Notes From the Bedside Table

Sunrise was at 5:19, sunset will be at 8:54.

We left our house and headed up the hill at just 5:19.

The windows in the houses across the valley catch the sun as the sun rises. As the sun gets higher in the sky, more of the hillside glows. It is a glorious way to start the day, the house covered hillside is magical for those very few minutes.

We turned at the edge of the driveway to look at the Olympic mountains and the very tops of the highest ones were pink, the tops floating above a batt of cloud. Birds chirping, a few other people on their way to work and on walks, no sign of Rainier so the bit of sun we are supposed to have today must have slipped through a rip in the morning cloud cover.

I'm dressed, lunches are made, Dennis left at 7 for his bus, it feels luxurious to have this extra time to be able to write before breakfast. I'm sure I will wonder how I can be running so late when I leave when I had so much time now!

I am in the middle end of the third of the Diana Peterfreund Ivy League books. I should be able to finish it before I go to work and I am really looking forward to the last one. It feels wicked, reading older books that I don't have to sell, don't have to talk up, reading something JUST FOR ME!

I have three new YA books that I am looking forward to: Illyria, by Elizabeth Hand, The Tension of Opposites, by Kristina McBride, and Restoring Harmony, by Joelle Harmony.

Elizabeth Hand has been one of my favorite science fiction writers for years. I have this beautifully designed proof for her first book, Winterlong, a "Spectra special edition", from my days as Science Fiction stocker at U of O Bookstore. Its copyright date is 1990 and I think Bantam had just started their hardcover book program, they had just started making galleys, advanced reading copies, of their books. It has thick, heavy cardstock covers, thicker paper than you'd expect, and the pages are loosening within. It looks, and was, well-read. I certainly didn't know anything about collecting books then! I think I'd better find a new, finished copy that I can re-read.

I don't know anything about The Tension of Opposites, but I love the cover and I love books that are described as "haunting psychological thriller".


And I have been waiting for Restoring Harmony, by Joelle Anthony, since Cecelia Goodnow wrote about it on her blog, Cover to Cover Kids. It's a Northwest book, Seattle and Canada, based in a future where the oil's run out and people have to grow their own food.

There's been a lot published lately about what's going to happen in the not-so-distant future. Some people are calling it dystopian fiction but I think this is more speculative fiction, it's more of a what if? book.

ANYhoo, it looks good and I don't know which to start first when I get done (just in time for my DAY OFF!) with Tap and Gown, the last Peterfreund. I also have a stack of books a foot high on my bedside table (hence the reason for my blog name) and I am smack dab in the middle of the buying season for the bookstore which means lots of new advanced reading copies (and most of them are adult books which are REALLY LONG!); I always feel like I need to read at least a few pages of each and that takes so much time. And wall space.