Musing Monday- Holiday Reading

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about reading/blogging during the holidays…

How does your reading (or your blogging) fare in the holiday months? Do you read more or less? Do you have to actively make time to read?

During the holidays I never seem to get much reading done. This year had been pretty off for me and some months I haven't read anything at all. I have a feeling December will be like that too. However, in December of 2006 I read 17, in 2007 it was 6 and 2008 was 9 books. Hopefully I can make time to read more this year but I doubt it. :(


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From now until Christmas whenever I update I'll try to include a video clip of a Christmas song I'm listening to lately:

Christmas Eve in My Home Town by Kate Smith (introduced by Bing Crosby)

Happy Turkey Day

Hope everyone who is celebrating has a great Turkey Day!

Queenly Muppets

New Moon, Cupcakes, and a Book

I got up a little too early for me today since I stayed up until 3am last night/this morning but I got up for good reason: I went to see New Moon this morning!

I can't say I was really surprised that some of it I didn't like since the angst in the book annoyed me so much but what did shock me was just how much I liked Jacob. With the books I'm die hard Team Edward... now with the movie I'm kind of Switzerland. I still just love Edward though. Okay, I'll talk more about this in a review whenever I get a chance to (hopefully not once it's out on DVD either...)

Okay, after the movie we did a little shopping and I went to one of my favorite places: the cupcake store! It's called Frosting and they are the yummiest gourmet filled cupcakes I've ever had. They have a different set that they sell every day and today was Elvis' Favorite, Cheesecake, Mocha, Chocolate Covered Strawberry, Almond, and Lemon Poppy with Apricot. Since they've gone up on their prices I only got one this time but it was the first time I've ever been on a Friday so I got to try something I had hadn't before. That cheesecake was a good choice! It's a white cake filled and topped with cheesecake with a white chocolate coating topped with a cherry. Yummmmy!


On our way home we stopped and picked up Marked by P.C. & Kristin Cast so now I have all of them except the third one and I picked that up at the library so I could re-read them. So that's what I'm off to do now. I'll be around the blogs sometime tonight though!

Recipe: Divine Almond Toffee

Today over on my Movieholic and Bibliophile blog I reviewed Sammi Carter's Candy Apple Dead which came with a few recipes. I made the Divine Almond Toffee from the book and it was surprisingly good! I've never been that fond of toffee but I can't seem to stop eating this stuff so be warned!

Divine Almond Toffee

2 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup butter
¼ cup water
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon baking soda
12 ounces chocolate chips
1-½ cup sliced toasted almonds, coarsely chopped

Lightly grease a 10x15- inch baking sheet and set it aside. In a large heavy saucepan, combine the brown sugar, butter, and water and bring slowly to a boil, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
Insert a candy thermometer and cook until the mixture reaches 285 degrees F (soft-crack stage).
Remove from heat and quickly stir in vanilla and baking soda.
Immediately pour the hot mixture onto the greased baking sheet.
Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the hot toffee. Let the whole thing sit for 5 minutes, then spread the chocolate evenly over the surface of the toffee with a spatula. Sprinkle the nuts evenly over the top.
Cool completely. Break the hardened toffee into pieces and store in an airtight container (I've been keeping mine in the fridge too).

Makes about 1-½ pounds

Looking for a book

Hey I'm looking for a book. It's YA and it recently came out. I believe it's somehow loosely based on the Snow White fairy tale but I can't remember the title or the author. Please help!

Twilight Parody

Okay I actually do like Twilight... most of it at least but I couldn't help love this!

Feeling Better and Some Quotes

Hello! Hope everyone who celebrated had a wonderfully happy Halloween! As you may have guessed from this update I'm feeling much better today though the pain has been on and off for the last several days. I'll get around to checking up on everyone and seeing what I've missed over the next week or so.

I actually posted a review today for Inkheart and since it's one of my favorites I thought I'd share the passages I liked best here. There may be spoilers so beware:

Quotes from Inkheart

Some books should be tasted/ some devoured, but only a few/ should be chewed thoroughly.

“If you take a book with you on a journey,” Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, “an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while reading it… yes, books are like flypaper-- memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.”

“You’re the one who says books have to be heavy because the whole world’s inside them.” ~ Meggie

She felt almost as if she could hear the books whispering on the other side of the half-open door. They were promising her a thousand unknown stories, a thousand doors into worlds she had never seen before.

“All books are in safe hands with me,” replied Elinor, sounding cross. “You know that. They’re my children, my inky children, and I look after them well.

The fire licked his skin like something living, a darting, burning creature that he had befriended, a creature that caressed him and danced for him and drove the night away.

Why do grown-ups think its easier for children to bear secrets than the truth? Don’t they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets? ~ Meggie

“Perhaps there’s another, much larger story behind the printed one, a story that changes just as our own world does. And the letters on the page tell us only as much as we’d see peering through a keyhole. Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there’s a whole world that goes on-- developing and changing like our own world.”~ Mo

Mo’s face stayed with her in her slumber. It emerged in her dreams like a dark moon with figures leaping from its mouth, living creatures-- fat, thin, large, small, they hopped out and ran away in a long line. A woman, scarcely more than a shadow, was dancing on the moon’s nose-- and suddenly the moon smiled.

“A world of so many pages, Silvertongue, so very many pages, and I want to write my name on every one of them.” ~ Capricorn

“You know, it’s a funny thing about writers. Most people don’t stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think writers are all dead long ago-- they don’t expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way--.” ~ Mo

“And she loved his ink-black heart. Your heart is a stone, Capricorn, a black stone with about as much human sympathy as a lump of coal, and you are very, very proud of that.” ~ Fengolio

“I mean the magic of the written word. Nothing is more powerful for good or evil, I do assure you.” Fenoglio lowered his voice to a whisper. “I made you yourself out of words and letters, Basta! You and Capricorn.”

She had been right. The world was a terrible place, cruel, pititless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live in. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness-- and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn’t ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly. Love, truth, beauty, wisdom, and consolation against death. Who had said that? Someone else who loved books; she couldn’t remember the author’s name, only the words. Words are immortal-- until someone comes along and burns them. ~ Elinor

In books hatred is often described as hot, but at Cpricorn’s festivities Meggie discovered it was cold-- an ice-cold hand that stops the heart and presses it like a clenched fist against the ribs. Hatred made her freeze, in spite of the mild air wafting around her, telling her that the world was a good, safe place.

Meggie stroked its binding as she always did before opening a book. She had seen Mo doing the same. Ever since she could remember she had known that movement-- the way he would pick up a book, stroke the binding almost tenderly, then open it as if he were opening a box filled to the brim with precious things. Of course, the marvels you hoped to find might not be waiting inside the covers, so then you closed the book, sorry that its promise had not been kept. But Inkheart was not a book of that kind. Badly told stories never come to life. There are no Dustfingers in them, nor even a Basta.

“I’m only a kind of book doctor. I can give books new bindings, rejuvenate them a little, stop the bookworms from eating them, and prevent them from losing their pages over the years like a man loses his hair. But inventing the stories in them, filling new, empty pages with the right words-- I can’t do that. That’s a very different trade. A famous writer once wrote, ‘An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher, or a magician-- but the magician, the enchanter, is in the ascendant.’ I always thought he was right about that.”