Tackling the To-Do List

This feels like it's been a short week. I barely got home, and I'm having to get ready to leave again. I have a rather epic to-do list, but it's gradually shrinking. Most of the items are quick little things. One, I'll be able to strike off: watering the outside plants. It's been raining so much lately that I don't think that will be an issue. Of course, it'll stop raining entirely the moment I leave the house, so they'll still dry out while I'm gone.

I probably shouldn't have stayed up past one in the morning to finish reading a book. I didn't even like it all that much. It was pretty much the generic self-congratulatory, quasi-literary book club bait kind of thing that I checked out of the library because something about the cover and the description gave me the impression that it was going to turn out to be magical realism or "soft" fantasy. It wasn't. As the "literary" cliches kept piling up, I kept reading because I was sure there would be a twist that would upend the expectations, but it did exactly what I was afraid it would do. It was a book that seemed to have been planned on the basis of a "get critical acclaim/be selected for book clubs" checklist. In spite of being a big reader, I'm not a big fan of books that hit you over the head with the "I'm so superior because I read the right things" message.

It was a relief to dive into a real fantasy next. I have no problem with books in which the characters are better prepared for what happens to them because they read a lot of fantasy novels. Maybe I'm a hypocrite, but then I don't think I'd like a book with the "I'm superior because I read the right fantasy novels" message. Literary snobbery irks me.

And now I kind of want to write a fantasy novel involving a bookstore. Bookstores are figuratively portals to other worlds. What if it were more literal, and you could actually travel to other worlds based on which book you took off the shelf?

Now I need to print up some more bookmarks, do some laundry and bake some cookies. I already got supplies (ahead of the anticipated afternoon storms). And I probably need to think of some selections to read from to be prepared, depending on who's at the reading and what they want to hear.