Sunday Salon

Since August is three-fourths of the way through the year, it makes sense to do some bookish stats updates. But instead of doing and entire breakdown of genre, book source, author gender, year, and everything else, I just want to look at something I’ve been curious about: my ratio of fiction to nonfiction and how that’s changed through the year.

At the end of August, I’d read 74 books total. That puts me on pace to read 100 books this year. It’s above where I was last year at this time (72 books), but in 2010 I ended up reading 109 books total. So if past trends continue, my reading could speed up in the fall and put me over the 100 books for the year mark.

As promised, I finally have enough of my stuff put away that I can show off some pictures of my new library/office in our house. The photo above is a view of the living room while standing on the stairs to the second floor. The front door is to the left, and my library is to the right. You can see one of my bookcases right behind my awesome reading chair.

Sophisticated Dorkiness is now officially coming to you from small town Minnesota.

Things have been quiet around here for the last several days because Boyfriend and I — with the help of family and many great friends — were in the process of moving 425 miles with a U-Haul full of stuff and one cranky cat. We left Madison on Wednesday, arrived at our new home on Thursday, and have been settling in ever since.

Thank you for hanging in there with me while blogging takes a back seat to major life changes. I don’t like putting the blog on hiatus, but I just can’t seem to find the inspiration to puts words together, and I’d rather not post than post things that aren’t good.

It seems like everything in life has become a numbers game… how many days until X, how much will Y cost, how far until we get to Z? In that sense, here’s some of what my life has been like lately…

So, I have some big news: I took a new job. In about three weeks Boyfriend and I will be moving nine hours away so I can take it. It feels enormously big and terrifying and exciting and awesome all at the same time.

The job is to be the editor of the newspaper in the town where I went to college, Morris, MN. I was actually living in Morris when I started this blog about three years ago, but shortly after moved to Madison to start grad school. I went to grad school in order to get a job exactly like this one, so this new job is a great opportunity for me. I know this is a job that I can do really well, and I can’t wait to get started. On the other hand, I love Madison and am going to be really sad to leave here. Emotionally, I’ve been up and down about everything all week, but mostly up :)

Oh, Sunday, here you are again. While I’m happy to be here at my computer, drinking tea and eating cherries (well worth the $9 I spent on them at the grocery store yesterday), I’d rather be where I was last Sunday about this time — sitting on a beach chair with a book and a view of the lake.

I spent last weekend at my family’s cabin for the fourth of July, and it was awesome. I finished three books over the four-day trip, went swimming, ate delicious food, and got to spend an entire afternoon cruising around the lake on a boat, alcoholic beverage in hand.

I’m leaving this Friday to spend a long weekend at my family’s cabin in northern Wisconsin, and I’ve been thinking all month about the books I plan to take with me. I’m not alone — June seems to be the month where everyone starts putting together their big summer books sections, and I’ve had a lot of fun reading them.

It seems like this year there’s been an emphasis on blogs and on major book websites about the idea of “smart beach reads” or “books you don’t have to be embarrassed by” while you’re out sitting by the lake. Take, for example, this article on mind-bending science fiction that NPR posted a couple weeks ago.

Wallace (Unpoutdownables) had a post earlier this week where she talked about having a well balanced reading diet, and I really liked that idea, especially since for the last several months, my reading diet has been anything but balanced.

In the last two months I’ve read 12 books, and of those only two were fiction (and one was an audio book, so I’ve only “read” one fiction book in two months)! While that’s not entirely surprising given that I love nonfiction, reading Nina Sankovitch’s Tolstoy and the Purple Chair last week put me in the mood to switch up my reading diet a little bit and get some variety of the fictional sort.

Oh, Sunday… you always come too soon. This morning is pretty chill, but this afternoon Boyfriend and I will be heading to our wine-tasting group, WASTED. The theme this month is wine and music, which I think will be a lot of fun.

I’m not much of a music expert — I mostly listen to Pandora rather than purchasing new music for myself — so Boyfriend was in charge of picking out selection this month. I honestly can’t remember what he chose at the moment, but we bought an assertive South African red blend to go with it. Should be interesting!