If I were a gas, I'd be inert.

[constance]

A meme, stolen from several people on my friendslist:

Reading
I just finished a reread of Tithe by Holly Black, thanks to a recent conversation with bowdlerized, and liked it better the second time around, for reasons which don't need exploring at this juncture. And I'm getting ready to start Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi. I'm more ambivalent about Avi than I am about probably any other author I've read; generally my feelings about an author's books don't vary hugely from title to title, but with Avi, some of whose books I've loathed and some of which I've adored, I never know quite what to expect.

I'm on a YA kick lately. Can you tell?

Watching
The Lord of the Rings, all of it, in single-disk installments. One disk left to go.

Listening
Stiff by Mary Roach. Sky Blue Sky by Wilco.

Drinking
Yellow and Blue lavender tea.

Anticipating
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, of course. Spiderman 3.

Dreaming
About the little Craftsman house that went up for sale just down the street from me.

Doing
Trying not to spend too much time playing the old-school Super Mario Bros. freeware I downloaded the other night. Planning a little Harry Potter project post. Cleaning my house in easy-to-manage stages (this is something new I'm trying, in hopes that it'll be easier for me to get round to it if it's not going to be an all-day project). Staring out the window at the hummingbird feeder my mother gave me, willing the hummingbirds to find it and flock to it so that I can peer at them. Waiting for the next news of my grandmother, who's been in the hospital for two weeks.

Creating
Carbon dioxide? Computer dolls? Imaginary houses? I haven't been creating much lately, which may be a good thing. But: see above mention of Harry Potter project post.

Comments

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

Ah, so you're listening to Stiff. I'd been clamoring to read that forever, having loved The Mummy Congress to bits and wanting more about dead bodies, but when I finally got my hands on a copy, I found out that my sister was right when she said, "You'll never get through this. You're too squeamish." Sure enough, I found myself only several pages in and doing that squinty-eyes-during-a-really-gory-moment-in-a-film thing, and that really kind of defeats the purpose of reading. Maybe listening to it might be a better way to go- it could be easier to "la la la" through the parts that'll give me nightmares.

Did you ever read the book The Other by Thomas Tryon? Or see the movie? I found the book in a secondhand store and have been having some good old-fashioned nostalgic fun. Not sure how that fits into this conversation, except that it does feature PART of a dead body. Sort of.

Interesting about Avi- I've only read one book by that author and I was so-so about it, so never went back for others. I might have to try again with another title.

Keeping my fingers crossed for a horde of hummingbirds and good news about your grandmother!!

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I can recommend the audio version of Stiff highly; its reader is chatty and wry in a way that lessens the impact of her subject matter, as well as suits Mary Roach's writing style. But then, I am not all that squeamish about this stuff, either, so YMMV.

I have not read The Other, but I will be on the lookout for it, and let you know when I come across it. Hooray for parts of dead bodies, and nostalgic fun too!

I confess to having put Avi on hold for Judith Krantz; talking to Amelia a little while ago about Mistral's Daughter made me eager to read it for the first time in many years, and I got it in the mail this afternoon. But I'll let you know how things fare with Crispin. From its description, it seems like the sort of thing you might like -- it fits handily into your ingenuity-under-impoverishing-circumstances trope -- but there's plenty of room for things to go horribly wrong between the blurb and the text, I guess.

Thank you for the kind wishes! No hummingbirds as yet, but my grandmother is doing as well as can be expected, and is no longer in any immediate danger.