Top 5 items I'm in the middle of reading/watching/listening to during this wet and wild Auckland Anniversary weekend

"The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

No, I beg to differ - the best thing one can do when it's raining is to stock up on lots of everything! Two of the nephews and I made a run to the library today to stock up on movies, books and music (good and terrible) to ride the bad weather out. We're truly awful after we've come home with our haul of treasures. They round up their loot and stake out the flat to have a movie marathon and, occasionally, come up for air and food. I take over the main house and spread everything out around me and go over each and every cover and synopsis in detail, read the first page, then the last page, and then divide my spoils into two piles: 'wanna, gotta, need to have it right now' and 'it can wait.' Then I try to read a book, watch a movie and listen to music all at the same time. It's messy, unstructured and totally smacks of someone who has little to no control over their impulses. At least when it comes to library items. Below is nothing more interesting than a small part of my most recent stash of library goodies that I'm in the middle of enjoying. All at once.

Honourable mention

The horns of ruin by Tim Akers - steampunk fantasy (love the cover)

Supernatural : John Winchester's journal by Alex Irvine ; illustrations by Dan Panosian and Alex Irvine - TV tie-in to Kripke's 'Supernatural' series (the journal that Dean and Sam's dad uses in his demon hunting)

The science of Doctor Who / Paul Parsons

Top 5 epistolary novels

List by Annie

"The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary. It is the only art which can be practised at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness."
- Holbrook Jackson

Here you go – novels in letter format (or notes, or emails, or…). Nice and quick to read, but often with the story told between the lines.

Honourable mention:
* Jaclyn Moriarty’s oeuvre. Any of her teen novels fit the bill. I couldn’t decide on one. So I recommend all of them. (Maybe 'Finding Cassie crazy' if pushed) :)
* And… one of the earliest modern epistolary novels – and novels, really: 'Pamela' by Samuel Richardson. Mind you, I recommend this one, if only to make you read the much more entertaining (and less gag-inducing) 'Shamela' by Henry Fielding [multiple editions] – the send-up of Pamela.