RANDOM READING THOUGHTS

I've been looking through my reading log this month, and what I saw startled me a bit. I read about 150 books a year, give or take a dozen. (No, that's not the startling part!) What surprised me was that I tend to read the same authors over and over. I thought I was a more eclectic reader than that, so it was unsettling to see how often I gravitate back to the same writers.

Of course there are the obvious culprits, those authors who are blessedly prolific, like Nora Roberts/J. D. Robb--well, actually, I guess there's no one else quite like the Queen--she is an entity unto herself! Still, authors like Christina Dodd, Kelley Armstrong, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and others keep me coming back for more.

This week, I finished Liar by Justine Larbalestier. Now, I wouldn't exactly call her one of my favorite authors, but I find her books inherently intriguing, especially this one, about a girl who is a pathological liar with a very unusual problem. The thing is, this book grabbed me and kept me all the way through, but I'm still scratching my head over the ending, which I think is exactly what JL was going for when she wrote it. So I guess she is one of my favorite authors, because her books always leave me thinking.

My current read is Ivy by Julie Hearn. It's a book for teens, but it seems like an amalgam of A Little Princess, anything by Dickens, and possibly Slammerkin or The Dress Lodger. I'm always up for a heartrending orphan story, but I have no idea where this one is going to take me. I'm enjoying the ride, er, read.

Putting books up for sale at amazon.com has been fairly lucrative of late. Since my husband retired from the army last June (2009), he has not found another job. His retirement pay doesn't stretch quite far enough for him to remain unemployed for much longer, but of course this economy is about as bad as it can be for job hunters. So I do my regular job, my side job, and find other ways to make money, like selling my books. Considering how many thousands of books I have, and the snail-like pace at which I read, it makes some sense to try to sell them, because I probably won't live long enough to read them, anyway.

I'm going to stop here and go eat dinner, but I wanted to post something and keep my blog active on a regular basis this year.

Happy trails!