Sunday Salon 6 XII 2009 - November Wrap-up, Looking Ahead to December and Giveaways!

Good morning, fellow Salon Members! I hope everyone had a safe and happy Thanksgiving! I spent a loverly day with my mom, who made a 22lb turkey for the two of us. Yes, a 22lb turkey for two people. Because it was on sale and would have been a waste not to buy it. I have had so much turkey in the last couple of weeks that if I don't have turkey again until next Thanksgiving, it may be too soon!!

I thought October had been a good reading month for me, but November proved even better. Twelve books! Part of that was because I was house-sitting for my mom for 2 weeks in November and that always gives me a lot of time to read (no distractions like I have when I'm at home) and the other part is that I picked up on an old guilty pleasure again, X-Men comics. I've been reading X-Men comics for over 30 years, and while my interest waxes and wanes periodically, I always come back to them. This time however, I've been picking up the collected trade paperback editions, getting entire story lines at one time. Nothing of any great literary value, but fun brain candy all the same. Looking back on November, here's what I read:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
• The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
  
• Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor
• ArchEnemy by Frank Beddor
• Uncanny X-Men: Rise & Fall of the Shi'Ar Empire
• X-Men: Supernovas
• Uncanny X-Men: The Extremists
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• X-Men: Blinded by the Light
• A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
• Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  

For the most part, everything that I read this month was good. The Looking Glass Wars stuff is always a good read, and with the third book finally released, it was great to be able to sit down and read the entire series through. The X-Men stuff, again, is nothing staggering in the literary sense, but still fun escapism all the same. A Christmas Carol is a yearly read for me, so I really shouldn't count it, but I do. It's one of my favorite Christmas stories, and with the release of the new Disney animated film this year, I've enjoyed it that much more. I am going to try to read one of Dickens' other Christmas stories before the end of the year. I had never read A Light in the Attic before (in fact, I think the extent of my Shel Silverstein knowledge to this point was The Giving Tree) and when this new anniversary edition was released, I picked up a copy for both myself and my sister, who loves Silverstein. Well, I hate to say it, but I don't know that I'll ever pick up another again. Maybe I just missed out on him as a kid, so I don't have that attachment to him now, but I wasn't all that impressed with the poems, and quite frankly I found some of them to be downright disturbing (especially the ones about kids dying). Maybe I'm just missing the point, but not for me at all. Ella Minnow Pea was another reread for me; I had originally check it out from the library, and enjoyed it so much that when I found a copy of it at a used bookstore during my last trip to Chicago, I picked it up to read on the train ride home. Finally, many of my friends have been telling me that I would love The Time Traveler's Wife, not only because it is a extraordinarily written book, but because it takes place in Chicago and I'd recognize most of the locations in the book, and they were right on all counts! It topped my reading for the month as my favorite book!!

You're probably noticing some skipped reviews up there, and I'm hoping that I can get to them today. They'll be up by the end of the week for sure.

December is going to be another slow reading month for me, I can tell already. There is just so much to do with the holidays and all. Like I said, I do want to try to get in one more Dickens Christmas story, and I have two books that I will be reviewing, Elle Newmark's The Book of Unholy Mischief and J.F. Englert's latest, A Dog at Sea. Beyond that, maybe a couple more X-Men collected editions? Nothing too heavy, that's for sure!

Now, for the giveaways! I had the opportunity to finally meet James Dashner last month, and since I didn't have a copy of his new book handy (The Maze Runner, it was a my house and I was house sitting for my mom), I just went ahead and picked up another copy for him to sign (and again, no camera, so no picture! Curses!). Well, the good news for you is, I'm giving away my other copy to a lucky reader! My other giveaway is a full set of J.F. Englert's books (A Dog About Town, A Dog Among Diplomats and A Dog at Sea). Stop by and enter!

That's all for this Sunday. Happy reading, everyone!