Just Half An Hour

So yesterday, in a bid to meet my goal of reading for half an hour and doing some creative writing for half an hour a day, I picked up four new (well, not technically “new” because they are all second-hand) books at the library book sale.

I haven’t yet had a chance to do any reading today as I write this because I have been working on my fledgling business and that was my top priority for the day on my short list of things I needed to get done before I go to sleep. I’m sure I will be writing about that process here quite often as well. I have had many side hustles over the years but I am now finally ready to do this the right way so at the beginning of the year I coughed up the money for a business coach and I committed myself to taking my business pursuits from hobby status to full source of income status. My hope is that I will be able to become my own employer someday soon.

So back to my books. For $0.50 a piece, I bought:

• Revenge …is a woman’s art – A short story collection edited by Kate Saunders (I actually on just noticed the “is a woman’s art” part right now as I was looking at the title. It caught my attention because I was an early fan of the ABC TV show Revenge but even though I try to keep up with it now, I seem to have lost track of who Emily is revenging or avenging and why. It was so much more straightforward in Season 1 when she was simply avenging her father’s death, but oh well…
• Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz. The author apparently worked in the Admission office of Princeton University one year and shares some insider secrets of the whole admissions process so I wanted to get a clue about that. The main character seemed mature and there’s apparently a bit of a love story so hey… I like a little bit of romance in my novels (hopefully it is not a Harlequin-type “romance”).
• How I Came West, And Why I Stayed – Stories by Alison Baker. My initial attraction to this book was because it was a compilation of short stories and I felt I would not have to commit to finishing an entire novel. Also, it’s supposed to have some humor and the first line of one of the stories was “I’m looking for cheerleaders”. Need I say more?
• Arranged Marriage by Chitra-Banerjee Dirakaruni. Hmm, I see a theme here. I guess I was somewhat afraid to commit to a full-fledged novel so I got these collections of short stories. At least if I get through one short story a day I will be accomplishing something. I actually found this on the floor not on a shelf. I don’t know if someone threw it or dropped it on the floor on purpose but I reached for it to place it back on a shelf and then got sucked in by the title. Who doesn’t want to lift the veil on an arranged marriage and see the inner workings of it? I have heard both sides before and this book is a compilation of just that, the good ones and the bad ones so I think I will be duly entertained.

Today is Sunday and one of my favorite shows is on tonight – Amazing Race – so I will do my reading after that because it starts in about six minutes. At least I have done my half an hour of creative writing today 🙂