How I feel about babies (and basically all kids) is how I feel about dogs. I think they're pretty darn cute. I enjoy watching and hearing them run around and play. Seeing them happy makes me happy.

I don't, however, want one to get too close to me. I'd prefer they maintain, say, a 10 foot perimeter. This is because they're usually smelly and over-excited, and there's a good chance I'll end up with drool (and possibly poop) somewhere on my person.

Overall, I think the world is a better place with them in it, but there's no way I ever want one of my own. Just in case anyone was wondering.

Well, I've finally decided to do it. I'm going to reread the Harry Potter series. I read each book once, right when it came out, so it's been almost 5 years since I read the last one, and over a decade since I read the first few. Of course, I've seen the movies dozens of times. When I'm flipping through the TV on weekends and come across a Potter-athon, I just can't seem to turn it off. As a result, the movies are what have really stuck in my head, including the little differences from the books. All the little details in the books that didn't make it into the movies are pretty much gone from my memory.

I've been thinking about rereading this series for a while, but I always talk myself out of it. There are so many books out there that I haven't read that I find it hard to convince myself that it's worth reading something over again, especially when that something is over 3,000 pages. So what made me decide to do this now? In just over a month, I'm going to Orlando for a week, and we'll be visiting the Harry Potter park down there. I figured this was as good a time as any to get going. Of course, that means I somehow have to cram all that reading into the next month. I think I can do it, though. After all, the books are compelling and, more importantly, written for kids! 

And best of all, they inspired this video, which has provided me endless amusement in the last few years. 

Another great Top Ten Tuesday idea from The Broke and the Bookish. As usual I’m posting my list a couple of days late and a couple of items short, but my lack of numbers is made up for by the fervency of my feelings about these authors.

1. Jane Austen
When I saw the topic of this list, this was the first author that popped into my head. I generally don’t like re-reading books simply because there are so many books out there for me to discover and read and love. But Jane Austen is one of those authors whose books I gladly reread. I just wish she had left more behind. I’ll just keep hoping that someday soon, someone will discover a trunk filled with her unpublished manuscripts.

2. J. K. Rowling
And make it another long, awesome series, please. Thanks!

3. Diane Setterfield
I really enjoyed her book The Thirteenth Tale, and I just hope that she puts out something else soon.

4. S. E. Hinton
When I was younger, I LOVED The Outsiders. I read it over and over. I read her other books as well, but that’s the one that really appealed to me. She’s actually done a couple of books more recently which I have to say I didn’t enjoy all that much. So I guess what I’m saying is that I wish she’d write another book that affects me the way The Outsiders affected 13-year-old me. Shouldn’t be that hard, right?

5. Shakespeare
I admit that I haven’t even read everything he’s already written, but still, I’d like to see what he’d write if he were around today.

6. Alice Hoffman
This one probably shouldn’t be on this list because she’s written a ton, continues to publish frequently, and I haven’t even read all of it. But I love her lyrical writing, and because I view reading one of her books as a treat, I tend to parcel them out to myself rather than gobbling them all down at once. I read two by her in 2011, and will probably read another couple in 2012 and continue that way until I’m all caught up. I just wish there were a never ending stack of them.

7. Harper Lee
The world could use more books like To Kill a Mockingbird.

There you go! What does your list look like?

It's taken me a little longer than I'd hoped, but I've finally finished putting together a review of the books I read in 2011. Having never done one of these before, I think I may have gone overboard. If you fall asleep halfway through, don't worry. It will still be here tomorrow so you can finish it up. 

Ever since I moved to Pittsburgh a little over five years ago, I've noticed a difference between the drivers here and the ones I encountered back in New England. The primary difference is that the drivers here are generally nicer. There's this thing called the Pittsburgh Left, where if you're waiting at a light, and the person opposite you wants to turn left, when the light turns green, you pause to let them turn. I mean, really? Who does that? That's so...nice. Back in New England, and particularly when I happened to drive in Massachusetts, it was cutthroat, every driver for himself. If you paused for more than a millisecond after the light turned green, every car within a three block radius would start honking at you. And that's another thing. Nobody honks here. If you don't notice the light turns green, nobody gets upset. The cars behind you just regard it as an opportunity to spend time observing the scenery. Every time I honk at someone, I feel like I've just broken some sort of law. 

Another thing I've noticed is that people here don't seem to understand what it means when you flash your lights at them. In New England, you flash your lights at oncoming traffic for one of two reasons: 1) it's dark and their lights are off, or 2) they're approaching a police car behind you and you're warning them to slow down. Now, I personally never flash anyone for the second reason because it seems a little silly to me. If they're speeding, they can deal with the consequences. But I always flash people when they're driving with their lights off. I know how easy it is to make that mistake, to forget to turn them on. I've been lucky with my last two cars. The one I have now has a sensor that automatically turns the lights on when it's dark enough, and with the one before that, the lights went out when you turned the car off, so I just left them on all the time. 

However, I haven't always been so lucky. The one and only time I've ever been pulled over was in high school, when I was driving my parents' Toyota. In that car, you turned the lights on by pulling on a little knob in the dashboard. One click turned on the parking lights, and the second turned on the headlights. I thought I had pulled the knob all the way out, but apparently I hadn't. Since I was still in town with lots of lights from streetlamps and businesses and other cars, I didn't realize they weren't on. Fortunately, the officer who pulled me over let me off with just a warning.

Now, because I know how easy it is to forget to turn your lights on (or to not realize that they aren't on), I've been long in the habit of flashing my lights at oncoming cars who don't have theirs on when they should. In New England, I'd say that a little more than half the time, the other driving realizes what I'm telling them and flips on their lights. Here in Pittsburgh, though, in the five and a half years I've been here, exactly one car has understood my message. Just one. 

So what is it? Do people here just not know what that signal means? Or does it just mean something entirely different here? Have I spent all these years sending a secret signal to other drivers, like maybe that Giant Eagle is having a really good sale on rib roast?

Tell me, what does it mean where you live when someone flashes their headlights at you?

Today, I wanted to clean and reorganize my home office. I don't use this space a lot, and lately it's been mostly for storage. So today was the day to clean it out, get rid of the stuff I'm not using, and do a little organizing. One of the ways I was going to do this was to hang a couple of shelves above the desk. This should have taken about 10 minutes, tops. 

I forgot, of course, about my total inability to do anything that involves hanging something. Curtains, pictures, shelves...you name it, I can mess it up. Honestly, though, usually it's not my fault. I just always try to hang something on a piece of wall that fights back. Today was no exception. The first shelf was a piece of cake. We drilled a couple of pilot holes and up it went. Then we put the second shelf where we wanted it and marked the spots for drilling pilot holes. Except when we tried, nothing happened. The drill bit just wouldn't go in the wall more than an eighth of an inch. Even when Brent put his whole weight behind it, nothing. The wall was resisting our every effort. 

Ok, I decide. I'll just move the second shelf a little bit. It won't be exactly where I wanted it, but that's ok. Except, not so much. No matter where we tried, we just couldn't make anything happen. It's like only part of the wall was wall, and the rest of it was made of adamantium or something.

Now I'm left with one sad, oddly placed little shelf, surrounded by about 8 partially drilled pilot holes. Thank goodness that for actual hard projects, there are these wonderful people called professional handymen. 

Nothing special to report today, but I've gotten some great pictures of the birds and flowers in my backyard in the last few days, so I thought I'd share.

I set up a few birdfeeders last year, and this spring they've attracted some gorgeous visitors.

We've also had some non-flying visitors, but I don't mind them too much as long as they don't hog all the food.

I love this mega zoom!

And here are a few shots of the tulips that we planted in the fall. They came up a little later than most of the others that we've seen around the area and we got worried that they wouldn't bloom, but it looks like we're just going to have some beautiful flowers for a little while after everyone else's are gone. I just love how bright they are.

Hooray spring!

Or maybe I really am just a grumpy bastard.

Top Ten Eight Things I Love About Books

1. Getting lost in the story

Good writing is so easy to get lost in. I love when a story is so captivating that I lose all track of time, and when I look up, I’m ever so slightly surprised that I’m not in the room I was just picturing, surrounded by the characters I was just watching. The book has surrounded me, washed over me, and drawn me in so completely that I honestly forget about my own reality for a little while.

2. The emotional manipulation

No, I’m serious. I WANT to be manipulated by the books I read. I want to cry and laugh and everything in between. I take it as a sign of effective writing if a book makes me feel something. I just recently read this quote somewhere and it speaks to this idea:

A good book should leave you… slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it. – William Styron

3. The smell

There’s something about the smell of books that sets the stage for reading. I realize that it’s just a combination of dust, the chemicals used in papermaking, and bookworm poop, but still. It’s all part of the package and I wouldn’t ever want to get rid of it.

4. Full bookshelves

I love seeing shelves stuffed full of books. They’re so inviting. Orderly shelves like you see in libraries and bookstores are ok, but what hits me viscerally are shelves where the books are all piled seemingly randomly, with some laying on their sides and cockeyed and plopped down on top of others, with a few knick-knacks thrown in for good measure. I work very hard to get my shelves looking like I just tossed the books up there without a care in the world.

To get my fix, I like to go to this appropriately named site. It’s for addicts like me.

5. The story

This one is pretty obvious, but it constantly amazes me how people come up with an entire story out of their head. They imagine the characters and the scenarios and somehow manage to put it all together. I’m not nearly that creative, so I really enjoy seeing what people can conceive and make work.

6. Libraries

How amazing are libraries? I mean, seriously, this is a place where you can go, and without any money or references or anything other than a photo ID that shows your address, you get to take books home. For free! For weeks at a time! And if they don’t have the book you want, you can ask them to get it, and they will! For free! How awesome is that? Given that the weight of books in my house is threatening to cause our first floor to fall into our basement, I’ve started hitting the library hard recently, and I’m finding that I just can’t stop. It’s an addiction I don’t mind having.

7. Book series

Oh, lord, I do love discovering a new series of books. And by new, I just mean one that I haven’t read before. Truthfully, I don’t really like discovering an actual new series because if I like the first book, it means that I have to wait for the rest of them. It’s the best, though, to read the first of a series and realize that you like it and that there are 7 more waiting for you, ready to go. The series I most recently discovered, just a month or so ago, was the YA Chrestomanci series by the prolific Diana Wynne Jones. I’m sad to say that Wynne Jones died this weekend of lung cancer. Neil Gaiman writes a touching tribute to her here. If you’re interested in YA titles and/or books about magicians, you should give these a try. I thoroughly enjoyed them and plan to make my way through the rest of her extensive work.

8. My Kindle

I was torn on the Kindle at first. I really just love the feel of real books in my hand, and the look of them on my shelves (obviously), so I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to embrace e-reading. Plus, I get nervous about spending money on something digital. You might remember the story from the relatively early Kindle days where people who had bought a book, I forget which one, suddenly discovered that it was gone from their account, and they had been credited their money back. There had been some dispute with the publisher and Amazon had simply taken the book back from the people who had bought it. I find this outrageous. If I buy something, it’s mine, and you can’t have it back. It would have been like someone from my local bookstore coming into my house at night, snatching the book from my shelf, and leaving a little pile of cash with a note saying, “Sorry!”

But the idea of being able to have so many books available to me on this tiny little thing...I couldn’t ignore the convenience of it. I put my fears aside, and finally got a Kindle this summer. I’ve come to really love it and I’m now buying more e-books than hard copies.

So there you have it. Eight things I love about books. If you write your own list, send me a link. I'd love to read it!