Thursday, August 28, 2014

Of reading in July and changing my spacing habits and not blogging for...how long?

When I went to the Missouri State Fair in 2013, I really wanted to try a fried Oreo, but I couldn't bring myself to go up to the window and order one because of the unnecessary apostrophe on the sign. Instead, I took a picture.

Then I went and stood in line for this gorgeous cinnamon roll. I can't remember anything about the sign.


Hello Blob,

It's been a while, I know. It's not you; it's me. A couple of days after my last post, I had a disappointment that bordered on humiliation. I didn't cry, but my ears burned a fierce red as I sat on the futon and wondered if I should ever write anything again. If I had the right to sully people's eyes...well, that kind of thing gets tiresome quickly. Being somewhat sensible, I took a break, and now I'm back. Since you're a forgiving Blob, this is the part where you might say "I'm glad/you're back/don't explain." Too late; I already did. Sorta.

xoxo Bybee


From now on, I'm going to try to remember to space once and not twice after a period. My very scary typing teacher from high school, Mrs. Peggy Bowman, trained me to two spaces back when Carter was president. One-spacing feels like an aberration. OK, enough. Here's what I read in July, and it's one of my weirder lists:

1. Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher - Joan Reardon. (biography)

2. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green. (YA novel)

3. In the Year of Jubilee - George Gissing. (novel)

4. Ella Enchanted - Gail Carson Levine. (Juvenile or YA novel. I can't remember.)

5. Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein. (YA novel)

6. Five Came Back - Mark Harris. (nonfiction)

7. Lessons from Madame Chic - Jennifer L. Scott. (nonfiction)

8. 1,000 Outfits from Just 30 Pieces - Wendy Mak. (nonfiction)

9. The Tidy Closet - Marie-Anne Lecoeur. (nonfiction)

10. Looking for Alaska - John Green. (YA novel)

Favorites: In the Year of Jubilee; Code Name Verity; Five Came Back; Lessons from Madame Chic; Looking for Alaska.


I'll be back in a couple of days to talk about my great month of reading in August.

10 comments:

Care said...

Hi. Sorry about the whatever that caused the blob-break and what sounds like horrible darkness but I am glad that you have worked back to the sunshine. You read a TON!
I don't seem to notice when others do the two space thing so I don't get why it bugs people but OK. I seem to have broken the habit myself because Wordpress helpfully would tell me when I put in that horrid two spaces. Welcome back. Cinnamon roll looks awesome. How's Missouri? Did you hear I am moving to North Carolina?

Susan Bybee said...

Care,
I don't move to MO until March, 2015. North Carolina! Triangle area? (I thought of that because that's where the bookstores roam.)

jilllora said...

You're back, I'm back. Sounds like we need to have a party. :-D

About that two space/one space thingy...I never even knew we had dropped a space until I wondered why wordpress was giving me funny spacing in some of my posts. Why didn't they teach us this shit in college?!?

Valerie said...

Jill! You're back! I am very YAY.

raidergirl3 said...

I love that you didn't buy the fried Oreo because of the apostrophe. Just yesterday I saw something on the internet about a fail post for someone who had made 'synonym' rolls. I'm sure you would have noticed that!

John Green binge, eh? And you're leaving Korea? That will be a big change.

Unruly Reader said...

I'm glad/you're back/don't explain.

Saw your post today and went all "yippee ki yay." Keep on writing, sister. We need to hear your voice!

I'm curious about the Madame Chic title. Please disclose details. (Demanding, ain't I?)

Susan said...

Booktwin!! You are back! I'm sorry you had a hard time of it. I'm glad you are back again. We Susans have to stick together.

And you did some reading!!!

Susan Bybee said...

Jill, So happy to see you!

Raidergirl, Yes, I'm filling myself full of John Green. Synonym rolls; I love it.

Unruly One, I feel all yippee ki yay about you, too. In fact, I got so carried away about it, I almost added the compound noun that Bruce Willis tacks on to that phrase! Madame Chic is based on the author's paradigm shift after studying for 6 months in France nearly 15 years ago. I first found her on YouTube, and she stood out because she seemed so articulate after a whole afternoon of watching rambling videos with large helpings of "ummm"

Book-Twin, I always enjoy sticking with you. Enjoyed your 100 days of happiness.


Anonymous said...

Glad to have you back. You're one of the people I most enjoy reading.

And I shall remain ever defiant until my last breath. Two spaces after all end marks, period, I say.

;-)

Susan Bybee said...

James, Thank you so much. I'm very sorry to hear about Maya.

 
http://bybeebooks.blogspot.com/2014/08/of-reading-in-july-and-changing-my.html
bybeebooks.blogspot.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-34
69148
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:KSJT5BMZG2BIOT5LO7UCOT2NHANLOF4L
<urn:uuid:be540e93-2871-436d-ba3b-4bb634ca8596>
2018-08-18T01:02:27Z
172.217.7.129
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:OPU6QOWNZLYTAO27B66OVJ7A4IW7K5VL
<urn:uuid:5f9d1214-15ff-4971-a067-c0f9cede2c5c>
http://bybeebooks.blogspot.com/2014/08/of-reading-in-july-and-changing-my.html
response
<urn:uuid:fdcac75f-d5fb-4f92-865f-42894b40afab>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-34
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2018
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-185-139-225.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/