What I'm Doing Instead of Working

My brother, Don, and I have been e-mailing each other all day. What could have been accomplished in twenty minutes over the phone takes all day via e-mail, but that's the way we like to do things. So, during this e-mail session we determined that he might have a staple gun that I could borrow to recover some dining room chair seats, after I find some fabric I like, and also that we want to have Mexican food together tonight at a place which neither of us can recall the name. We know it's on the busiest street in town, and it's next to the empty building that used to be a Lowe's, so we're meeting there tonight in hopes that it's still a Mexican restaurant. If it isn't, I hope it's at least some sort of place that serves food, because I really don't want to try to decide on another location. This one took all day to determine.

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What I've been reading lately:

Finished the Harry Potter series. Emily kept telling me how great the series were and I loved the movies, so I read them and she was right. They are great. I kept imagining I was twelve while reading them and it made the reading a lot more fun. I'm also amazed at Rowling's imagination and use of Celtic mythology. There's going to be one more novel in the series and I can't wait to read it.

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking - best nonfiction I've read in a while.

Elizabeth Dewberry's His Lovely Wife - made me very sad because of the references to Princess Diana, but otherwise not really a good novel. I was very curious to read it, and my curiousity is satisfied. I think the best one-word description for it would be "cheesy."

Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude - Zzzzzzzzzz, I know, I have a master's degree in literature so I'm supposed to realize how great this novel is. Sorry, but I only made it through about a third of it and couldn't take it.

Stephen J. Carter's The Emperor of Ocean Park - my current read and I'm enjoying it. Should finish this weekend.

Up next: Freakanomics, then Wendy Wasserstien's novel of which I can't remember the name. It has a hot-pink cover and I think, oh, wait, it's The Elements of Style I think. After that, it's Faulkner's Light in August - maybe.

Anyone have any more recommendations? (As if I don't have at least twenty books piled on my nightstand already.)