What I've Been Up To

I've taken this whole glorious week off of work! And it's very much needed. I've started a tradition with myself where I take vacation the week of Dewey's readathon. It's a good way to guarantee myself two weeks of vacation a year and this really couldn't come at a better time! Today has been wonderfully relaxing so far. I slept in and went to the grocery (not so fun) and then did a little bit of book shopping and went by the lakefront to read for a little bit. Gorgeous weather outside today too :) We're in the 70s and there was a lovely breeze coming off of the lake and I found a beautiful old oak tree dripping with moss to sit under while I read Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which hooked me from the first page, by the way!).

I finished Helen Oyeyemi's Boy, Snow, Bird last night and I don't even know what to say about that book. Sometimes, all to rarely, you read a book and just know right away that you've found a new favorite author. That happened to me with Oyeyemi. Wow was this book amazing. The thing is, I don't even think I can review this book because I don't think there's any way in hell I could begin to do it justice or speak on all of the important things that she touches on. There are fairy tale retellings, and then there's what Oyeyemi did....she used the tale of Snow White as a platform to talk about gender and racial issues, taking it above just a retelling for entertainment's sake. Though there's plenty of entertainment and absolutely gorgeous writing to be had. She put EVERYTHING I love about book into this one. It even turned into an epistolary novel for a short while and I swear I just clung to this book during those scenes. Her characters were all so perfectly flawed if that makes any sense and I now just want to get lost in all of the worlds that she's created.

In other news, READATHON!!! This Saturday :D :D :D Who else is participating?? I'm so excited as usual, but even more excited this year because there are friends participating that haven't been able to in awhile :) My blog will be more active that day than it has been all year, lol. I've made quite the ridiculous pile for the readathon :p I have more books in my pile than there are hours in the day. But that's ok. Whatever I don't get to in that day....well there's the rest of the year for that :p With the rate my reading is going, I won't even finish this pile this year. I went to my shelves and picked only books that I'm truly dying to read to assure that this will be a day of reading that I'll love. I'm going to let random.org dictate what I'll read for the day. Here's pictures of my pile:

You should be able to enbiggen them if you can't read the titles :p Think I have enough? And I bought  food for the day as well! I'm making velveeta and rotel dip, there are frozen grapes (one of my favorite snacks :p), Oreos, Sandwich fixings, and a myriad of other assorted crap. There will likely be donuts too. And coffee of course. 

Hope everyone else is having a good week!