36. 37. 38. The Long Winter (335 pp) , Little Town on the Prairie (307 pp) and These Happy Golden Years (289 pp) by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Dec 25-26). I decided to pull out The Long Winter to be ironic. Maybe if I read about people who had to crack the ice off their bed before they got out of it in the morning would make me stop feeling sorry for myself. I don't really feel sorry for myself. The weather is a bit tedious but I'm not unhappy.

Once I read that one I wanted to read the part where Laura and Almanzo fall in love. I'm such a sucker for romance. Why is that?

I used to pick and read these books on a fairly regular basis but now it's been years and years. It was fun to re-read and also to get wrapped in a story that didn't need a lot of concentration. Man, those people worked hard. A fun day was doing all the laundry and ironing without any machines. I laughed every time Ma complained about how she hated those savage Indians. But she sure like settling the land that was stolen from them.

35. Touch (300 pp.) by Elmore Leonard (Dec 12). Finally, I read a book. My book reading has been so pitiful lately. I brought this on the plane to Idaho 2/3d's finished and was afraid I'd finish it before the flight ended so I took my time and then had 12 pages left that had to wait until I had time to finish it the next morning. I would love to think that I'm going to cram some book reading in before the end of the year but my magazine pile has taken over my nightstand. The drawers groan with the weight of all that stuff so I'm going to try to clear all that stuff out first.

But on to Elmore. I usually love Elmore Leonard and I had a very hard time with this one. It may be because I read it while I was doing NaNoWriMo and writing 1667 words a day. Then as I got into bed, braindead and eye-fatigued, I'd read a single chapter before turning off the light and going to sleep. You can't really get into a book that way. And I never really got into it.

He wrote an intro that when he originally wrote it, the publisher bought it but then never could figure out what to do with it and he eventually bought it back and sold it elsewhere. It's not like a usual Elmore book. It's about a regular guy who can heal people and exhibits the stigmata and various people want to exploit this. I had a hard time with the characters bad and good.