That seems most likely.

The duplicates. All 54 of them. Anyone craving a copy of The Mote in God's Eye?