hogglestock

The view from our bedroom window this morning. (Just kidding. DC is about a three-hour drive to the ocean.)

Hunkered down for Hurricane Sandy it feels like a wonderful snow day. Both of us home from work. John no longer has to fly to Chicago tomorrow for work. Lucy is as snuggly and cute as ever. Did a good run on the treadmill. Back in cosy sweat pants and slippers. What’s that, oh, I feel something, I think it might be, yes, it is, a numbered list…

1. Yesterday just hours before the rain began, one of the electric windows on our car got stuck in the open position. Can you think of better timing? So far the trash bag solution is holding up to the rain. We will see what happens when the winds, gusting up to 70 mph, get going.

2. We had a fun time bowling yesterday with Roz and Layla. Some of you may remember Roz from a book club in London. They are residents of DC now, and despite all of their very outgoing efforts to wring every bit of entertainment out of their new home, I think they have yet to find a book club here that doesn’t make them want to fall asleep or run from the room screaming.  With any luck Roz is wrangling an invitation for us to an event in December that will make you all envious. But I am not going to say what it is until it happens. Stay tuned.

3. As I mentioned previously, I am making my way through the 1980s portion of my Century of Books list. My latest was 1986 which I jut finished this morning:

Anagrams by Lorrie Moore
This was Moore’s first novel. Up until that point she had been a mildly successful short story writer. Well. Anagrams feels like short stories in search of a novel. Overall it is the tale of Benna and her bestfriend/boyfriend Gerard but each “chapter” is a kind of alternate universe version of their story. I kind of enjoyed the first two or three but then the final one is not only the one I enjoyed the least, but it is by far the longest. Longer than all the others combined. Which for me, reinforced the notion that Moore really couldn’t come up with a single, cohesive novel, but instead strung together a bunch of trying to be too clever twaddle. She (both author Moore and protagonist Benna) is one of those lit professor types who things too much about what she writes. Full of puns and plays on words and various veiled and not so veiled references to anagrams.  There were moments that I quite enjoyed but overall I was glad when it was over.

4. I have been the recipient of unsolicited book gifts from three people lately. I will blog about them in more detail in the days to come. Suffice it to say that the online book community is a wonderful place to hang out.

5. Is Facebook ruining your blogging life? Or maybe I should say impairing, or even just changing.  I have become Facebook friends with some of my favorite bloggers and I love following the ups and downs of their daily lives. But I find that it divides my attention a bit and keeps me from being more creative on My Porch. Granted I have had less time for blogging this year, but it seems like the stimulation I now get on FB is taking away some of my urge to blog. My Porch has always had a healthy dose of my personal life mixed in with books, and those posts tend to encourage more comments than posts that are strictly about books. And now I find that my books only posts are boring the tears out of most of you…I am not sure where I am going with this.  I know I need to step up my blogging game, but that might have to wait until my work project is done at the end of the year.

In the meantime, are there any of you regular commenters, or even lurkers, who would like to be friends with me on Facebook? If so, shoot me an email and I will let you in on my last name and we can be friends.  onmyporch [at] hotmail [dot] com