Art

#Readathon Mid-Event Survey

2022, Art, Books in Bed, Dewey's Readathon, Non-Fiction, Queer /

Funny. I’ve done a million #readathons and I’ve done very few mid-event surveys. I wonder why. Very weird.

  • What are you reading right now?

I’m going back to the Once Upon a Book Club book, The Roughest Draft.

  • How many books have you read so far?

I’ve finished three books – but I was 1/3 of the way through one of them. So far, I’ve finished Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Part (I was 110 pages into it when I picked it back up today), I read Create Your Life Book, and of course The Woman of Andros.

  • What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the readathon?

I think I’m most looking forward to finishing The Roughest Draft. All of those presents to open along the way!

  • Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those?

Well, the chickens refused to go directly from their day time grazing yard back to their night time area. It took two of us and a lot of cajoling to get them to all move in the right direction and stay in the right area. I mean it’s not like it took an hour to round them up but it was a good 15 minutes. That’s pretty much the only real interruptions, so far.

  • What surprises you most about the readathon, so far?

I’m doing better than I expected, considering how tired I was when I got up this morning. I’m about 450 pages down – that’s not going to break any records but all things considered, I’ll take it. If I can get another 300 pages done before I call it a night, I’ll be exceptionally happy.

My mid-event snack.

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How to Make Books

2019, Art, Books in Bed, Dewey's Readathon, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I finished a book. During Readathon! Granted I’ve been reading it so long that it’s auto-renewed three times and has to go back to the library next week but still… I finished a book. A good book. A book that I thought would be silly since I know a good bit about making books. Turns out, How to Make Books is a great book and would be a great resource for people who want to make books of all kinds. I’d like to own it, really. I wonder if Pippin and Squish and Evergreen want to learn to make books… then I could justify buying it. In hardback because the binding is awesome. (As a book about making books should be.)

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The Velveteen Daughter

1 Comment / 2017, Art, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

When I was little, The Velveteen Rabbit was one of my favorite stories so I had to pick up The Velveteen Daughter. HAD TO.

I didn’t know a darn thing about Margery Williams, except that she wrote a bunch of children’s books long before I was born. I didn’t know she had kids. Or, that her daughter was a child prodigy. Or any damn other thing about her. And while this book is primarily about her daughter, I learned a lot about Margery Williams. So interesting.

About her daughter, Pamela Bianco… what a heartbreaking story! (The book IS fiction but it’s based on news accounts and personal correspondence.)

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#Readathon Books Five, Six & Seven: All Non-Fiction

2017, Art, Books in Bed, cookbooks, Dewey's Readathon, Non-Fiction /

First, the cookbook My Two Souths that Sassymonkey told me about. I liked it. TW was not as impressed with it, which is troubling since we thought she’d really like it. I really want the tomato pie/tart. That would be yummy right about now.

Next, Gardens of South Florida was fine. An over-sized book full of fancy gardens. If you like fancy tropical gardens, this is your book.

Last, but not least, The Art Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained. To be honest, I’ve been reading this book for awhile. I just leave it open on the breakfast bar and read a couple of pages while I eat dinner or lunch or whatever. And then I finished off my readathon by reading the rest straight through. It’s a great book and I’m interested in the other books in the series. I’ll probably get some of those in the future. I might even like to own a few.

And that’s a wrap… seven books, mostly non-fiction, 17 hours of reading and a $50 donation to the #readathon charity. No great snacks and I have a messy kitchen and I didn’t take part in a single mini-challenge (except the opening survey), which was weird. I just wasn’t feeling it. BUT, I very much enjoyed my #readathon and am looking forward to the fall event. (I hope it’s not GHC/birthday weekend… gah.)

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#Readathon Book One: The Doodle Revolution

2017, Art, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I didn’t plan to read The Doodle Revolution front to back in one sitting but I got involved and ended up not wanting to put it down. It was excellent. I wish she’d talked about color with more depth, that was really the only disappointing part of this book. (And that was really disappointing.)

I didn’t do any of the doodle games or exercises, but I’ll go back and do some of them before this has to go back to the library. (I might update this post after I actually do some exercises. Maybe.)

PS. I’m categorizing this as “art” for the purpose of organizing my blog posts but DOODLING IS NOT ART. Just making sure y’all know that (and everyone knows that I know that.)

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Two Non-Fiction Craft Books

2017, Art, Books in Bed, Feminism /

I picked up This Can Be Beautiful with the idea that it would be a good book for #Readathon later in the month. But, it needs to go back to the library before #readathon so I read it last weekend when I was tired, had a headache, and couldn’t figure out what I wanted to read next. It was OK. Not great. Not horrible. OK. There were a couple of cute ideas and it was a good book to flip through at the time. Also, I have no idea who Tiffany Pratt is. Do you Canadians watch her on HGTV in your country?

Since I was reading This Can Be Beautiful, I figured I might as well read Crafting with Feminism, which I picked up at Poetry & Prose when Steph and I went to dinner in DC last month. I couldn’t resist it. Totally cute. We should really make those vulva Christmas ornaments this year. And, I have an idea for a Christmas gift I might make for Michelle. But, the biggest thing that happened because I read this darn book is I fell into the hole that is Vaginal Fantasy videos. (the author of this book, Bonnie Burton, is one of the co-hosts.) Until now, I’d steadfastly avoided this video series. (Easy because Google Hangout is stupid…) Now, I find myself just randomly clicking one of their videos and listening (and laughing) while I work. Oy.

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Make Your Own Ideabook with Arne & Carlos

2017, Art, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I had no idea who Arne and Carlos were when I picked up their Make Your Own Ideabook at the library. I still had no idea who they were after about 10 pages but I had the impression that they were… knitters?

So I stopped and looked them up and ended up watching some Youtube video of them doing a Q&A. Yep, knitters and totally adorable. But anyway, this book… It was pretty terrific.

There wasn’t anything I didn’t know in there, but the photos were fabulous and getting a look at some of the pages of their ideabooks was fabulous. I’m really glad I checked this one out. Also, they’re really cute. lol.

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Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe

2017, Art, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, Women /

I was worried about Georgia. Anyone who tries to write a novel about O’Keeffe is taking a big chance. Good thing she did. I found myself nodding my head thinking, “I hope it really happened that way.” and at other times sighing and saying, “I hope that’s not how it happened.” and at others just really enjoying the story.

Well done.

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Jane Austen: Cover to Cover

2017, Art, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

On our last trip to the library, they had a big display of Austen (and Austen related) books. I glanced at it but didn’t see anything I hadn’t read or anything I hadn’t read that looked interesting… until I spotted a bright and shiny looks like it has never been checked out book called Jane Austen: Cover to Cover.

I’m no Janeite so I almost didn’t check it out. But I’ve always found it hard to resist a bright and shiny never been checked out looking library book before, so I grabbed it. Gosh, I’m glad I did. It was a lot of fun to read on a lazy Monday holiday.

As expected, my favorite covers were all of the most recent Penguin specialty editions and also as expected, there have been some truly awful Austen covers over the last zillion years. It made me kind of want to collect them, hahaha.

Get this book. It’s fun. Seriously.

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