I read 15 books in January.  Which is, by any measure, a respectable number of books.  Except my Januarys are always a book buster month, because school holidays Down Under are in December and January, so I generally don't have to work, which means I can loll about alone with my books.  I read 33 books in January 2018 and 35 books in January 2017.

2019 was not blessed with this decadence; I started work again right after the New Year, while the schools were empty, trying to get ahead of a number of massive networking projects that all came together at the same time.  And the iPads.  OMG, the iPads.

Unfortunately, I didn't get ahead of any of them, really, and work got steadily busier as the month progressed, with me working almost 44 hours more than I was contracted to in the last 2 weeks.  This has sent my narcolepsy spiralling out of control, which means if I'm not moving, I'm sleeping.  I'm pretty sure there were a couple of times when I was moving and sleeping.

I'm sharing this little whinge-fest with you all not because I'm doing a (back of hand against forehead) woe is me!; I'm not - my life is very good, all things considered, and this hellish period will pass.  As I told a teacher who said to me with a look akin to pity that she hoped my day would get better: "well, it will end."  This will end too.  

But I am super disappointed with my reading this month.  The craziness/narcolepsy has left me too tired to read more than a page or two, and the constant fatigue has left my feelings too close to the surface to be safely allowed to socialise.  So not only is my reading down, but so too is my participation here, as a blogger, buddy reader, group moderator and librarian (::shudder:: don't ask me about the librarian queue - I'm afraid to look at it).  I was really looking forward to the Pymalong and I just couldn't keep up - words I have never once said about reading in. my. life.   In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing; no big deal.  But, it sort of is, to the part of my psyche that defines my sense of self as a reader first, and pretty much everything else second.

So, I'm not a happy camper; this, too, will pass.  Of the 15 books I did read, the best were all non-fiction.  Some reference-types, some books about books, and a collection of science experiments to do with kids at home.  

Moving along, My TBR Project is going well.  For every two books I read, I can buy a new one the next month.  For January I started with a book budget of 19 books (based on the average # of books I read per month last year).  

* I round up to nearest integer.

Onward, February!

When Literati Books opened in Ann Arbor Michigan, the owner put an old typewriter out in the stacks, with a sheet of paper in it, curious about what might happen.  In his wildest dreams, he imagined a sort of never ending story, where each patron would pick up where the last one left off; a true community built novel. Pragmatically, he figured he'd end up with a lot of nonsense or jokes about bodily functions.

What he got was something totally different and totally special.  People wrote some silly stuff, but they also wrote poems, posed philosophical questions, proposed, broke up, and otherwise bared their souls.  After several years of collecting the daily contributions, Gustafson was convinced to collect his favourites into what became this book.

Notes from a Public Typewriter is short, I think I read the whole thing in about an hour.  It's almost purely a collection of what Gustafson considered the best, the funniest, the most touching.  There are photos of the shop and patrons throughout, and every few pages, Gustafson writes a short essay-type piece to introduce context to some of the inclusions.

The 5 stars is because this book, for all its simplicity, moved me.  By the end, it was hard to stay dry-eyed, to be honest.  I'm sure Gustafson has collected a LOT of dreck over the years, but the simple lines he included here were honest, heart-felt, and sometimes raw.  

I don't go looking for books that reveal what goes on beneath the surface, so I'm really no judge, but this one worked for me.  What is on the face of it an anonymous, ever changing, mass of humanity going in and out the doors of one shop, is revealed in this short volume to be instead the very definition of a community.

I’m a sucker for a bargain. I was in a little shop called The Glory Hole a few years ago, up in Tighnabruaich, a little village in Argyll and Bute. We were just browsing the shops at random since there weren’t many of them and we found this little charity shop. I was nosying around and found a typewriter sitting on the floor, in a black box. Well, as a writer and as a total history buff, I wanted one. When I saw the price tag, only £5, I picked it up, box and all, and told my mum I had to have it. I wouldn’t leave the shop without it. So I bought it and put it in the car, all excited by my brilliant find.

We went other places and eventually got back to our cabin in Dunoon, where we were staying on holiday. I was going to clean the box because it was clearly very old and had been neglected, the poor thing. So I pulled the heavy Royal typewriter out of the box and was shocked by what I found. Inside it said it belonged to a Flight Lieutenant of the Voluntary sector of the Royal Air Force. I was gobsmacked, but very excited. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find out more information about my mystery Lieutenant, but I hope to one day. It would be a nice little story to add to the beautiful machine.

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I'm not a great photographer, because I can't keep steady, but here is my beautiful typewriter, pride of place, surrounded by my Marilyn Monroe memorabilia and an Art Deco lamp. The dinosaur is made from nuts and screws, another bargain find that we discovered in Glencoe. The phone is from Dunoon, a cute little artsy cigarette shop where I got a lot of cool stuff, and the small wooden/glass box at the back is actually an antique spyglass and letter opener set. The Marilyn statue was an amazing find at a little place called Highland Arts, in the Isle of Seil. So, as you can see, not only do I love a bargain, but I'm a huge fan of anything Art Deco, 1920's or just outright weird. ;)

Click Clack Moo: Cow's That Type by Doreen Cronin is a book about cows that get a hold of an old type writer and decide to go on strike against Farmer Brown. They make continuous requests/demands (for example electric blankets) in order to give Farmer Brown their milk. I would rate this book a four out of five stars and It is listed as an AD160L on the Lexile scale. I would have my students write letter to the Farmer Brown making a request from a different animal. I would make it clear that the students could choose any other animal they would see at a farm except a cow. This is a super cute book that i will have on my bookshelf for sure.