denise

#Readathon Book Four: The Abyss Surrounds Us

2017, Books in Bed, Dewey's Readathon, Favorites, Queer, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Women, Young Adult /

Liz Henry talked about The Abyss Surrounds us a few weeks ago on Facebook and I decided we needed to read it. It was excellent! Totally awesome for #readathon. Trained killer sea creatures, a female pirate captain, a couple of lesbians. Really excellent. And, even better — it ended perfectly. I like that.

It’s getting late, I’m getting tired and since I don’t have a bunch of picture books and early readers this time around, it’s time to move to the world of cookbooks and over-sized coffee table books to carry me through the next couple of hours.

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#Readathon Book Three: Fire!! The Zora Neale Hurston Story

2017, Books in Bed, Comics & Graphic Novels, Dewey's Readathon, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Women /

I bought Fire!! when I was in DC in February and saved it specially for #readathon. It was very good but it felt … rushed, maybe? I mean it’s hard to tell someone’s life story in the span of one relatively short graphic novel, I get that. But Hurston’s story is so… interesting. I almost felt let down. Almost. It’s still a great graphic novel and I highly recommend it. I just wanted MORE.

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#Readathon Book Two: I Hate Everyone, Except You

1 Comment / 2017, Books in Bed, Dewey's Readathon, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I had to read I Hate Everyone, Except You because how could I not, with a title like that. Also, Clinton Kelly (WNTW), right?

And, it totally amused me. The first chapter horrified me and amused me, both at the same time. Many of the chapters horrified and amused me. It was awesome. lol

Also, do you think you can you outrun a raccoon?

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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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Good morning and happy #readathon

2017, Books in Bed, Dewey's Readathon /

Hah. I can tell I haven’t done this in awhile, I usually pre-write my answers (or most of them) to the opening survey. LOL. Not this year. I had almost forgotten that there was an opening survey. Gah. I hope to never miss two #readathons in a row, again. Ever.

Onward…

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
— I’m quite happy to be reading from Keystone Heights, FL and NOT from Chicagoland. Finally.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?
— Hard to say. Doodle Revolution? Or Book Jumper? Oh wait. FIRE! (a graphic novel about the life of Zora Neale Hurston.)

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?
— Well. I’m not sure. We deviated from the norm this year and just bought our snacks at Publix. So, there’s nothing really exotic or unusual happening. That’s going to be something I regret. I guarantee it. Maybe the cream horns. I LOVE CREAM HORNS.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
— I am starting off tired. No idea why, since I slept well. You care about this, right?

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?
— I did not participate in the last readathon but I’ve participated in a lot of them … today…I’m going to be reading outside a bit, particularly in the morning while it’s cool. That will be a big change for me. We’ll see how that goes.

Onward to the books (and the coffee!)

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Sick poodle is sick. Very Sick. For real.

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Pet Peeves /

After a full day of us saying we were not taking the Skeeter poodle to the vet ONE MORE TIME for eating something she shouldn’t and having an upset stomach, we took her to the emergency vet at around 1:30am, last night. As we drove, as we sat in the waiting room, as we sat in the exam room, we thought we were idiots for doing this AGAIN. She ate something. She has a tummy ache. They’ll give her fluids and anti-nausea meds and we’ll have spent $1K and lost 6 hours of sleep and if we just waited it out, we’d have had those 6 hours of sleep and the $1K we were about to shell out… But this time, when the doctor turned on the x-rays and said she ate something, and this doesn’t look good either… welp. Turns out this is not like those other times. It’s not like that at all.

It looks like she swallowed a penny. And they’re pretty sure it’s a penny due to the exact size and measurement of the penny. (I am still skeptical about this, coins have never been her thing — so while I can see her eating pretty much any damn thing… coins? Huh. That’s just… weird.) And apparently pennies are particularly toxic to dogs because they’re made of zinc. So letting her try to poop it out was not an option that was even suggested.

They tried to make her vomit to see if she would clear it that way. This dog is the least vomiting dog EVER and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work. I was right. They dosed her with the morphine mixture TWICE and no vomit.

So we left her there and the emergency vet said she wanted to consult with the internist at 7:30am about whether they could retrieve the item through endoscopy or whether she recommended abdominal retrieval. We got home at 5:30am and the phone rang at 7:15…

She was resting comfortably, they had done another set of x-rays to see if anything had moved — her intestines looked better (did I mention they were all weird? well they were… another reason for not suggesting we just let her poop it out) but nothing in the stomach had moved even a millimeter.

The internist asked that they try to make her vomit again… using hydrogen peroxide this time. They dosed her twice with that, no vomit. (THIS DAMN DOG!) The internist is concerned about the penny but she’s equally concerned about all of the other things in Skeeter’s stomach since they haven’t moved at all.

So, because the intestines look better — we’re waiting eight hours and will do another x-ray to see if any of the contents of her stomach have started the move through the GI tract. If not, she’ll have full abdominal surgery. If stuff has started moving, they’ll probably go in and try to retrieve the penny through endoscopy (unless of course the penny has moved into a place where it can’t be retrieved through endoscopy.)

So I’m glad we took her to the vet for another stomach ache and foreign body ingestion check. I’m glad we lost six hours of sleep. I am hopeful that she’ll be home again in a day or two and I will try not to complain at all about the recovery period issues we’re going to face.

Damn, poodle.

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The Wild Girls

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

We needed an audiobook so I wandered around the library shelves until Wild Girls jumped into my bag.

It was a really quick audiobook and really enjoyable to listen to. It also didn’t end badly, and it had the potential to end badly. I was really impressed that the author didn’t take the easy way to a happily ever after ending. I liked that a lot.

I also liked Joan & Sarah (Fox & Newt) and I liked every single one of the characters. All of them.

Fun read. Let’s all be wild girls!

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Two Days Gone

2 Comments / 2017, Books in Bed, Favorites, Mystery /

Apparently Two Days Gone is part of a series, the Ryan DeMarco Mysteries. Who knew? I have no idea how it appeared on our library cart. I thought TW picked it up. I also thought she had already read it and left it on the shelf for me to read because it was good.

Turns out, she hadn’t read it yet but it was good.

Dark. Very, very, very dark. Also, heart-freaking-breaking. One of those… what choice would you make if forced to make a horrific and impossible choice. Good lord.

I do kind of want to go back and read some of the other books, to see how DeMarco got to the point he’s at now. I mean, they gave enough backstory to get the gist but I might have to go back and read it for myself. Hold the phone, it IS part of a series but this is the first one? Now I’m frustrated. What do you mean this is the first one? You’ve given us a really dark and flawed character with an #ASSTON of backstory and we don’t get to actually live any of that backstory with him? Now I’m not so sure I want to read another… maybe. Hell.

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Hidden Figures

2017, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Non-Fiction, Women /

Oops. I finished Hidden Figures awhile back and thought I already wrote about it. Apparently not.

Anyway.

Totally enjoyed it. Really enjoyed seeing how the movie combined bits and pieces of womens’ stories and tweaked the timeline a little and the ages of characters and the relationships of characters. That was pretty interesting to think about, in terms of book to movie stuff.

I also really enjoyed learning more about the work these women did. And loved how much time was spent on Dorothy Vaughan’s story. She’s my favorite. The only complaint I have is that there wasn’t quite enough about Christine Darden.

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