It's Monday, What Are You Reading? #16

I've been reading Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow for nearly two weeks now but didn't get to read more than in snatches until Friday. Between the room spring clean, a Dr. appointment that wasn't, the five movies plus season 2 of The Sopranos I had out of the library last week and the first selection of my free trial month with Netflix (Titanic), the wonderful weather and the calling of my crochet hook I just didn't give my best to reading.

I have just passed the halfway point in Presumed Innocent and had to tear myself away to get this post up.

I really need to finish it in the next day or two if I'm to have a chance of also finishing the sequel before it must be returned next week. It's due Tuesday but I have until Thursday morning before fines kick in.

There are six other novels from last week's library haul calling to me and today I checked out six more, one of them, Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna is also in a long queue like Innocent. And it is the second time I waited my turn for it as my turn came last time just a week or so before I left town for two moths last July.

In last week's It's Monday! post I said I was intending to spend 48 hours reading after my in-laws got home Tuesday. But they extended their trip an extra day and I took advantage of that to watch DVD on the big screen in the living room. Then on Thursday there was the big production of getting ready for a doctor appointment only to get there and find out that it had been the day before! Sigh. I finally got to read for significant stretches on Friday, Saturday and Sunday but I confess I kept taking breaks from reading to crochet, to IM with my sister, To watch Titanic on the big TV Saturday night, to watch episodes of My Name is Earl online on Netflix at the urging of my sister.

And today, today, I was all revved up to spend the afternoon reading but instead I spent four hours looking for a lost crochet hook--my favorite because it is the only one with a little dip behind the hook that keeps the loops from sliding off so easy and its size 9 which is perfect for the size 20 and 30 threads--which exhausted me almost as much as the room spring clean itself as it was much like a fast forward rerun of the five day cleaning effort without the cleaning just the moving of stuff from here to there, the dumping out of drawers, bags, boxes, purses and refilling them, the shaking out of sheets, blankets, pillows, clothes left on the bed.

Once I found it I head outside with the book and a bookmark in progress and Merlin on his leash, but there was already too little light left in the sky to read by and at that moment I HATED the thought of returning to the room as just being in there made me feel like throwing a temper tantrum. So I decided to crochet until the light was too little for that as well. I barely got started when Merlin pulled another of his Houdini stunts getting out of his harness and trotting down the driveway and out of sight before I could get the bookmark, hook and thread safely back in the bag and follow. I spent half an hour looking and calling but it was getting too dark. That was nearly three hours ago now and he's still not back the rascal and it is full dark and there are bigger, meaner cats, mean dogs and raccoons roaming the trailer park.

So, to wrap up. I read around half of Presumed Innocent since last Monday and need to finish it and start its sequel, Innocent soon. Both are over 4oo pages so there's no sense in listing anything else though there are dozens of books in my TBR shelves calling to me, including the dozen library novels checked out in the last two weeks.