I am happy to say that I completed the From the Stacks Winter Reading Challenge. Books pulled off the stacks for the challenge were:

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Grayson by Lynne Cox
Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman

Grayson and The Ghost Brigades were substitutions. Thanks Michelle for a great challenge. It encouraged me to read/finish some books that I have really wanted to read and also fueled my current science fiction craze. I think you should host another mid-year From the Stacks Challenge just to keep all of us resolute readers from letting our stacks overwhelm us! 😉

I have read one book so far in the Winter Classics Challenge, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, and cannot wait to get to my other choices for that challenge!
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I saw this meme over on Kate’s blog and thought it would be fun to do. Feel free to answer all or some of the same questions here or on your site.

The Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages

Not sure what qualifies as ‘ages’. I have wanted to read The Histories by Herodotus since the moment I finished Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which was shortly after its publication date in 2001. The main character, Shadow, frequently references the book.

Isaac Asimov’s book The Stars, Like Dust is a book that I had been hunting for years, not knowing the name or author of the book…only knowing what the cover of the book looked like. I found it in a serendipitous moment in Chicago in 2005 and am planning on reading that early this year. I have had Bram Stoker’s book, The Lady in the Shroud, for years and will probably read that for this year’s R.I.P. Challenge.

The Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success

When I was in elementary school a kid in my class brought in a book about planets that had fantastic art in it. I believe it was a science fiction book with many imagined worlds, etc. but I loved it. He let me borrow it one night and I just poured over it. This led to days of drawing planets and space ships, daydreaming about the universe. Unfortunately I have no idea who wrote or illustrated the book or what it was called. I keep hoping that one day I will stumble across it and a light bulb will go on and I’ll realize, “this is it!”.

The Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment

I don’t really read alot of self-help or self-improvement books so I am not sure that anything fits in this category. As I take over a new position at my work it would probably benefit me to read some more books on effective management skills so that I don’t keel over and die from the stress of it all! 😉

The Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case

How to Make Money Grow on Trees: The Fast and Easy Way to Becoming a Billionaire and When Robots Attack: A Survival Guide for Those Who Always Suspected it Would Happen One Day. As soon as those books are written I’ll be picking them up! 🙂

The Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer

By and large I am a ‘whim’ reader so I do not do a tremendous amount of planning, the exceptions being challenges that I may be anticipating. I was loaned The Stolen Child by Keith Donahue which I am saving for the Fantasy/Fairy Tale challenge (I really need to name this soon). I will be picking up Colleen Gleason’s second book in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles series, Rises the Night, in June as well as Kat Richardson’s book, Poltergeist, in August so those are reads that will probably happen in the summer. I have been wanting to re-read some of the Anne of Green Gables series, read Anne of the Island last year, and will probably read some of those this summer as they always feel like spring/summer reads to me.

The Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves

Other than things that aren’t already published? 🙂 Though I haven’t finished it yet I suspect I will need The Dark Flight Down, companion volume to Marcus Sedgwick’s The Book of Dead Days which I received as a Christmas gift. I need good hardback copies of Spectrum 1,2,3,4,10 and 11. I have 10 and 11 in trade paperback and Jeff has tracked down and given me 5,6, and 7. These are such fantastic art books and I want to have all in hardback. I need Legacy: Selected Paintings and Drawings by the Grand Master of Fantastic Art to complete my Underwood Books collection of the works of Frank Frazetta.

The Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified

That is a hard one. Any books that fill me with sudden, inexplicable curiosity are probably easily justified in my mind. Any books I stumble across that have to do with astronomy fill me with sudden curiosity. Books about books or about reading instantly grab my attention. Sorry, that’s the best I can do with this one.
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Last, but not least, Colleen Gleason has tagged me with the Five Crazy Things About Me(me). Not sure how to differentiate ‘crazy’ things from the five ‘weird’ things I posted recently…without revealing my latent psychosis…but here goes:

1. I frequently have detailed conversations with myself in my head. I don’t argue with myself much, we…me and my mind…get along pretty well! I sometimes make myself laugh with the ridiculousness of these conversations. At the same time many of my blog posts come out of this so its not all bad. Please don’t medicate me. 😉

2. I make up songs by changing the words of other songs and sing them to my wife and daughter. I do this alot, generally changing the words into stuff that is slightly inappropriate or gross (sometimes very inappropriate if just Mary and I are home). Christmas songs are some of the easiest to do this with. I can usually do this quickly and spontaneously. Maybe I should have been a white rapper!

3. I almost never eat breakfast. However, if we order out for pizza I will, without fail, get up in the morning and have pizza for breakfast.

4. I don’t chew my fingernails out of nervous habit. Many, many years ago I was driving down the road and realized that my fingernails were disgustingly long (to me). I didn’t have any clippers so I decided to just chew them off. It was so easy and convenient that I have done it ever since. I never chew them in contemplation or worry, only when I look down and think ‘that one is getting a bit long, time to chew it down’ and almost always do this while driving. I think seeing my hands on the wheel reminds me to check my nails.

5. I don’t buy dress shoes. I wear either black or brown leather hiking-type boots to work, winter, spring, summer, and fall. My feet are small and I have a hard time finding nice dress shoes. Plus the hiking boots add an inch to my height! 😉

Well, that’s it for this wacky Wednesday! Only 2 more days, people. We will survive.