The Absent Blogger

Hello, Infinite Reads, you beautiful form of self-expression, I have missed you!

And you people reading it, well, you’re not so bad, I guess.

Kidding!

You are so bad.

Kidding again!

So, where have I been, anyway?

In School!

I finished my last assignment of the spring semester about an hour ago, a nonfiction subject collection profile. That’s a fancy way of saying, I pretended my library is developing a collection of books about superheroes! Which we are not doing! But which I chose as my topic anyway, largely so I could look at pictures of Aquaman and call it “doing research for school.”

At the Doctor!

The health saga continues with a series of super-fun GI symptoms that spontaneously crop up and attack the fun times of myself and anyone standing near me. I’m still hoping it’s a nascent superpower that, once it manifests, will not only stop making me nauseous but also render me very useful, heroic, and financially successful.

In the Garden!

My boyfriend and I tried our hands at container gardening, with mixed results.

And by mixed results, I mean my tomato plants died like dogs, as El Guapo would say. Root fungus. Terminal. Ugly.

Today we decided, to hell with containers and their uncertain drainage. On the spur of the moment, a tiller was rented. Plots were plowed. Weeds were raked. Frolicking occurred. Of course, I didn’t do any of that stuff, my boyfriend did, except for the frolicking, which his dog did. But I did help move the tiller and stand nearby with a large glass of water. Oh, AND I told the dog to stop frolicking in the tilled dirt. I am busy and important.

On the Phone!

It’s a poor excuse, but I had my hands full trying to put Instagram on my Android phone. To do so, I had to upgrade my software to Android 2.2 because my phone, for whatever reason, does not like to update its own software. To upgrade my software, I had to do a factory reset on my phone, which was acting wonky. After the reset and the update and three failed attempts, Instagram finally installed and is usable!

And then I downloaded Picsart and realized I like it much better, and I could have had it all along.

Either way, I took important pictures:

Both apps are fun, but I prefer Picsart because it has more features, and also because I can’t figure out how to get Instagram to post to my Facebook News Feed instead of just onto my Timeline, and if I can’t spam my FB friends with photos of my dogs and my boyfriend’s dog, then why have a camera app in the first place?

Hard at Work!

I’ve had my nose to the grindstone on some pieces for Shelf-Awareness.

Most excitingly, I get to do the reviews/author interviews for the following books:

Shine, Shine, Shine

by Lydia Netzer

Baldness, pregnancy, a special needs child, secret murders, suburban disillusionment…and that’s just a sliver of what’s going on in the heroine’s life while her husband and his brilliantly-designed robots are off starting a colony on the moon.

This book will be featured in Shelf Awareness in mid-July, so watch for my review and an interview with Lydia Netzer, the author.

In the meantime, get a taste of Lydia’s intelligence and humor at her blog. She’s funny. She’s insightful. She’s talented. I’m jealous. I’d hate her for being so funny, insightful, and talented, but she’s so funny, insightful, and talented that I just can’t manage any hard feelings.

Alif the Unseen

by G. Willow Wilson

Hackers, forbidden love, secret police, social rebellion…and djinn! I love this book. Love, love, love.

This is the author’s first novel-novel, but she is the author of the graphic novel Cairo, among others, making her the first author I’ve heard of prior to interviewing.

Everybody better buy this book so the author will be successful and get to write more novels. Okay?

And finally, I have been….

Squicked Out!

Because I started reading this infamous and atrocious work:

That’s right!

Coming really, really soon to an Infinite Reads near you:

What’s the Big Deal?: The Fifty Shades of Grey Live-Blogging Edition

Whips will crack.

Heads will roll.

Wait, no. I meant eyes.

Eyes will roll!