I'm in love, I'm in love and I don't care who knows it!!

In love with Neil Gaiman's writing, that is.  I mean AAAAH!! It's so beautifully elegant, mystical, entrancing, insightful and exhilarating.  The Ocean at the End of the Lane was sublimely superb.  
Take, say, "Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside.  You don't.  I don't.  People are much more complicated than that.  It's true of everybody."
Or, "I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy."
Or (I promise this is the last), "Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.” 
I mean come on... I can't really use more of my favorite quotes anyway without giving away elements of the story.  So suffice it to say, if you haven't done so already, get out there and read it!  
I have been waiting for one of Gaiman's others, The Graveyard Book, to become available from the digital library for quite some time now.  I'm hoping that will become available soon, and also American Gods, as I feel I will be needing another hit of Gaiman goodness very soon.  
I don't know the number of pages we read today, because I accidentally updated our progress before doing the page count, and once the progress is updated I no longer know what pages we were on yesterday.  Mine was around 150 and Ilya's was 20ish (he fell asleep reading, my poor over-worked and exhausted husband!).  
Next I am going to read Labor Day.  I have been waiting for this one to become available to borrow from the digital library pretty much since the beginning of this challenge and am very pleased that it is finally in my possession.

Enough with the snow already!!

Apparently March decided to go out like Godzilla, as we got absolutely hammered with snowpocalypse #502 of the year  last night (see above, though it doesn't even come close to showing the mess that was out there).  Ok, perhaps I'm exaggerating... it's more like snowpocalypse #5...and while I do admit that I couldn't help but feel happy when I woke up this morning and looked outside the back windows and saw the beautiful snowy trees, any happiness quickly faded away when I looked outside the parking lot side (I didn't even get a picture, it was just too disgusting!).  
Normally we wouldn't even go anywhere on Sunday, however Ilya absolutely had to get in to work today to finish some things up before their deadlines.  And in keeping with our horrible luck in apartment-choosing, our section here at the top of the complex hadn't been touched by shovel, snowblower or plow.  So we figured we would have a nice leisurely morning and by the time we were done with breakfast they would have plowed.  I made us a new recipe I tried off Pinterest for stuffed french toast which was delicious (though probably the least healthy breakfast option ever), but when we were done with that and the dishes and whatnot at noon, the parking lot in our section had still not been plowed at all!  So we decided we had to go start shoveling (the couple who shovels together stays together!), since our car was buried on all sides because of where we had parked, so it would take a long time to get out.  Luckily the plows finally came through as we were shoveling, so it was a magical union of snow removal and after some serious effort we were able to get our car and our neighbor's car out.  So Ilya headed off to work and I am now recovering from the intense shoveling and preparing to immerse myself in my next read.
I finished up Sharp Objects yesterday, which I enjoyed all right, though it was my least favorite of Gillian Flynn's novels (I'm pretty sure it was her first, though, so I cut her a little slack).  I'm not sure what exactly it was that I found lacking, it just didn't hit the same, I guess.  
Now I am diving into Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  this is a fairly short read (246 pages), and after reading the first chapter it feels like it should be a pretty quick (and enjoyable) read.  So on that note, I am off to curl up with Gizmo, my Nook and my coffee to have a relaxing reading afternoon. 

Tough decisions need to be made

Pages read today: 15 for Meredith, 80 for Ilya

Well ok, I guess it's just one decision... 
I'm trying to figure out if I want to forge ahead with Winter's Tale or jump ship for Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, which just became available for me to borrow on my Nook.  Winter's Tale seems to have begun the intense descriptive text and it's really not holding my attention right now.  Though to be fair, the lack-of-attention is probably more accurately a result of my thinking about Sharp Objects and how much I want to read that instead!  It doesn't even seem possible at this point for me to get through all of Winter's Tale before I have to return it to the library (and it cannot be renewed as other readers have it on hold), and I really would much rather read Sharp Objects right now, so it seems pretty clear where this is going to end up.  It will just be a pause for Winter's Tale.  I do still want to try reading it all, and I can wait to do so until the hype of the movie dies down and the demand for the book dwindles, right?  Right! 

phew!

My apologies for the lack of updates on here.  Sadly, there wasn't any reading going on this week.  The overtime levels worked by both of us was ridiculous this week, so the weekend was spent catching up on doing things we hadn't been able to do, and watching a couple of movies (The Hunger Games - Catching Fire and American Hustle.  Both good!).  My brain was just too fried from all the reading for work to handle more reading. Fortunately, it looks as though both of us will be back to regular hours starting tomorrow, and that means we get our reading time back!  Wooohoo!  I'm excited to dive back into Winter's Tale, as I was enjoying what I have read so far.

I choose you, Winter's Tale

Pages read today: 59 for Meredith, 54 for Ilya

After reading a chapter of Winter's Tale to figure out if I could take on its epicness, it was so great that I didn't want to stop reading.  So I didn't.  I have set The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo aside for the time being until I finish this beast of a novel.  Hopefully its greatness will continue and it will not become overrun with crazy descriptions.  I'm feeling optimistic about it.
Sadly, we must now say goodbye to the weekend.  Let's have a moment of silence for our beloved friend.

I need longer weekends!

I'm having a book crisis.  I currently have both The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Winter's Tale ebooks checked out from the virtual library.  If I dive into the former, inevitably I will then want to keep on reading the other two books in the trilogy, and with their length it is pretty likely that the latter will have already needed to be returned. 
There doesn't seem to be a huge demand for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books right now, so I could just read Winter's Tale first and then go read those after.  However, the reviews for Winter's Tale are really concerning me (along with its hefty page count).  From what I have gathered, it is overridden with endless, lengthy descriptions and little actual plot or event-happening.  This might not be as big of a deal for a novel half its length, but at 748 pages, I'm just not sure I have what it takes to endure that kind of writing for that long.

So I'm still trying to decide, figuring I will read a few pages of Winter's Tale to see how it feels and then go from there.  Has anyone out there read either (or both) of these?  If so, any guidance would be appreciated.
I must confess, today is largely being used as a lazy, relaxing day catching up on all kinds of TV stuff I haven't been watching.  Every weekend lately has felt like go, go, go and yesterday was non-stop for me from the second I got up until 8pm and it just wiped me out.  So we actually slept in a bit today and have been seriously bumming around all morning.  Somehow it's noon already, and Ilya still has to go put in a few hours at work and I have to do some laundry and before we know it, the weekend will be over.  :(
I did end up watching The Road last night.  Ilya's brother was over last night and they were watching whatever guy stuff downstairs, so I was upstairs and figuring out what I wanted to do.  The book dilemma wasn't even close to solved and I remembered having seen that The Road was on Netflix Instant and decided to give it a whirl.  It was definitely as bleak and depressing as the book, but as is almost always the case, the book is a million times better and the movie, while true to the book for the majority of the time, still ended up Hollywoodifying it. 
Well, time to really crack down and figure out which book to commit to before the day is over and there's no time to read anything.  I hope everyone out there is enjoying the weekend.

Snow Days are the best days!

Pages read today: 92 for Meredith, 176 for Ilya

We have had quite a snow-filled winter this year, and today got hit with yet another blizzard.  The upside?  Getting let out of work at noon!  It was a rough ride home but sure was nice once we got here to just enjoy a free afternoon with our animal buddies.  
Another upside is by having acquired extra free time in the day, Ilya jumped back into the duel with a vengeance!  He's actually done with his book but is finishing reading the appendices.  I also finished my most recent read today and noticed there has been a trend in my reading lately, with the events in the books being during and/or after the decline of civilization.  Even when the story ends on some kind of optimistic note, the overall experience is quite depressing and I really need to get on a new reading path for a bit!
There has been a promise I made to write some kind of post about my thoughts on The Giver series but then I never got around to it.  So here it comes... There was a clear trend with the first 3 books having the ending come at you all at once with very little page time devoted to it, feeling somewhat rushed.  There was a steady increase in how noticeable this was as the series progressed.  At least with the first 3 books in the series, they were each fairly short (ranging from 169-215 pages overall) so it wasn't necessarily a bad thing or causing me to feel robbed in some way of a more eloquently-laid-out ending.  However, this was not the case with the final installment, Son, which was double the length (or more) of its predecessors in the series.  I was concerned going in, after having openly acknowledged to myself this trend in the rushed endings, but thought since there was double the page space it would certainly be able to better hash-out the ending that would tie the entire series up, right?  Wrong.  There was way too much repetition, as well as bringing the reader up to speed on events from the previous books, with a huge build up for a reunion between two characters.  Then the monumental, crucial events that the 300+ pages you've read have been building up to arrives and, I kid you not, they occur and the book is over within 15 pages, max (it may have even been less than that, I can't remember right now as I finished it a while back.  It was definitely no more than 15, and probably more like 10).  I was so angry I almost threw the book.  Not only because of how it was so abrupt but because it felt like she had just been writing along with no clue of how to actually play-out the ending, and then realized she had to end it so she just slapped it on haphazardly.  It was stupid.  There, I said it.  The way the "enemy" was defeated was so dumb and made no sense whatsoever that it could be that simple (and the defeating of the enemy received all of about 2 pages).  Since it was a library book, though, I decided that throwing it was probably not the best option, so instead I just complain about it instead!  Honestly, it felt rushed, sloppy and seriously like a massive insult to the readers who had gone on this journey through the entire series leading up to these final events to slap it together in such a short space.  And it's really upsetting because of how much I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the series and even despite the repetition and bringing readers up to speed for the majority of Son, I was ok with that and still enjoyed the rest of the book itself.  If only the ending had been handled properly.  Since it wasn't, though, it was just a huge let down for me. 
Anyway, that's that.
Dark Places was next for me, another Gillian Flynn read.  It reminded me of the experience reading Gone Girl in that there was an increase in the craziness level of the characters as the story progressed.  In the beginning it was just "eh, we're all a little flawed, right?!  Who doesn't have some kind of issues, especially from childhood trauma?"  But then gradually (and sometimes in a not-so-gradually but more of a "BAM!" occurrence), the characters became increasingly dysfunctional and disturbed to a whole other level.  As twisted and sometimes downright awful the characters and story were, though, I loved it!  It had me completely hooked and needing to know how it would all end.  I'm a big fan of Flynn's writing style, as she is able to work the chapters alternating between points-of-view beautifully and in both books of hers I've read now I can honestly say I never had a friggin clue how it would all end!  I'm looking forward to reading her other book, Sharp Objects and am waiting for the ebook version to become available to borrow from the library on the Nook.
And that brings me to the book I just finished, Shatter Me.  Not a lot to say on this one... I didn't love it, didn't hate it, it was kind of just there.  It seemed somewhat corny at times but nothing too crazy (nothing close to the Twilight-level or corny, that's for sure!).
And now I am going to dive into the Millennium series, beginning with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  This one is pretty epic in length (for me), but everyone I know who has read it loved it so I'm pretty excited to check it out.
As a side note, the film version of The Road is now available on Netflix Instant.  We came across it today while perusing for something to watch.  Ilya has seen the film, never read the book.  I have read the book, never seen the film.  It seems, however, they are both fairly equal in being dismal and bleak, so we decided that we will need to be in the right mindset in order to watch it and today was just not that day.  I am looking forward to seeing it, though, as the conversations I had with Ilya about what general events were in the film made it seem that they were quite true to the book, which is always nice.  I'll still do my best to manage my expectations, though, since it is Hollywood and I'm sure they made sure to take their liberties wherever they saw fit.
Now that the snow has stopped falling, it's back to work for sure tomorrow, so my reading eyes need some rest.  I hope everyone is having an excellent week and that if spring hasn't quite sprung wherever you are yet that it will real soon (here too!).

Be careful what you wish for!

Pages read today: 198 for Meredith, 0 for Ilya

So remember when I was all whiny about how none of the books I wanted to read were available yet to borrow from the library on my Nook?  Well, in less than 24 hours time, 3 of those became available.  And from the looks of it, a couple others may also become available any day now.  So now I am facing the reverse problem and need to get back into gear with the reading, especially since I can only borrow them for 21 days.  
It has seemed to work already, as I crushed the rest of The Road today, which was powerful and gripping, while discouraging, bleak and despondent.  There are no chapters, just 287 pages straight of hopelessness and misery.  Sounds great, right?  But it is!  I found it to be spectacular, personally.  I know a lot of people can't stand the style it was written in (claiming it's repetitive), but I thought it was perfect for portraying the tone/mood of the world the reader is pulled into.
Luckily for me, I don't really know what the post-apocalyptic world would look like, so I wasn't sitting there trying to figure out every way in which the author got it wrong (which seems to be what a good chunk of the negative reviews out there point to).  It seemed pretty gosh darned realistic to me.  Definitely quite the downer, though.  Especially when looking around and realizing if an asteroid or nuclear attack or whatever the heck it was that happened in the book happened right now, the Gandelmans would be completely S.O.L. as we are in no way prepared for any kind of disaster!  Heck, we probably wouldn't even be able to survive a prolonged power outage.  In all seriousness, though, I highly recommend The Road. 
The first of the library books at my disposal that I'm choosing to delve into is Dark Places by Gillian Flynn.  I loved Gone Girl, so we'll see how this one fares.
Sadly, Ilya seems to have lost interest in the duel... probably because it's not really so much of a duel anymore with how far ahead of him I am!  Actually, I think he's simply choosing to focus more on his writing right now.  There has definitely been far less free time for the Gandelmans lately with all the overtime happening, so he kind of has to pick and choose.  And of the two, the writing is the one that he really feels like he needs to keep up with on a daily basis.  
So for now, I will just be dueling with myself, and I'm ok with that as long as I continue to make good progress!