Errant Blogger Returns

Hi everybody, if there's anybody still out there reading this. Been absent for a few weeks due to an underwhelming enthusiasm for writing anything.

Been so unenthusiastic about even logging in, that I never posted who won the little give-away that I did on 5/28. How's that for being a really bad blogger? Three of you answered -- Emily, Bloglily, and the blogger formerly known as Chief Biscuit now using her IRL name, Kay. (BTW, Kay has changed the name of her blog to Made for Weather, which is also the title of her most recently published book of poetry.)

None of you guessed the right answer, though Lily was closest: I thought Jonathan Strange would be cool for those reasons and gifted it to my son who thought 800 pages!. And so it sits unread. Since you each responded, you each win. Send me your postal address and I'll send you a little bookish surprise. Emily -- I have your address and will send with the book I promised (Rosalind Franklin and DNA) to you soon.

The answer? Stevenson's Treasure Island was a holiday gift meant to be read with my husband's grandson, but he was more interested in my son's Harry Potter book. That was when he was just learning to read, and longer ago than I'd like to admit. Not only has he now read for years, last year's gift was Michael Chabon's book Summerland. Sigh! I think he is too old now to think that Treasure Island is a cool book, even though it has pirates in it.

I don't think that there is any one reason why people have books they haven't read. I think most bibliophiles have so many unread books because we always are reading at least one and always on the look out for something to read in the future. As if we were squirrels storing up nuts for the winter, we stock books on our shelves lest we not run out of something to read.

While I haven't been posting here, I have been reading and have finished 4 books in the last 2 weeks. Escape by Carolyn Jessop, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, and Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon.

The last two were books I read for book groups I'm in. I've been intending to write about book groups for some time, so maybe there will be such a post here soon. Escape was a book I couldn't put down and stayed up until 5am one Saturday night/Sunday morning to finish. I've thought much about the Texas CPS/YFZ issue since April and, while I in no way support the cult's treatment of women and children or their bizarre beliefs, I was uneasy with how the State Government of Texas went into the YFZ Ranch and placed all of the children in protective custody. It seemed to me that it was more about the state not sanctioning the cult's polygamist beliefs. But, after reading Jessop's book about life in the FLDS, I've had to rethink my positions.

Currently, I'm trying to plow through Earth Community, Earth Ethics as part of the EcoJustice Challenge. I'll write about that when I finish, either here or at the challenge site. And, I found Gilgamesh stuck under the seat of my car and started to read it while waiting for a store to open during a heavy downpour. I'm completely taken by the first lines.

So, it's not like I don't have anything to write about. I intend to be here more regularly. Hope you'll stop by again.

In the meantime, here is a picture I took last night during a sudden 10-minute hail storm. I'm lucky that I haven't been flooded out, but I am so tired with all this rain!