A place holding post, of interest to those who care for trees falling on houses, how many books I read for the Cybils, and tea-bags

Here is a picture of the Christmas tree Mother Nature sent my parents....the person standing on the tree has just been swung into place by the crane's cable. Mercifully none of the large branches that made it through the roof went through the ceiling of the room below. I wanted to put lights on it, but they wouldn't let me.

But the tree is gone now, and we are home again, and some of us got up this morning and were a bit at a loss--for the first morning in weeks, I didn't immediately start reading for the Cybils awards. The finalists have all been decided now, and will be announced January 1st. (Our middle grade science fiction and fantasy list is rather nice).

I read 96 out of 98 books, which is 25 less than I did last year. On the other hand, I have finally read the Percy Jackson series and the Septimus Heap series in their entirety and enjoyed them both very much. The 5th books of each were nominated this year, and I hadn't read the others (except 50 pages of Queste for the Cybils last year, which confused the heck out of me).

So anyway, the point of this post is to say that I don't have anything interesting bookwise to offer, but that, having read so many books recently, I have lots of reviews to write.

And then there all the books to be read, now that the Cybils are over--books that aren't middle grade science fiction/fantasy. I have just started No Impact Man: the adventures of a guilty liberal who attempts to save the planet and the discoveries he makes about himself and our way of life in the process, by Colin Beavan, which I am finding soothing.

Which in turn reminds me that no one got me the book I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas, even though I kept telling them that it would show us how to make ornaments out of used tea-bags. All of us thought it meant the bag you put in the water, and wondered (when you cinch the waist of a tea-bag, it doesn't look that much like angel-wings, and that was the only idea I had). But now I know they were talking about the paper wrapper part, which sets my mind at rest, a little.


(I didn't actually want it, anyway--I annoyed/gently educated my family just fine with the Green-ness I had on hand).