Vive l'Inbox!

Well, I must admit that my inbox had rather a disappointing week, due in no small part to the fact that two of the three publishers for whom I review have absolutely NOTHING that I'm interested in requesting right now.  :(  !  So, I'm branching out a bit into unorthodox territory for this post.

Photo by Matt Reinbold

But first, here's a book that came in the mail this week, that I bought for myself as a Christmas present.  In our house, I buy the Christmas presents for everybody on Amazon, and my husband wraps them all (except his own) because he's much better and more artistic at it than I am.  I'm guaranteed to get things I actually want, I pretend to be surprised (or actually am surprised, because I forget by then what I ordered), and everyone is happy.

Okay, yes, I admit it--I already owned a copy of this book.  But this is the 30th anniversary edition!  AND the copy I got is turtleback, you know, library bound, a binding I just love because it will stand up to anything short of being run over by a tank.  Thus, I finally have a sturdily-bound copy of one of my all-time favorite books, plus new material by the author.  Yay!  Merry Christmas to me!

The other exciting things that came in the mail this week are technically books--I mean, bound pieces of paper and all--they're just meant to contain MY writing, instead of consisting of someone else's.  I've talked on this blog before about the wonder that is Clairefontaine writing paper, and this week I bought myself THREE beautiful Clairefontaine notebooks, as well as an inexpensive, hard-wearing fountain pen, to inspire myself for a new writing project.  I've finally come to the realization that I need the tactile experience of hand writing a manuscript of any substantial length.  Typing blog posts is a fun, satisfying experience, but trying to commit a long text straight to the computer screen without the intermediary of the written word just feels too cold and clinical to me, especially when I'm writing about something very close to my heart.  So I bought myself some gorgeous notebooks,

a shiny red fountain pen that claims to be able to write even if you foolishly store it with a full cartridge in it (as I often do),

and am writing away on my new project.  I don't know if anyone else will ever be interested in reading it, but it makes me happy.

P.S.  As you can see, both of the photos above came from WritersBloc.com, and I bought the items in question from them, as well.  I love them, and highly recommend them, and they didn't even sponsor this post or anything, so you know they must be really good for me to give them such high unsolicited praise!