I have a metric Bryant of books. (That's one thousand books, for the majority of the world who has never been on the LMB list.) I also have a lovely Kobo with a goodly number of books as well. I don't mind people asking me about what I'm reading, or what an ereader is like, or whatever.

But I get really...annoyed? Ticked off? When people ask me how many books I've read. Or how many books I read in a year.

I don't have a freaking clue how many books I read in a year. I mean, my ereader does, but that doesn't count any paper books. I gave up on trying to track via Goodreads, because it was too much of a hassle to deal with the books I'd start and give up halfway through.

When I got this question today, and she wouldn't take "I don't know for an answer", the questioner got offended when I said "Around a hundred." She was all, that's so low, and you're always reading. And in my head (because this is work, and you can't just snap at people) I'm all

Look. One hundred books works out to one book every three to four days. I've just, today, read three or four chapters of two books and have up on them because they're not interesting me. The last book I finished was a history of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and if I'm reading a nonfiction book, unless it's about cooking or knitting, it's going to take me a week, minimum. And then there are days when I don't read a darned thing that's longer than a news piece. So screw you with your "hundred books isn't enough"! I don't care about how freaking many arbitrary book-length units you want me to read, I care about the giant TBR pile I have that will never be finished because I keep adding to it!

And now, because the cozy mystery I was trying to read at the time was not interesting enough, I'm going to read a paranormal romance that seems quite promising from the first chapter, and which I will probably whip through in a day or so.

Three, at the most.

My shipment of books for me came in! I'm so used to Amazon's two days that the standard book rate on these used books was a little annoying. But now that I know about Silver Arch Books, I will probably just buy directly from them in the future.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books had a thread for romance novels with Jews in them, which got me to buy a number of books. The ones I was most excited about was a series by Nita Abrams, about an Anglo-Jewish family in the Napoleonic era who spy for the English. I went and picked up all five, as they are apparently out of print and not in e-format at the moment, and so far, they aren't bad. Not as good as the Pink Carnation books, but not much worse. And loads better than some of the other books I've read lately. These are fairly engaging, and might be worth re-reading.

I also picked up some old Sunfires, which I loved in middle school. We'll see if they're worth the re-read.

And now, shower!

The insane, inconsolable crying before dropping into sleep from sheer exhaustion? Yeah, I'd like to be done with that.

For my sleep habits, I saw a counselor yesterday. She gave me some muscle relaxation exercises, and a countdown exercise to do as I sleep. And they worked, they really did. The big problem was when Kidlet woke up 30-60 minutes after I'd fallen asleep, and I litterally fell back asleep and dreamed in the the middle of a conversation with wanderingfey. Bless his heart, he took her. Fortunately, she just needed some rocking to go back to sleep. (She wasn't awake, just yelling.) Still, getting up an hour after that was still hard, but doable. Now I just need to do some meditating and exercise during the day.

I finished Julia Kagawa's The Iron Queen. I picked it up because a) it won the 2011 RITA for YA Romance, b) it looked interesting, and c) it was written by one of the two 2011 RITA award winners who was not Caucasian. So, in the furtherance of the 50books_poc challenge (which I totally have never succeeded in, as far as I know), I checked it out.

It's not a bad book. It's got some interesting ideas about Faery. I found it interesting/amusing that Kagawa's land of the fae is called the Nevernever, as that's a word I've only heard from the Dresden Files before. I read it through to the end, which is more than I can say for many a book lately. But on the whole, it didn't do all that much for me. There's a teenage girl. There's the boy she loves (and who loves her back -- this is book three of the series), and the boy who's her best friend who wants to be her true love. Note: she does not seem to have any female friends. In fact, the only other women I remember are Mab and the main character's mother, and I really don't like books with a female protagonist who has no female friends. (Or even allies.) It smacks too much of the Smurfette Principle to me. One of the things I've come to appreciate about linked or grouped romances is that, even though each book centers on one male/female couple, the females can and do interact with each other in books not their own, and a community is created. (You can do the same thing is a solo book, but that doesn't often happen in the romance genre, at least as far as I've seen.)

Honestly, I probably would have really enjoyed this book as a teenager, what with the pretty boys and the cosmic power. And it's as well-written as other YAs I've read recently. So for its target audience, it's a good book. For me, not so much.

We had game at our house. I really do like gaming, and I really like having people come over. I just wish that Kidlet would go down easier on Thursday nights. Heck, I wish she went down easier most nights, but last night was really an awake-time of epic proportions. Oddly, she didn't really nap through most of the day, so I don't know what that was about. We shall see, I suppose.

Kidlet entered a phase last week that is likely to occur for a long, long time. She has discovered 'I'm Tired, and I Don't Want to Sleep.' Given that both her parents fall prey to this, I expect it to last for a while. (When she's older, I am imagining on insisting on being in bed with lights out at bedtime. We shall see what happens.)

What it means right now is that she wails, and nothing will comfort her. She makes "food" motions, but refuses food when offered. The play mat does nothing, and cuddles and back pats are five second salves at best. The crying doesn't last for a long time, relatively, but when you have a child screaming in your ear loud enough to make your ears literally ring, five minutes is a very long time. ('Literally' is not used here for emphasis; Kidlet can actually reach a tone that reverberates in my ears. I worry about my hearing, but it's also an intellectually interesting phenomenon.)

So it's 10 am-ish, and it's clear that Kidlet wants to go to sleep and is refusing to do so. There's not much I can do except hold her in the position she keeps falling into and let her cry. (The trust she has in me is astonishing. She lets herself drop off my shoulder, with the assumption that I will have an arm in position to catch her. So far, she's not been wrong.) She curled up in a fetal position, wailing her little heart out.

And in mid-cry, she goes to sleep. 60 to zero.

I am amused.

In related news, wanderingfey and I found Go the F*ck to Sleep in a bookstore. We have not purchased it yet, but may later. We couldn't help it; we laughed the whole way through. Kidlet is not at the stage of the book's child yet, but holy goodness, we related. We so related.

In other kid-related news, I now have Peggy Orenstien's Cinderella Ate My Daughter from the library. I waited for the book for four or six months. I picked it up yesterday. And then, last night, I got a message that the ebook was available. (The book will be going back soon, natch.)

It's a very easy read, but a rather chilling one. It's a reminder of the shoals and waves that still lie ahead to be navigated, a show of the fights to come. It will be...interesting.

In other book news, I have finished Fuzzy Nation, which was definitely as good as Little Fuzzy. I think I prefer Little Fuzzy (and I want to read the others!), but FN is still a lovely little book. I've also been re-reading Mercedes Lackey's retelling of fairly tales, and actually read The Black Swan for the first time. It's very pleasant.

I also finished Kitty's Big Trouble, which I enjoyed more than Kitty Goes to War. At the same time, they do feel a little like Little Fuzzy; it feels that they're too short, that something is missing. I suppose that's what happens when you're used to doorstoppers, but there was still a rushed feel to KBT. It's going to be interesting to see Vaughn wrap up the series.

Now to make some French toast for me. (wanderingfey prepped French toast last night with the brioche bread I got for Shabbat. My cooking last night was homemade oven-baked barbeque chicken, with extra barbeque sauce. It's nice to have good home-cooked food.)

It's a little scary to realize that Kidlet is growing up already. She no longer wants to be swaddled at night, and she will actively wriggle her way out of a swaddle. She has more active alert times, and we've actually started to do some non-burping tummy time. (She's getting pretty darned adept at raising her head, and yesterday she did half of a roll.)

It's a little disconcerting. And, unfortunately, it now makes songs like "Sunrise, Sunset" and "Yesterday" (Thank you, Muppet Show) something resembling tearjearkers. I am a sap.

Also, the lack of swaddle means that she makes a lot more noises in her sleep, and I'm still learning to filter those out, to sleep through the meaningless ones, and respond to the meaningful. It makes my sleep even more broken than before, which is not fun.

It took me five days to get motivated to learn how to juggle a book with one off hand, or even with no hands. (Hardcovers only for the latter.) Because no matter how much I love my child, there's only so long that I can stare at her before going, "I would like something to read now, please." (It doesn't help that breastfeeding, even when done right, elicits pain in me, and distractions are really useful.) I just finished 1636: The Saxon Uprising, which is the interesting payoff for all the really boring setup that makes up 1635: The Eastern Front. Still, I wonder how much longer books will be written in this universe. There are very few places to start beyond the first book. I'm also almost finished with Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, which is really helpful right now. Helpful in the whole, "No, it's okay; you're being a good mother" sort of way, which I need some reassurance for when I don't have enough deep sleep and start crying. (Which I am wont to do when I have a few spare minutes where I don't need to be doing anything.)

I'm not terribly good at talking to Kidlet. Sometimes I can really get a conversation going, but usually I'm just quiet. I feel like I'm stunting her vocabulary. At least, when I talk to her, I use adult words and full sentences. Minus the pronouns. Mommy is getting very good at speaking in the third person.

Off to a lactation appointment. I never thought that I would consider 10 am to be far too early to be up and out of the house.

6:30 AM during a dark downpour and windstorm is one of the most apropos times imaginable to finish Cryoburn.

The end is...very, very well-written. I think she knows the audience she's writing for very well.

On the...other side, the CD is all I could have asked for and more. I do wonder why they didn't put Memory on it, but as I bought it in a Webscription pack with Miles, Mutants, and Microbes and Pyramid Power, I at least already have it on my Reader.

Which has now been re-authorized. I'd still like to know when I got an AdobeID. Methinks I was automatically signed up for it when I initially authorized my eBook Reader. That's...frustrating.

The storm is quite nice, though I don't think we're getting anything near the coastline gusts.

I finally got a chance to go to Kol Ami the other night. It turns out that they share a Methodist church, which made it a bit confusing for purposes of finding the place. But I was not late, and it was very nice. People talked to me; it's a smaller congregation; and it's exceedingly musical. It might be a little more staid Reform than I would like, but I think it's easier to feel a kavanah in a small staid place than a large one, so there's that. There were a lot of kids running around, and even a decent number of teens, so yay for that.

Still, I couldn't help but think, "Wow, there's a lot of het people here. That's weird."

I've just finished two incredibly good books and one incredibly good short story. The short story is found in Clockwork Phoenix 2, which I had purchased a while ago, but not read. It's called "Hooves and the Hovel of Abdul Jameela," and it's the first modern fairy tale that I've read that could be a fairy tale from long ago and far away. It's this amazing story that perfectly balances plot, characterization, and theme into a perfect gem. Very good, as is most of the rest of the anthology. The story is up for a Hugo, and I hope it gets it.

Book one is N.K. Jesmin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Outcast girl gets summoned to The Royal Court to compete to be her grandfather's heir. Sounds trite, but there's so much more to it than that. It's...wow. I won't say that you don't know where it's going, but it spins some somewhat familiar grounds into different ways. Plus, gods! And universal metaphysics! Which I will now proceed to judiciously filch from.

I'd heard about the book back during Racefail '09, IIRC, and I've been waiting for it to come out ever since. Well worth the wait and well worth the price. Definitely on the shelf for re-reading.

Book two is getting a lot of well-deserved press. It's Rebecca Sklootz's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It is a non-fiction book that I could not put down, which almost never happens. It's the story of Henrietta Lacks, who had her cervical cancer cells biopsied and turned into the world's first immortal cell line. It's the story of the Lacks family, who thanks to race and lack of education, had their lives spun around like tubes in a centrifuge because no one would take them seriously. It's about privilege. It's about the ethics of biologics. (Which, if you're interested, are also regulated by the FDA.The biolgics, not the ethics. As least not any further than we're told to by the FD&C.) And it's about writing the book. It's amazing, and it's wonderful, and it's eye-opening.

I swear, this should be required reading for every science major in the country. If you work in any sort of scientific work, I think that there's a tendency to either talk over the average person's knowledge, or to dumb it down into misunderstanding. It's somewhat hard, once you know the jargon and the meanings, not to use the shorthand that you know. And this book is a clear explanation of why it's important to bring that educational gap.

But tILoHL is also just a really interesting story. I was told in Bio201 about HeLa cells, and that they came from a woman called Henrietta Lacks. And that was it. I'd wondered a bit about the hows and whys of it, but I never went much further than that. And wow, there was a lot behind that.

Good stuff. Go and read. (Sorry about the lack of links; my computer is having trouble loading pages and some programs that use the internet. It doesn't seem to be a virus, and it's not all pages, just some of them. I really wish I knew what was going on.)

I just got an email from Amazon suggesting a new book for me: Anne of Green Gables: For the 21st Century. The product description says "The classic story of the red-headed orphan who finds a family at last and grows up to be a teacher is revised and edited to modernize the language and make the story more readable for the modern reader."

W. T. F?

No, really, wtf? What exactly are they dumbing down? Do they figure that modern kids won't know what a slate is and so now Anne is going to crack her iPad across Gilbert's head? Is Anne not going to use five dollar words anymore, despite the fact that it's part of her character?

I am...unimpressed. A lot.

I am three pages into P. Craig Russell's Sigfried. Sigfried is a teenage jock who deserved a spot in the Hall of Fame for jerks.

I am about seventy or eighty pages into Cherie Priest's Boneshaker. It is not as zombie-filled as I feared and I am enjoying it. I also like the brown ink. It sets the book apart.

I am one reading into Jeff Vandermeer's Finch. This is a book for wanderingfey, I think. Guys being eaten to death by fungi kind of trips me out in a not-good way.

I am one reading into Cat Rambo's Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight. I am not sure how much I will like *reading* her stuff, as opposed to *hearing* it. When she read, her prose was poetry, and I have a horrible tendency not to appreciate poetry on the page. Too much reading for the story, I suppose.

I am more than halfway through Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime. It is fluffy and insubstantial, and showcases much of what is really wretched about Christie's plotting. But it's Tommy and Tuppence, whom I love. And somewhere, there is a web page that has all of the famous-at-the-time detectives that Tommy and Tuppence attempt to emulate that I don't know. (Except for Holmes and Watson, of course.) Why, look! It's the Wikipedia entry!

I am on the Eastern Front at the beginning of the War in John Keegan's aptly named The First World War. So far, it's quite good, if incredibly depressing. And it was made even more depressing by the note I heard today in Hardcore History, "Ghosts of the Ostfront I." Namely, more people were killed on the Eastern Front of WWII than died in battle in all of WWI. That's...a lot of people.

I am five chapters or so into Stefan Fatsis's A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays for the NFL. It's very well written, very crisp and concise. I was with Fatsis through trying to find a team that would let him be a paper placekicker, with him through his own training attempts. But then he got to the Broncos training camp, and I don't care anymore. I think, for me, having him be there is the peak. If I cared at all about football, I can see how my intrest would be much more rivited by what's going on behind the scenes. But I'm not, and so I don't think I'll be finishing this.

I am some pages into Age of Misrule: World's End. Like A few Seconds of Panic, I think that this one needs to go back to the library. Premise: The Age of Science is over, the Age of Magic and random crap happening to you because a god says so is back. I am a Technocrat; I like gravity. A lot. Gods and the fey coming back and f'ing over everything just because? Not so much. The universe suddenly being...other? No thank you. And England is the epicenter of it all because... No, I'm a little tired of the Anglocentric viewpoint. (Shocking, I know.) Please note that Ilona Andrews has a similar premise, and I love it. A) The characters are well-written and sympathetic, and B) The world still has rules. Humans are not playtoys or chewy snacks if they want to be other. Maybe I'm not giving this one a fair shake, but it's doing nothing for me.

I am finished with David Plotz's The Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. And it is exactly as he promises. It is a breeze through the entire Tanakah, from someone who wasn't connected to G-d or his Jewish faith. And now he's still not connected to G-d, but he's a lot more connected to his faith. Maybe it wouldn't be as funny if I were a Christian, or if I was an Orthodox Jew. But I loved his whimsy, his sense of the absurd, and his awe. It's kind of like the fantastic "God Said, Huh?" which is an excerpt from Julia Sweeney's piece, Letting Go of God.

I am 600+ words into my NaNo, which is probably not going to happen. I don't really want to write stories, I want to read them. However, I may try to do more of these "book reviews as they happen" posts, because I'd like to write more about books, but I never seem to get anything written after I finish them. So, I just need to sit down and write regardless of finishing.

So, Cat Valente (catvalente) is in a bad place financially. She really needs some help to get over this boost; she's got a going-to-the-mass-market book due soon, and that will give a push to the family income, but at the moment, they're screwed.

She doesn't want to ask for help, so she's offering a trade. There's a book in Palimpsest called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Boat of Her Own Making.

Catherynne is now writing Circumnavigated as a YA novel. Every Monday she's posting a chapter, absolutely free, on her website, for all and sundry. All she asks is, if you can, do put a little something in the pot.

This is a fabulous book. It's Alice, it's Stardust, it's Edward Eager and E. Nesbit, and it's none of the above. It's a book that's worthy of buying in hardcover, and it's worth supporting in e- form. It is, quite simply, a good book.

Go, read. And five, ten dollars, for more and better? Well worth the investment.