Oh Internet, You Make It So Easy to Be a Hermit!

Clearly I am not a blogger extraordinaire, but maybe one day I will be a quarter good as these ladies are:

http://fourthgradenothing.com

I stumbled across Ally's Fourth Grade Nothing blog earlier this week when in a fit of nostalgia I googled Swatch phones (blog about the teenage wonder that was the Swatch phone will come later). I was hooked from the first entry and I proceeded to spend the next two day's worth of free-time reading every single entry she has written. Such nostalgic fun! She is witty and has a really honest voice. Go check her out!

Fourth Grade Nothing led me to my next great discovery:

http://whatireadbackthen.wordpress.com
otherwise know as Are You There Youth, It's Me Nikki

Nikki's blog, where she re-reads and recaps books from her youth, is my dream blog. I wish I had thought of it first ( I was planning to write a Series Loved, Some Lost post this summer and I'm still going to do it sometime soon), instead, right now, I will bow down at her feet and tell her she's a genius. I tore through the entire blog in two or three days. While reading I kept amazon.com open so I could add books to my "Used Kid's and YA Books I NEED to Track Down List" ... that list is getting pretty long now thanks to the dearth of great material I have (re)discovered over the last few days. Thanks Nikki, you rock :)

My next stop is going to be http://dibblyfresh1.blogspot.com/

Books, Books, Books

Grad school has put a serious cramp on my recreational reading. I miss fun reading. For me a day without reading for fun is basically a day where I'm cranky and grumpy. I've been cranky and grumpy A LOT lately. I decided to put an end to this ... partly because I was starting to fear for the lives of the innocents around me. I learned how to read quickly but asides from a love affair with The Baby Sitters Club books, Sweet Valley books, The Little House books, The Anne of Green Gables series, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the works of Beverly Cleary, Marguerite Henry, Madeleine L'Engle and picking up books here and there, I started reading adult books early on and rarely looked back. It wasn't until I was running the Children's & Young Adult sections of a bookstore that I finally realized how much I had missed. Don't get me wrong, it turns out I had read more than I remembered, but man the stuff I had missed!

In the interest of saving my overworked brain cells I have decided to devote 2010 to reading the Children's and Young Adult titles that I missed along the way ... with old favorites thrown into the mix. The first two series I jumped into were the Mary Poppins books by P.L. Travers and the Paddington books by Michael Bond. Both very enjoyable and oh, so British that I wished I was back in London curled up in my bed in my old terrible flat (REALLY TERRIBLE, but great duvet) with some crumpets and tea happily reading away while the rain pattered on the window.

Next up is A Wrinkle in Time. This is one of my absolute favorite books of all time. It tops the "Books I Re-read Every Year" List, but that's another post entirely. Just reading the first sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night", takes me back to a million and one places and a million and one feelings. I have so many favorite lines and moments that I don't even know where to begin. Each time I re-read it I take something new away. I have read my way through four copies and I will own a copy until the day I die. I often feel as lost as Meg and I'm still looking for my Calvin O'Keefe ... someone to tell me I have "dreamboat eyes" and who will love me prickles and all. In the words of Mrs. Whatsit, "wild nights are my glory" ... A storm is blowing like mad outside and I'm ready to hop into bed and dip into Chapter Three a cat by my side. Sheer bliss!