Post 472: a general update

Hello. You missed my birthday.

No worries, I spent Saturday with my mom, her boyfriend, and my brother eating friend chicken, asparagus, lima beans, biscuits, and chocolate cake. Sunday I had plans to spend it with people I've been kid/house/pet sitting for. Last week I made sugar cookies with the four year old. That was fun times. It's sort of weird being of the age to have children, yet not having them and having no possibility of having them and not really wanting them anyway. Er, yeah. I kind of have no reason for living right now, so on second thoughts, it's okay that my birthday was ignored.

Enough with the quarter life crisis.

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin.
I am making progress in this series. The books are long so it's kind of hard to find time to read them, even though once I start I tear through pretty quickly. This is a library eLend, so I have to finish it up by the 23rd, or else get put at the back end of the list which is currently (as of the 12th) 28 patrons long. It could be worse, but let's just say this is near the top of my git-r-done list.

Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies by Donald Spoto.
This was up for grabs on a swap shelf I sometimes peruse. It looked interesting enough, and while Hitchcock films are usually a bit slow paced for my tastes, I still enjoy them now and again. In any case, I'm always interested to know a little bit more about Hollywood before bat-shit crazy became a thing. Okay, so that was always a thing, but let's just say it's at a whole different level nowadays. Winning.

The Portrait by Iain Pears.
Another of those authors that people seem to like/talk about that I haven't read.  grabbed it from the library sale table for 25 cents. I'm interested to see how Pears tackles the Critic-Artist dynamic, especially given the loose friendship the two subjects have.

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns.
Another library sale table grab. This one was on my feed for a while last year as it was handed around to various book bloggers by word of mouth. Since I am in small-town The South, I will be able to judge, at least somewhat, its authenticity as being a book that "deftly captured the subtle crosscurrents of small-town Southern life."