Do You Read More When It is Cold, Snowy, and Gray?

The Four of Us live just miles from the 45th parallel in the Northern Hemisphere of this lovely Earth and this time of year it is mostly gray, bone-chilling cold, and very snowy. A time of year when we get very nervous if our pile of books-to-read is not stacked high. Just last week The Big Sister was blue, she had just finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and had post-perfect-book-dread: "will there ever be another book as good? Can I find a book to occupy my perfect book spoiled mind?" With a little quick thinking, a bit of research, and time at our book shelves we managed to replenish her stack: previously overlooked books by Madeleine L'Engle Arm of the Starfish Quartet, Many Waters, and Meet the Austins; to add to the mix, a little non-fiction, If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland; coupled with twenty minutes online at the library, reserving books --and her hunger was sated, for the moment.

Can you find The Sisters? Would you believe we've gotten almost three feet more snow since this photo was taken? Yes, it is very snowy here.

Recently, The Sisters found their stack of audio books dwindling --a calamity, for girls who's favorite past-time is disappearing in to their art room and listening there way through a biblio-epic journey. Usually the solution is simple: a trip to the library, but what if we're house-bound thanks to six inches of fresh snow? Thankfully, we have a subscription with www.audible.com. An investment in a new audio book is a small price to pay for the Cabin Fever cure. But how to decide what audio book to buy? The Sisters know --it has to be one you want to listen to over and over, and lately, that is Brian Jacques' Redwall series. The audio books are recorded with a full cast and music, with Brian Jacques himself, leading the story with a rich Scottish brogue. And the BEST part: there are 23 books in the series, perfect for the long, cold winter we seem to be in the middle of.

So, do you read more on cold and gray days? And if you do read more, go ahead an brag about how many books, we love to hear about what you are reading (or listening to)!

What are You Reading RIGHT NOW? May 2012-January 2013

To participate in this challenge the first thing The Four of Us do is head our bookshelves, our Library Bookshelf in particular:

The Library Bookshelf is a MUST in home like ours. If we aren't reading a library book, this is where it lives. When it's Library Day (Thursday) we grab our library bags, library cards, grab the books that need to be returned
and then hit the library.

We're thinking Alex Johnson would get a kick out of our 

bookshelves. The Dad makes new shelves every 

time we need them: OFTEN; bookshelves literally fill our house. 

Want to tell us what is on YOUR bookshelf? 

Take The Bookshelf Challenge --one of our first challenges!

Coincidentally,  The Poet sent us this piece from NPR: A Book About Bookshelves To Put On Your Very Own Bookshelf. His timing was perfect, The Mom purchased Bookshelf by Alex Johnson for The Dad!  The shelves in the book are wild and wonderful, you can explore some of them on the Bookshelf blog and the NPR story. The bookshelves around here are not exactly the artful masterpieces we imagine are featured in the book (it should arrive tomorrow); we wondered what Alex Johnson's own bookshelves were like. Thankfully Madhulika Sikka asked him this exact question:

So how does Johnson himself store books?

         "Ha, ha! Just as the cobbler's children have the shoddiest shoes, my bookshelves and bookcases are spectacularly dull and straightforward," he says. "Most of them are standard, horizontal wooden shelves painted white in the basement of the house where I work."

So, What are you Reading Right Now? 

Tell us in the comments below: