On the Move

I am such a bad blog-mommy this week. I've got a bunch of books I've read but not yet reviewed, because I've spent the last week working, finishing my final projects for my final grad school classes, and packing up my house to move. Right now I am in Jacksonville, Florida, hanging out in the new apartment that is thisclose to being officially unpacked and getting ready to head back up to Cleveland to finish my practicum and grad assistant job and then graduate!

I love the new apartment, even though it feels incredibly tiny after our house... I think we downsized by about 500 square feet of living space, plus another 600 or so square feet of basement space. There is still a lot of junk in Cleveland that I'm going to have to get rid of!

Since we're not yet cleaned up from the move, I will spare you pictures of the scary mountains of boxes, but I will show you the important book related items!

The bookshelf:
This is my triumph (I'm making a note here: huge success). Our books used to hang out on three bookshelves — this one and two others that were maybe a little smaller — and in closets, and on the floor... I spent a day or two going through every book and picking out the ones that I loved and wanted to keep or hadn't read but planned to, and that's what stayed. I didn't measure the books or anything, so I am pleased and amazed that they fit so well on this shelf! Off to the side there is a peek at our board game shelf, which I will miss back in Cleveland!

My reading corner:
This sunroom area is one of the major reasons we decided to get this apartment. The only thing in it right now is this really comfy chair and a lamp, and I plan to spend many unemployed hours reading books and enjoying the sunlight from the safety of air conditioning. It gets hot in Jacksonville!

Okay, now the hubby is declaring it "put lots of nails in the wall 'cause we've got artwork to put up!" time, so I am off! Perhaps more pictures when we are done!

Audiobook Round-up

I got back last night from a week-long camping trip in Alabama, which was awesome. Less awesome is all the internet catching-up I have to do!

Because of the twelve-hour drive, I decided to collect a bunch of audiobooks from the library's fancy-pants online trove of such things. Scott loves them, but I'd never given them a real try. Now I have, and... well. I was right — I can't focus on an audiobook to save my life. So. No ratings (or even decent reviews) for these until I read them proper, but here's the list of things I listened to in the car last week.

Dave Barry's Greatest Hits, by Dave Barry (22 March)
This is a 1988 collection of Barry's columns, which shows in all his talk about Reagan as president! I like Barry, so I enjoyed listening to this hour-long book while I tried to stay awake (we left home at 6am!). Bonus points for having John Ritter as a narrator.

More of Dave Barry's Greatest Hits, by Dave Barry (22 March)
I can't seem to find this listed anywhere but fancy-pants online troves of audiobooks, so this is possibly audiobook-only. Unsure. Anyway, this is the 1996 collection of awesome columns. Still entertaining. Still narrated by John Ritter. Still capable of keeping me awake, if not listening properly.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (28 March — 29 March)
I knew the general idea going in, of course — Dorian Gray has a painting that ages while he stays young. That turns out to be a gross over-simplification of this novel, which deals with heavy themes of morality and ethics and deception. Grey likes his painting at the beginning, but as it ages and the bad things he's done show up in it he comes to loathe it. And his loathing of it has him doing even more bad things that show up in it. And all the while he has an angel-friend telling him how good he is, and a devil-friend spouting off ridiculous (even to him) notions of how the world works. I definitely enjoyed this book, but I will have to go back and read it to pick up on the hour or two I missed of it!

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