Bits and pieces

Well, we're home from our holiday. We had a lovely time catching up with friends and family, but it is also great to be back home. Marcus caught a cold in the last few days of the visit, which turned out to include conjunctivitis, so he hasn't been a very happy boy today and travelling for seven and a half hours wasn't the best thing for him. He was sick a couple of times on the trip and is now sound asleep in our bed. He wanted Dave to sleep there with him tonight, so I am relegated to the spare room for the night. Oh well, at least it means I can write this up and listen to a podcast before going off to sleep myself.

I took several books away on holiday with me (mostly book group reading), but when there and choosing, I realised that I didn't particularly feel like reading any of them. I wanted something light that I didn't have to put too much work into, so I fired up the PDA and read Stephenie Meyer's New Moon instead. It was perfect for the type of reading I wanted so it turned out to be a good choice. My comments to come.

Yesterday I stared Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint. Looking at the length of it (it comes to 1683 PDA pages in eReader) there's no way I'll get it finished tomorrow, so this evening I started thinking about my reading list for December. That made me realise my good intentions of making comments on my reads had (yet again) slipped away from me. All the same, I want to write something for each one before writing up my December list. As the previous two entries show, I've done a couple and I'll try to do the rest tomorrow. They may be short, but I figure something is better than nothing. Also, I want to get into the habit so that as I read books for the various challenges I've joined for 2009, I'll have a post over here that I can link to in my book lists.

I've also been aware for a long time that my book ratings may not be all that useful as I tend to rate books high. I go into books intending to enjoy them and they have to be pretty bad for me not to do so. I also rate as much (in fact, probably more) on my emotional reaction to what I've just read as on the qualities of the story itself in the writing, themes, characters etc. (Which is one of the reasons why I don't write "real" reviews since I am focusing on my reaction to the book rather than trying for at least some impartiality.) So, to cut a long story short, I've added a rating guide to my sidebar. This gives at least a vague idea of what my numerical ratings mean to me. Also, please be aware that I am quite willing to give a book with faults a 10/10 grade if it pushes all the right buttons. For me, 10/10 grades are primarily emotional grades and if you point out specific faults in such a book to me, I'm quite likely to agree with you.

Right, bed and podcast (The Dragon Page - Cover to Cover) time for me. Hopefully there will be some more book posts tomorrow. Sadly, there won't be any stitching ones as I barely stitched while I was away. It was a bit too much for the rest-and-don't-think-too-hard kind of holiday I decided I wanted to have.