World's Worst Book Blogger

Hi, there! Remember me? I used to read a lot and then blog about what I'd read. Even before the Blog Days I used to read a lot. Now? Now I just suck apparently. This has been the longest reading drought I can think of for me. I'm miserable, my reading pile is getting bigger but the progress is miserable. The only reason I have a Currently Reading book in my sidebar is because I am sort of reading it. If I get up sick in the night, I pick up this book which I have left in my bathroom. And I am rather enjoying it too, but I just don't feel like reading at all when I am up during the day, not that I have time for it though. Sigh. I am less than a third of the way into the book though, so at this pace, I might be done by Christmas.I DID do something bookish this week however which resulted in book buying even though I had pretty much no money left in my bank account (um, luckily which I didn't notice until AFTER the purchases and came home and had to pay a bill online and noticed I was close to needing that overdraft protection I got... oops).This past Thursday night, I met up with my parents and headed over to the McGill University Bookstore (where I used to work not all that long ago) for a book launch event with author Louise Penny. Louise Penny is a local author whose murder mystery novels are set in a fictional town called Three Pines, which is set in Quebec's Eastern Townships region. The first novel, Still Life, my mother lent to me many moons ago and I read it and semi-enjoyed it. I tend to have problems with books set in my province because I don't like the way many authors do the French/English thing (Kathy Reichs being one of them, I can't even read her books!). The newest Penny book is The Murder Stone, which just came out in hard cover in October. This is the fourth book in the series and rounds out the seasons. Still Life is set in the Fall, Dead Cold (which I bought) is in Winter, The Cruellest Month (also bought) in in Summer and here we have the fourth book in Spring.Louise Penny is a very well spoken and humourous woman. I enjoyed listening to her speak and both my parents asked her questions. Oddly enough, she happens to be the neighbour of one of the people I work closely with currently and so my coworker came to the launch with me as well. My mother was quite tickled to find out I have a connection. Ha ha! I bought the second and third books in the series and had them signed while I was there. I also had the first book signed, but left it with a friend at the bookstore since I knew I was close to little funds in the bank account (little did I know HOW close at the time - yikes!). I figured, I read that one already and I wanted to buy new books to try and break this reading rut I am still in, so I'll pick up that first book after payday next week.Oh! I almost forgot - I won a prize off a blog last month! Whee! And I even photographed and uploaded said photo of the prizes and then never found time to blog about it - so here I am blogging! Melanie over at The Indextrious Reader held a contest last month that fit well with Halloween. Up for grabs was Vamped by David Sosnowski and Vampire Tea (with garlic!!). I have neither read the book, nor tried the tea (which I am wary of, but Melanie says to give it a try!) but I am so happy to have won in a contest on a blog - my first time! Yay, me! And so Vamped has been added to my pathetically long TBR list, which I can't even list because I have so many books on there now I can't remember them all. Sigh. I even finally received my Mini Book Expo review book from Random House (they are slllloooowww in sending out books, boyo!) which I was eagerly awaiting (Rick Mercer Report: The Paperback Book, by Rick Mercer) and it's not even fiction! Look at me branching out and all that! So thank you again, Melanie and I will be reading that book one day! At this rate I'll have tried the tea first (I just need a new tea pot for loose leaves, my old one has gone missing!).Lastly... The Story Siren has done something nifty on her blog, she cleaned out her piles of books and held a giveaway contest (of which sadly, I did not win. Not that I am bitter or anything... *cough*). I have piles and piles and boxes and boxes of books (because I only have two tiny bookshelves and so we never unpacked most of the books when we bought the house and then we bought more and just had to pile them places. Mental note: Ask Santa for bookshelves for Christmas.) Anyhow, it got me thinking I should do something similar. Many books I like to keep for myself, but others, I am willing to part with. I had joined Bookmooch for a while, but ended up spending a fortune in shipping other people MY books but came away with only one for me. So forget that. But I wouldn't mind sending out books once in a while to my (three or four) readers if they were interested in them. So I will think on that and if I can find time to clean out my boxes o' books (hahahahahahahahahhaha! Oh, that's so funny!) I will see what I might be able to give away!