ReadingReadingReading

You may have noticed that my reading list off to the right side of my blog is outdated. It is, in fact, exactly 12 books behind now, although, to be fair, I still haven't finished Nicholas Nickleby. (I just keep getting sidetracked by all that delicious YA lit in my local library.)

Since last updating the list, I have read the following books:

The Gift, Peter Dickinson
Tears of the Salamander, Peter Dickinson
Time of the Ghost, Diana Wynne Jones
Aunt Maria, Diana Wynne Jones
Hero’s Song, Edith Pattou
The Lion Tamer’s Daughter and Other Stories, Peter Dickinson
Waifs and Strays, Charles de Lint
Fire Arrow, Edith Pattou
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling
Austenland, Shannon Hale
The Blue Hawk, Peter Dickinson

I've also just started The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman, which I have already read but which I thought it wise to reread since a rather intriguing-looking film version is coming out in December (made particularly intriguing because they've used Mars: Bringer of War from Gustav Holst's The Planets in the teaser trailer).

The truth is, I've realized over the past few weeks that I need to stop checking books out from the library. Really. I currently own several dozen books that I have never read, so checking stuff out from the library, particularly things I've read before, seems about as sensible as eating out every night when your fridge at home is completely stuffed.

But I also can't seem to help myself.

Every time I go there, I just have to browse around, lifting a volume or two or ten from the shelves, convinced that unless I check these darn books out right now I'll never have the chance to read them. And I know the books at home will still be waiting for me once I've finished the ones from the library. So really, where's the problem?

In other Lizardbreath-reading news, I've discovered a few more blogs that are slowly becoming daily reads. For some reason (shouldn't be too hard to figure out) I find myself drawn to the blogs of mid-to-late twenty-somethings who are LDS and single. And also female.

And gradually I am beginning to realize that I am not alone, that there are scads of women like me out there, settling down into careers or further schooling, trying to convince ourselves that being single isn't so bad and that a career can actually be pretty fun and that you can also travel and do all sorts of fun single stuff, and then we run across things like this and remember (yet again, like smacking your head into that same tetherball pole) that--wait--yes, it is that bad.

And that guys are just dumb. Because they have no excuse. Because there are hundreds upon hundreds of the most excellent, intelligent, kind, caring and downright foxy women out there just ripe for the picking. (Not me, necessarily, but there are plenty of them out there!)

Seriously. What the heck is wrong with these fellows? Alas, I'm sure, somehow, they would ask the same thing about us.

Edit: Of course, all of you young single guys who read this blog are excepted. Because you are the ones who are Really Trying. (But even still. Look around your ward! Sit next to the girl you've had your eye on for the past two months and ask her out already!)