I’ve got a vacation from one of my jobs this week, so I’m enjoying new-found freedom in the evenings and seeing how the 9-5 world lives (except from 9-5, I’m sitting around the house making bread pudding, reading, and putting my home library on Library Thing).  Here’s a curious thing, that I knew but rarely experienced: when you’re not working till 9 or 10 pm, you get sleepy a lot earlier.  You feel cozy, and ready for bed, not hyped up or exhausted or still in dinner-digestion mode.  It’s great!  Also great is being able to go to a $3 movie on a weeknight with friends, early enough that they can actually get up for work in the morning.  Last night we took in Lars and the Real Girl, which was a surprisingly sweet movie given the premise and thoroughly enjoyable.

At home, in-between consuming bread pudding and going to bed, I read The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett.  It was the perfect length for that stretch of time, and one of those perfect stories for people who like reading about reading.  The way it sucks up your time, the way it changes your perspective, the way others around you react.  Of course, this reader is a fictional version of the Queen, so that adds some nice laughs.

Yesterday afternoon, and on a very different note, I finished A Great and Terrible Beauty, which was both enjoyable and annoying, in a mostly brain-candy with a little bit of edge sort of way.  Yes, I’ll read the sequel.  No, I’m not necessarily proud of the fact.  Mostly because the covers irritate me.

Speaking of covers, I also recently read Gideon the Cutpurse, whose title has been changed to The Time Travelers for the paperback version – boo!  Hiss!  Isn’t “Gideon the Cutpurse” much more fun and distinctive than “The Time Travelers”?  The new covers, though, are fab – although there was nothing wrong with the old one.  Nothing at all.  Kitri has a copy of the sequel, The Time Thief, which I’m looking forward to reading.  Good children’s adventure/time travel/historical fiction.

At the moment I’m reading Lloyd Alexander’s last book ever, The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio.  The first few chapters have been fun but I’m not hooked yet – it does, however, feel like classic Alexander.  I’m also listening to Ann Patchett’s latest, Run, on audio.  I have no idea where it’s going, but so far I’m interested.

Title quoted from The Uncommon Reader, but of course.

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