October!

Happy Halloween!  What a week!  I managed to survive this week without:

• My husband (out of town) 

• My Sansa Clip (getting repaired. Housework without an audio book?  I just ended up doing less cleaning.)

• Bread and sugar (South Beach Diet Phase 1.  Not one piece of Halloween candy has entered my mouth . . . yet.)

All in all, October has been a wonderful month!  I made a concerted effort to read excessively  this month and prepared accordingly.  I made a month of freezer dinners, and gave my house a good enough clean-up.  Yes, I do realize this is the sort of thing people do before having a baby or major surgery.  "Nesting" for books?  I'm screwed up, what can I say?

But you have to admit that October is an exciting month for reading in the book blogging world.  I loved joining in on Dewey's Read-a-thon for what I think is the sixth time.  Each time I read less and less, but it's still fun, and there's a comfort in knowing there are others all over the world who think it's fun, too!

October is also wraps up Carl's R.I.P. Challenge.  I don't usually read horror and mysteries, so I love the change of pace this challenge provides for me, and it gets me in the Halloween spirit.  I read more than I planned, but many of these are quite short.  Here's the final report on my reading:





Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury:  (Review here.)

===

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson:  This short novel does its job of creating suspense and horror.  The movie is better, but it was interesting to see the same themes set in a different time period.  The ending is abrupt, but meaningful.  I did not read any of the unrelated short stories that followed. 

===

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (audio):  This is my first Christie, and I was happy to learn that audio was a great format.  I'm a really slow thinker, and I wasn't sure if I would be able to follow a mystery on audio, but it worked out great.  I'll be listening to more!

===

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:  I'm reading all of the Sherlock Holmes works in order of publication, and this was next.  It's definitely my favorite of the novels so far.

===

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: (Review here.)

===

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre:  My first le Carre, and I was impressed.  I loved the story and the writing.  For a wonderful review on what makes it so great, read this post from The Literate Man.

===

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (audio):  Great audio production! It's very gothic, and the readers really helped set the mood.  I'm thinking I enjoyed this more as an audio than I would have reading a print copy.

===

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey:  A historical mystery solved from a hospital bed!  I enjoyed it, but had to read carefully to absorb all of the history of Richard III and his alleged murder of the Princes in the Tower. 

I'm in the middle of reading The Woman in White and listening to The Graveyard Book with my kids.


I also experienced a bit of craftiness this month.  I was in the mood to sew costumes this year, and here's what we ended up with:

A pig

And a pirate:

My other daughter put together a cute cat outfit, and my son wore a Spiderman T-shirt.  Costumes are one of the few things that get easier when your kids enter the teen years.

We also did a craft that has been waiting to be done for a few years!  The kids and I made a  few spider wreaths like this one:

We were also hoping to make mummy legs and witch hats, but somehow we didn't get to them.  Where does the time go?  (Yes, I do know the answer to that one.)

Tonight we celebrated by eating our traditional Mummy Pizzas and Monster Shakes:

and some of us watched (very LOUDLY) the Saints vs. Steelers game.  Mr. Book Clutter is a happy man tonight!