I’m lazing away this Sunday afternoon, about to dig into a patty and coco bread. The dark clouds outside are teasing me, but I still have hope they will open up and provide the perfect atmosphere to get my creative juices flowing. In the meantime, I figure now is the perfect time to offer the “where has Ann-Kat been?” update.

For a little while, I was sick (think delirious and semi-conscious) with the flu. It’s an experience I’d rather not repeat and luckily I’m all better now (yay!). The downside is that I’m racing to catch up with everything that’s fallen behind…

Writing

I’m now nearly 16,000 words behind on my NaNoWriMo project, but I hope to fill most of the gap by the end of the day—cloud inspiration permitting.

I did, however, manage to get most of my NaNo board finished and discovered the face of my female lead along with a few secondary characters. Since I promised to bring this blog back to all things bookish, you can read all about the NaNo board (and my writing progress in general) at Today, I Wrote….

Reading

After finishing Wuthering Heights, from which my head is still reeling (Kidnapping and extortion? Really?!?), I’ve moved on to The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and Fallen by Lauren Kate. I’m about a third of the way through both.

The former I remember from childhood; reading it as an adult brings some new perspectives. The latter is interesting so far, but I’ve already found a few items of contention—here’s hoping it will redeem itself by the end.

Reviews

My review queue is backlogged a bit, but I hope to have that sorted just after the holidays. Some of the books awaiting review include The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett, Dawn by Kevin Brooks, and Soulless by Christopher Golden.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much was enthralling. I thought I was in for a true crime read, but it was more a journalist’s memoir of the book collecting world and the misguided lengths to which one man would go for his passion.

I managed to get up a mini review of Dawn since I read it for the 24 Hr. Read-a-Thon, but I do need to get a proper review online. This book certainly deserves one.

I expected to like Soulless a bit more than I did. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy it. Then again, I’ve always been fond of those B zombie movies with cheezy overacting and that’s the feeling I got from the book. Plus, it had an original premise in how the zombie apocalypse started. There are some book notes up (and a Sunday Sketch depicting a scene), but like the others, this deserves its own full review.

Arrivals

Thank goodness the book fairy didn’t forget about me while I was infirmed. A number of books made their way across my threshold and I’m excited to read all of them. The list includes:

• Finch by Jeff VanderMeer
• Defenders of the Scroll by Shiraz
• i sold Andy Warhol (too soon) by Richard Polsky
• Raiders’ Ransom by Emily Diamand
• Madapple by Christina Meldrum

Soon I’ll get a proper “recent arrivals” post up along with synopsis for each of the titles. But for now, that ends my Sunday Salon week end round-up. You have been updated.

I missed last week’s Sunday Sketch due to NaNoWriMo preparations, but this week I worked in some time to sketch the ultimate love triangle.

Catherine is a gold-digger extraordinaire; Edgar is an ostrich (he knows what Catherine’s all about, but he chooses to stick his head in the sand); Heathcliff might be Satan’s spawn. Mix all of that together and what do you get? Wuthering Heights.

I might take some time to ink it, but I’m debating it. I like the effect of the pencil sketch—it gives it the feeling of 19th century drama, but I think a bit of color might make it pop a bit more.

Happy Tuesday! It’s time again for another edition of Teaser Tuesdays…

Here are the rules:

• Grab your current read
• Let the book fall open to a random page
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page
• You also need to share the title and author of the book where you get your teaser from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given
• Please avoid spoilers

This week’s teaser:

“He endeavoured to pronounce the name, but could not manage it; and compressing his mouth he held a silent combat with his inward agony, defying, meanwhile, my sympathy with an unflinching, ferocious stare. ‘How did she die?’ he resumed, at last—fain, notwithstanding his hardihood, to have a support behind him; for, after the struggle, he trembled, in spite of himself, to his very finger-ends.” pg. 98* Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Thinking back to high school, I would have much preferred reading this to Jane Eyre. Don’t get me wrong, JE rocked, but Wuthering Heights…it’s like an eighteenth century soap opera with ghosts and betrayal and gold-digging and revenge that spans generations.

Every other page my eyes are bugging out and I’m saying WTF?!? in the back of my head. So far, everybody, save Mr. Lockwood and maybe Ellen Dean, is nuts. And by nuts, I mean dose-dive off a cliff CRAZY.

Right now I’m savoring as I read, so it’s slow going—I’m only about halfway through, and even though I’m anxious to realize the conclusion of this engrossing tale, I must pace myself.

* Although I linked to the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of the book (because I love that cover), I’m actually reading it from my Project Gutenberg printout—therefore, the page number may not correspond with any of the traditionally published volumes.

On another note, if you’d like my cleaned up & pre-formatted Word document to print a copy for yourself, just leave a comment and I’ll email it to you.