Sorry that I’ve been a terrible blogger. I’m trying to prepare for 2 festivals this upcoming weekend, and I’m finding that what I want to do is more work than I thought. Isn’t that the way it always is? But anything worth doing is worth doing right. So I’m creating new displays for my new addition and some existing add ons that were never displayed to their advantage at the beginning.

DH finished The Eyre Affaire, and loved it. Now we have to seek out the sequels. Its all my fault, you know. I forced the book on him, and he is now hooked. Bwahahahaha!

I’m hoping, after sleeping in on Monday, to finish Harry Potter. But we’ll see what life actually serves up on Monday.

So I’m taking part in this challenge, yasee? And I really am not sure what I’m going to read. Thanks to everyone who commented on my previous post. Life is galloping along at a breakneck pace, and probably will continue to do so until after Halloween. So I figure that I probably could have the last Harry Potter book as one of my books, since I’m about 220 pages in and don’t anticipate being able to finish it until Labor Day, at least.

I’m considering using Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, simply because of its size. About 2 years ago I’d gotten about halfway through it, then set it down for some reason and never picked it back up. More for the size of the book then any other reason. At 928 pages, its fairly daunting.

But then the recommendations for Neil Gaiman have been nearly unanimous. I’ve liked what I’ve read by him, so I am going to look for one of his books. Its probably going to depend on what I can check out of the library, but American Gods or Fragile Things look like good possibilities.

Jonathan Carroll’s Land of Laughs is available at the library here. Yay! I think that is definitely going to be one of my books for this challenge.

And one that has been recommended elsewhere, but not mentioned in Carl’s blog is Max Brooks World War Z. After participating briefly in the BLITEOTW challenge, I feel like its required to have a zombie entry.

Another good possibility is Dan Simmon’s The Terror. It looks to be just right for this challenge.

All of these books are ones that I’ve not read or finished. I probably will look at re-reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula, possibly Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot or the Shining, Children of Night by Dan Simmons. They’ll be fun for the season too.

A reading challenge, that is. I found out about it thanks to Stefanie at So Many Books. Carl at the Stainless Steel Droppings Blog issued his second RIP (Readers Imbibing Peril) challenge. One must read 4 scary genre books, or 2 humongous books, or 2 large and one small scary, or just one book that fits the other guidelines. This is for the time frame Sept 1 – Oct 31, 2007. I’m out of scary books here at the house, and will have to adjourn to the library or bookstore. Oh shucks, whatever will I do?

I need to see if I can find another Jonathan Carroll locally. I’ve already read Sleeping in Flame. It was a trip. Does Dan Simmons have anything else out now? I just read Ilium and Olympos. What Gaiman can I get into? Carl suggests Coraline or Fragile Things. Hmmnnn. Decisions, decisions. Do you have any suggestions for books for this challenge?

what the previous weirdness was, I found the BLITEOTW site late Wednesday night. It was a blog site that started the zombipocalypse idea. The main idea of the thing was to have everybody who wanted to participate blog all day about zombies taking over their corner of the world. And as I have a bit of haunted house experience, that was just too fun and silly not to take up. I just hate that I didn’t find out about it until too late in the day to take real advantage of the entire meme. There are some really great blogs out there linked to the site with fantastic setups that are really great writing. They set up the situations very plausibly and keep up very real seeming situations. I need to find and post some of the links to the bloggers whose stories were the best.

For some reason, I can’t post from some places. So my posting is going to be sporadic right now. My laptop is about to be sent off for service and so life is going to be very entertaining for a bit. Thanks for your indulgence while this craziness goes on.

It’s amusing. I’m sitting here watching the early news and my local fox affiliate is running their weekly tech segment. The guys, Chase and Sam, are talking about blogging. They mention/recommend WordPress!