What I read this month

It’s been a busy month of hunting things down for the reno and running around and picking up and dropping off and meeting and stress and calls and emails and then rinsing and repeating.

I thought faucets were overabundant. But that’s only because we hadn’t gone too deep into the world of lighting.

Good lord.

There’s a handful of lights for every man, woman and child in the province in just four nearby lighting store locations. And of course, as with faucets, it’s the insane volume of options that are killing me. It’s an odd dichotomy of “Surely amid these millions of options, there’s something we’d like” offset by “Wait, they have that style and this one, but why not one that mixes those two in the colour of the third one we saw last week, which would be just perfect?”

It’s a feeling of, knowing how much is available, thinking that we shouldn’t need to make do with something. And yet weeks of that belief despite all the effort starts to remind one that, um… something/anything will be better than nothing.

But then another part of your brain wonders if it actually would be.

It’s maddening.

Then you go to sleep exhausted and wake up still tired and, along with all the other stuff you’re doing, you remember that oh, yeah, we still haven’t gotten those lights chosen yet. And now it’s one day closer to the electrician not being around any more, so better get those lights squared away, along with everything else already on your plate.

Guh.

As I’ve been telling people lately, I’m looking forward to being back at home so the reno’s done and we’re just back at home. But quickly catching up to that is looking forward to being back at home because it means the reno is done; it means so too is the end of all the running around and choosing and options and chasing down and picking up and dropping off and stress and everything else we’ve been pressed with having to deal with.

This new bed we’re getting better be really comfy, because whoo, boy, I’m gonna need it.

Having said all that, I got a surprising amount of reading done in October. Here’s how it shaped up:

Read
All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) – Martha Wells
Race to the Sun – Rebecca Roanhorse

Started and stopped
The Paladin Prophecy – Mark Frost
Jade City – Fonda Lee
Planetary book 1 – Writer: Warren Ellis, Artwork: John Cassaday, Colours: Laura Martin & David Baron
Identity Theft and other stories – Robert J. Sawyer
Pearl volume 1 – Writer: Brian Michael Bendis, Artist: Michael Gaydos

Reading
Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries #2) – Martha Wells

Weird month for a broader-than-usaual sampling of styles and media that wasn’t to my taste. And it served to reinforce that just because a writer is lauded and has, in the case of Sawyer, won tons of every award going in his field, doesn’t mean it’ll be my speed (as I realized ages ago with Oscar winners).

The next time I write a reading summary like this, we will’ve been back in our house for a week or two, probably still getting used to how everything works, and bumping into things and stubbing our toes on corners we haven’t gotten used to.

And I can’t wait.