Kitchen renovation

In my dream, this is what my kitchen looks like! In reality, my kitchen consists of 3 empty blank walls. A hollow space. It sure does make the kitchen look larger than it looked with the old cabinets and appliances in place.

Dust is everywhere. I wake up early to let the contractors into the house and after the massive task of cleaning up after dinner (dishes and utensils in the sewing room, paper goods in the living room, utility sink in the laundry room, and trash in either the garage or the office, there's not a whole lot of time left for reading.

And yet I'm juggling three books at the moment.

I'm nearly finished with Everything That Rises Must Converge. What a crazy collection of short stories by Southern writer, Flannery O'Connor. I really look forward to finishing that one up and writing my review of it. That's the August title for Books & Beer Club. (What I'm really looking forward to about Books & Beer Club this month is having my 28-year old daughter, the one who gives me book recommendations, there with me at the meeting.)

I'm really struggling with Toni Morrison's Beloved. I've read novels and memoirs about slavery. For some reason, this novel is much more gut wrenching and it's a good thing that I'm reading in short spurts because that's all I can really handle of that book at a time. (At the moment it's expired off my iPad and I'm waiting to be able to download it again.) Beloved is the September Books & Beer Club title.

Finally, I just started reading When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalinithi. I'm at the very beginning and Kalinithi's writing style is very easy to engage with. Just praying that reading about someone dying of cancer doesn't become too difficult for me as I watched several of my most dear relatives lose their fights with cancer all too recently. My community book club will be discussing When Breath Becomes Air in October. In September we'll be discussing Barkskins by Annie Proulx. I'm really looking forward to that discussion.

7:30 will come around awfully quickly tomorrow morning. If I get to bed now, maybe I can read 15 minutes of something before my eyes can no longer stay open.

How many books are too many books?

Wow, this hasn't happened in quite awhile. That I have 4 books to read at the same time. Sort of.

I've been happily reading A Breath of Snow and Ice since my Overdrive fiasco last week. Pleasure reading of a book I'm reading only because I want to read it! I'm making slow and steady progress but it's a really big fat book! I wouldn't expect to finish it before the ebook expires.

Yesterday, I was finally able to pick up A Man Called Ove from the library. It's a print book so I can't read it in bed at night. I sat outside in the sunshine yesterday and read the first two chapters.

Later that afternoon, when I checked my email, I learned that The Lightkeepers, my November book club title for my community book club, was available to read. So last night when I went to bed, I started reading that.

Seriously. Three books. I haven't done this in... well... maybe forever. Back when I was doing three books at a time, one was an audio book, one was a print book and the third was a kids' book. Not three adult books at the same time!

Plus... I've got Dracula, my October Books & Beer Club title, downloaded onto my iPad as well. (Found it free on amazon. At least that one book doesn't have a due date.)

I struggled last night to decide how and when to read all these books. Since I need to get the book club books read and I want to get book #6 of Outlander read, too. It helps that I'm going on a trip involving air travel.

Here's the plan:

• Outlander is due in 6 days. I'll read that at night for the next 6 days, trying to get as far into the book as I can. (There's not a whole lot of difference dropping an Outlander book in the middle - or taking a break between books.)
• I'll read A Man Called Ove at the airports and on the airplanes. It's not a long book. I should be able to finish it in the 7 or so hours I'll have.
• Once Outlander expires off my iPad, I'll read The Lightkeepers. I should be able to finish that in the 2 weeks I'll have left before it expires. I have a feeling that by default I'm going to be leading that book club discussion.
• When to read Dracula, the one title that I don't really care about reading except that I love attending Books & Beer and wouldn't attend if I hadn't read the book? That's the question that remains.