Today marks 11 months of the blogging project. Although, since I technically started my blog on New Years Eve I guess it's not truly my 11 Month Blogiversary. Perhaps instead I should call it my 11 Month Projectiversary. And I spent the day reflecting on the last few months of the project - but I will be saving those thoughts for my special week-long end-of-the-project recap extravaganza (which clearly needs a much catchier title) and planning out the books I will be reading for the month ahead. Normally I am not organized enough to plan my books out a month in advance, but it's going to require some strategic planning if I'm going to make it my goal of 100,000 pages by the end of the year. I'm very excited about all of the books I have planned - Christmas books that will be scattered throughout the month, a special book in honor of the Anniversary of the day my parents met, a special Chanukah/Hanukah/Channuka book (however you want to spell it) and a few other surprises.
Today's book, "Leelee Satterfield seems to have it all: a gorgeous husband, two adorable daughters, and roots in the sunny city of Memphis, Tennessee. So when her husband gets the idea to uproot the family to run a quaint Vermont inn, Leelee is devastated . . . and her three best friends are outraged. But she's loved Baker Satterfield since the tenth grade, so how can she not indulge her dream? Plus, the glossy photos of bright autumn trees and smiling children in ski suits push her over the edge. After all, how much trouble can it really be?"
December thoughts:
- I almost didn't read today's book because the title seemed so corny. But I liked the book cover so much that I decided to go ahead and read the book description, which sounded promising. Today's book was not without its flaws (events that were predictable, and oversimplification of some of the characters) but overall I liked the book. It was a cozy book, perfect for curling up in front of the fireplace on the first day of December and reading by the glow of the Christmas tree lights.
- The book takes a concept that TV makes look so fun - running an Inn in Vermont - and shows us the other side of things, the unpleasantness that TV sitcoms rarely let us see. And there was that inevitable reference made Newhart, which made resulted in me having the theme song from that show stuck in my head for several painful hours. Don't get me wrong dear readers, I do enjoy that theme song in an I-was-a-child-in-the-80s-so-I'm-programmed-to-find-crappy-music-soothing kind of way. But hearing that song playing on an endless loop can really start to wear on a person's nerves after forty minutes or so.
- And, because I'm always thinking of my dear readers who might be vegetarians, I feel the need to issue this warning: If you read this book, I would strongly advise that you skip over pages 93 and 94, in which there was a rather graphic description of the making of head cheese, which I really wish I could have skipped over. Unfortunately, that would have violated the parameters of the project, so I was forced to suffer through. I would also strongly advise that you never google "head cheese" a lesson I learned the hard way a few minutes ago when I googled those words to find out if head cheese was one word or two. Let's just say I am changed forever by the experience.
- And finally, the most amusing part of the book was the part where the main character, Leelee, and her her two daughters, Sarah and Isabella, are complaining about how small their bedrooms are in the private quarters in the inn. - There was nothing particularly funny about that scene, only that it reminded me of when, at the age of five, my family moved into a new house and my sister and I spent weeks fighting over who got the smallest room. That's right, for some reason, which still defies all explanation, we both wanted the smallest room. In case you are on the edge of your seats wondering how that one turned out, I won (or lost, depending on how you look at it, because I quickly realized what a stupid idea it was to demand the smallest room.) It sort of became the reverse of Mike Brady's dad speech of, "Sometimes when you lose, you win." Sometimes dear readers, when you win, you lose (and you spend the next 8 years whining about it until your family moves again and you wise up and ask for a much bigger room.)
