Be Careful Out There

Be careful while you are surfing the internet out there. Even the most innocuous site can be infected. I simply visited a few book blogs this morning, and the mere act of visiting them got me infected with a particularly malicious little bug, which actually hid my entire C:/ drive from me!

I'm not positive, since I won't go back to the site to confirm it, but I think that it was Rundpinne's site that got me. I had, I think, three sites open and was visiting one when I had a message pop up about a script having trouble. I chose to "Stop" the script, and I think that was my big mistake, as I think they used that common window as a launch for the bug. Next thing I knew, I saw DOS windows pop up and close. I thought that was suspicious, and I went to check out the other tabs that I had open, and saw at the top of one of the blogs it mentioned a script error. Then I suddenly got "hard drive failure" messages, which made me really suspicious-- this is a common ploy with malware. Then I got other messages, and a Windows XP Restore window opened and started "scanning". I stopped it, as I didn't believe it to be legit, and called my computer techs.

They confirmed that this is an ugly one that they've been seeing lately. What makes it so bad is the fact that it actually hides all of the user's files from them. Nothing could be opened or used or accessed. We wound up having me go into Safe Mode, and had to launch Internet Explorer from "Run", which was one of the only things that would work (thank God I could still access my Start menu!). So I was able to initiate a remote session with my tech guys and was lucky enough to have all of my data stored on a server and not locally on my system. They are still working to see whether they can restore my system without having to reinstall everything. But right now, it isn't looking good.

Ugh! So, I can't say for sure that it was Rundpinne's blog that did it, but that is the one that I have in my mind as being the one with the script error. Unfortunately I don't know her email address, so I can't contact her to alert her. If anyone here knows how to get in touch with her by some means other than her blog, you might alert her that her site could be infected.

So now I fear visiting any blogs, as even an innocuous book blog can house a big nasty just waiting to infect my system! Be careful out there, my blogging friends!

My Reading Style

I've been noticing certain trends with me that I find are becoming indicative of a certain reading style that I consistently display:

• I read multiple books at once. This is partially due to a tendency to boredom requiring a lot of variety. It is also partially due to me being a bit scatter-brained. So I need to have one book by my bedside and one in my purse and another in the living room. That way I always have one available, and don't have to work so hard to remember to grab my book as I go.
• The first 50 pages are difficult for me. I have a hard time getting into a story during the slow build-up that you commonly have at the beginning of a story. So I hem and haw, debate on whether to continue reading the book, read a couple of pages and then put the book down, read a couple of paragraphs and put the book down. Then suddenly the book catches me, usually between 50-75 pages in, and then I'm hooked and can't wait to see what will happen next.
• A book is like my gas gauge-- the first half goes slowly, and the second half just whizzes by! I guess another comparison would be a road trip. Don't you find that the trip home goes by so much faster than the first half? Books seem to drag on and on for the first half, and the final 100 pages usually flies by! And a good book is sort of like a road trip, isn't it? I mean, it takes you on a journey, and then brings you back on home again. Part of the explanation for this phenomenon is probably due to point #2 above. I just take so long to get through the first 50 pages. And by the time I get to the final 100 pages, I am usually immersed into a high-octane storyline that has me hooked. So I wind up foregoing everything else (including the computer *gasp*) to complete the story. Also keep in mind that I am generally a slow reader. Others will finish a book in a single day that may take me a week or two to get through. A couple of paragraphs read while I brush my teeth, a few more read pumping gas, a couple of pages read in bed before I pass out from exhaustion. I read in fits and starts.

So how about you? Do you have a certain "reading style"? Do you just sit down and devour books in a single sitting, or are you a distracted reader who only reads a little at a time? Do you focus on one book at a time, or do you have multiple books going at once? Do you find that books go down smoothly, or do they go in fits and starts? Like me, do you find that maybe the beginning drags on slowly, while the end flies by?

My bookcase can kick your bookcase's butt and make it cry...

I just picked up this bookcase from a neighbor of my mother. She had picked up 8 or 9 of these things at one point, and just didn't have room for this one anymore.

No wonder! This thing is HUGE! It's a monster of a bookcase. It stands 95 inches tall. Yep, 95 inches! That's just a hair under 8 feet tall! I will actually need a step ladder to reach the top shelf! When I stand in front of the bookcase, I am eye level with the bottom of the second shelf down-- and I'm about 5'5"!

I had planned on probably putting this out in the garage for additional storage. However after getting it home we found that it is too tall for the garage! So today it got moved into the entryway. The only place that it will fit in my house is in the living room, which has vaulted ceilings.

This baby should go a long way towards helping me organize my books. I was finally able to start unpacking the books that have been stashed in the garage since I moved in 1 1/2 years ago.

And look at that. Someone even wired it for power. So I can put a lamp in the bookcase or my digital picture frame or stereo. Not half bad!

J.M. Barrie and M.J.

I was reading about author J.M. Barrie today (the author of Peter Pan), and it was interesting to read his biography on Wikipedia:

Barrie also had friendships with other children, both before he met the Davies boys and after they had grown up, and there has since been speculation that Barrie was a paedophile or that he engaged in child sexual abuse. However, there is no direct evidence of any such conduct, nor that he was suspected of it at the time. Nico, the youngest of the brothers, flatly denied that Barrie ever behaved inappropriately. 'I don't believe that Uncle Jim ever experienced what one might call "a stirring in the undergrowth" for anyone — man, woman, or child,' he stated. 'He was an innocent — which is why he could write Peter Pan.' His relationships with the surviving Davies boys continued well beyond their childhood and adolescence.

Doesn't that sound a lot like another figure well associated with Neverland? Isn't it curious that Michael Jackson may actually have been very similar to J.M. Barrie rather than Peter Pan.

Just something that I found interesting...

Just changing the window dressings...

Please excuse the mess while I play around with the window dressings a little. A friend of mine started making me a banner months ago, but he never finished. You know how life gets in the way sometimes, and you get side-tracked. But he was doing a great job with the banner, and I decided that I was going to utilize the proto-type, and see how it goes. So you may see this site go through a few renditions while we play around with it.

Feel free to give any feedback on the banner or other layout choices. All feedback is appreciated!

Note: The truck in the image is one that I got a picture of a couple of years ago. We were on our way over to my step-brother's house, and had this truck in front of us. It had the stereotypical big tires and American flag flying in the back bed. I asked my boyfriend to get a shot of it, because it epitomized the "redneck world" that I grew up in! (However my friend did take some liberties with the truck, adding "FERD" and the "RED NEK" license plate!) The truck that we had in front of us yesterday with the dead wild hog strapped to the top of a cage in the back of a truck would be a close second contender for the stereotypical redneck truck!

Reading List 2010

Here is what I have so far on my list of books to read/listen to this year. Most of these are already sitting on my shelf:

• Any Minute by Joyce Meyer (audiobook)
  
• Beginner's Luck by Laura Pedersen
• Best Bet by Laura Pederesen
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer by Sam Benjamin (e-book)
  
• Dark Jewels by Lisa Jackson
• Dead Sea by Brian Keene
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• Godmother by Carrie Adams
• Hate List by Jennifer Brown
• Hope for Refuge by Jane Goodall (audiobook)
  
• The Host by Stephanie Meyer
• Hunter by Campbell Jeffrey
• Julie & Julia by Julie Powell
• Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn
• The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
• The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
• Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson
• Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• Maximum Ride: School's Out by James Patterson
• Obama's Blackberry by Kasper Hauser
• Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
• Predator by Patricia Cornwell (audiobook)
  
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
• Showdown by Ted Dekker
• Simon's Cat by Simon Tofield
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
• Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson
• Terror by Dan Simmons
• Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
• Day by Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne
• Ghoul by Brian Keene
• The Shack by William P. Young
• Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin
• Traveling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon
• Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
• The Mayo Diet book by Mayo clinic
• Darkness on the Edge of Town by Brian Keene

One World One Heart 2010 Giveaway

It's time for the OWOH worldwide giveaway event, and I'm joining in with a "book related" giveaway over on my other blog Heather's Eden. Feel free to pop in over there and enter to win!

Shipping Delays

I believe that I may have a couple of books waiting to be shipped out. Unfortunately I don't even know right now what may need to ship, as everything from my bedroom is packed in boxes in my spare room.

Late November-Early December was consumed with holiday preparation. Mid-Late December we packed up my bedroom and began painting, and we just finished that a few days ago and are slowly going through the boxes and moving things back into the bedroom along with the furniture.

So at the moment, all of my TBR books and those that were for giveaways are packed up while I slowly work through things.

So long story short (TOO LATE!), if you are waiting on a book from me, please be patient. Since I am shipping these books, it sometimes takes longer to get them out than if they were shipped by a publisher. Just know that I haven't forgotten and am just spinning my wheels and trying to get caught up. But, if you are waiting on a book from me, please feel free to check in with me and make sure that it has not gone out yet.

Thanks for hanging in there with me!

Secret Santa Gift Received

I actually received my Secret Santa gift awhile back, but I had committed to not opening it until Christmas. Well, I opened it Christmas Eve, but I think it was near midnight. So...I sorta waited until Christmas!

I opened the box to find several gifts inside!


When I unwrapped the gifts, I found a copy of Dead Souls by Michael Laimo and The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe-- both off of my Wish List! I also got two homemade leather bookmarks. Very nice!

Thanks so much to my Secret Santa Somer of Some Reads! I love all of my gifts, and they were well worth waiting for!

What do you do?

What do you do when you have committed to buying a gift for someone, and you spend time checking their Wish List, picking out something from it, ordering the gift through the mail, wrapping it, packing it, addressing it. And just before you take it to the post office you check their Wish List one last time, and you find that the item is now missing from their Wish List, indicating that they probably have it now?

*sigh*

And I don't even know whether anyone else would like the same gift. So now I don't know what to do with the gift I already bought, AND now I have to come up with a new gift for this person, and FAST!

*heavy sigh*

Santa is holding all of my packages...

...and I'm hoping I'll have one of these under my tree Christmas morning! (I had to "borrow" this image off the net. It was too good to pass up!) There's a lascivious double-entendre in there somewhere, but I'm not going there!

I've decided that I am not doing anymore posts of books received (no Mailbox Monday) until after Christmas. Any packages that come in are going straight under the tree. That means just more Christmas day! Then I'll do a post after Christmas about any books that arrived between now and then.

I did receive my Secret Santa gift yesterday! However it went straight under the tree, too. So I don't know what my gracious giver gave, but I want to throw a premature "thank you" their way!

Happy Holidays to all, and I hope you all get everything you dream of and hope for!

A Profound Thank You

Looky, looky what came in the mail for me!

According to the accompanying card, that is a coin from 2nd to 4th century AD! This was a wonderful gift from author Michelle Moran for hosting a giveaway for her books The Heretic Queen and Cleopatra's Daughter, and I couldn't be happier or more surprised to receive it.
The 2nd to 4th centuries. 100-400 AD. The early days of Christianity. The days of Pliny the Younger and Ptolemy. Jonah is swallowed by the whale in this era. The days and decline of the Roman Empire. This coin is over 1500 years old! Can you wrap your mind around that?

I love "old things". So you can imagine how excited I am to have a coin from the early days of the first millennium. A coin that just missed sharing the earth with Christ by a mere few hundred years. A coin that could have sat in the hand of Ptolemy, or shared the sea with Jonah. Maybe it was lost at sea after being newly minted, and was never touched by anyone but the minters and the salvagers. But can you wrap your mind around the antiquity of this tiny little coin? It baffles the mind!

Michelle Moran-- thank you, thank you, thank you! I got such a kick out of receiving this coin in the mail. Learn more about Michelle's books here!

On a sidenote: I am reading Michelle's book The Heretic Queen right now, and I promise you that I have been in no way influenced by the coin when I say that I am loving the book! I love the ease of her descriptive writing style, which paints pictures in my mind of the scenes being played out. The coin just helps pull me even closer into the time period in which the story is staged.

Thanks so much, Michelle!