I managed to forget to take my camera to bookbinding class again so no pictures of my books in progress (I have two different books in the making) but instead I’ll show you what I’ve been doing lately:

See all of these stacks? These are Beaded Journals that I’m working on for a bookbinding order! I need to have 40 ready in the next few weeks so lately I’ve been cutting paper, sewing, and glueing up boards. It can be a bit tiring but it’s so much fun to come up with color combos, choose paper and just do something I really enjoy.

So now you know that I’m not just being a lady of leisure around here. ha,ha…

Moving on, I did finish Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan. This was a tough book for me to get through. I found the descriptions lush and beautiful but I kept thinking the story was going nowhere. As this was an ARC, I’d love to pass it on to someone who is interested in it and perhaps you’ll enjoy it more than me. So if you’d like to read this, leave me a comment and I’ll draw a name by Friday.

You know what today is? Sure, Tax Day but most importantly the Orange Broadband short list was just announced! I had read one of the books from the long list but it didn’t make it on the short list. From the short list, I have heard lots of great things about Lottery by Patricia Wood and I have Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill somewhere in the stacks. Maybe I’ll try to read one of these before the award is given in June.

In other bookish news, I started Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia. This is the reading selection for the Slaves of Golconda discussion coming up on April 30th. If you haven’t started it yet, you still have time and it’s a pretty slim novel too.

And, who doesn’t love some pretty book covers right? Take a look at some of the 50 Excellent Covers that Smashing Magazine selected for their creativity and expression. There are some great ones on here.

Finally, yesterday when I picked up my library holds I noticed that one of the books “looked” different than the others. Broken Colors is published by Europa Editions. I think this is the first time I’ve seen one of their books. Just a bit of investigating and I found their website and complete catalogue. I want more of these books! I think they’d go great with my small collection of Persephones, B&N Classics and Hesperus Press books don’t you think?