The reader might not stick with the blog, but she is always a reader. Also, there’s nothing like being stuck at home with covid to get you to take the time to think about the things you enjoy and do the things you can. So me and my day 2 covid brain are here to talk books and life.
Since I was last here I’ve (shocker!) read some books. I also finished my master’s program – whoo! I travelled all the way to the west coast for the first time and fell in love with Big Sur and the Redwoods! I also had a standoff with a tarantula in Arizona. Photo evidence:
Basically it’s been fun. Minus the covid.
The big thing driving me back here, aside from always wanting to reclaim my place to talk books is I just completed a very epic first step in ANY fantasy lovers reading journey. I finished The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. And I have opinions and also questions, though I suspect they will be answered in time. If they aren’t I’ll just have more opinions.
Right now I’m debating whether I want to jump right into The Great Hunt, book two of The Wheel of Time, or if I want to give it all a couple of days to marinate before moving on in the series. But I really do have questions I want answered. In the meantime I’m working on turning my thoughts of book one into a review whilst considering my other reading options. Ever the lover of the romance genre, I have a couple of books going that I can read tonight if I should decide to put off more Robert Jordan. I’ve also read the first few chapters of The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham recently which seems to be quite promising though I only have an ecopy that I’ve been reading on my phone. I tend to struggle reading these more dense fantasy novels as ebooks so I might need to acquire a physical copy for this one.
Anywhoodle, I’m off to overthink The Wheel of Time some more. I hope you’re well and stay healthy ya’ll!
Among Stories 
Sorry to hear about the Covid but CONRATULATIONS with the Masters degree. What’s the subject? I had a lot of fun doing mine despite being hard going at times.
BTW – That was a pretty impressive spider!
Thank you! Funny enough, my masters is in Public Health Preparedness… If only I‘d going into the program in 2019 instead of 2020, lol. It was very interesting and I did learn a lot though. Now that I‘ve graduated I‘m trying to figure out what I want to actually do with it. This part feels even harder.
The spider was something. Most of the critters where I‘m from are pretty tame so it was an experience to have that guy cross my path.
I’m one of those weird people who did their Masters degrees for fun (Yup, I have two of them!)…. Luckily I already had a job that I was planning to stay in so didn’t have to worry about looking for a new one with a newly minted MA (I guess yours is a MSc?). You’re timing was a little ‘off’ though – that Masters a few years ago…. licence to name your own salary! [grin]
The badass-ist insects I saw (yes, I know spiders aren’t insects!) was on a trip to Australia. Everything you’ve heard about them is TRUE. Big, scary and often poisonous!
I can totally see you getting a masters (or two!) for fun!
I’m very fortunate in that I do have a good job with growth potential now, however I just don’t love the industry I’m in so we’ll see what happens in the future with that now that I’m equipped with new paper that says “she knows some things.”
It’s funny that you mention badass Australian insects, the only thing I saw when I was there were lizards, bats, and some crocodiles. I was constantly on the lookout for snakes and the crazy insects you always see on nature shows and nada! Then again I also went at the end of winter so that might just have impacted what was out and about. I did however see mini penguins as they were coming in from the ocean for the night which is easily one of the most joyous moments of my life. Hearing all the little penguins chittering together… it makes me so happy even now. Highly recommend if you should go again!
The strangest insects I saw in Oz were ants. They were about 4x bigger that standard ants and had bright green heads. The local guide advised me not to get TOO close because if you stepped on one the nearest ones would come running – alerted by pheromones – and would attack anything nearby….. and she was walking around in her BARE FEET!
Oooh, that’s wonky! Your guide must have been a native quite comfortable in her environment!
She definitely wasn’t put off by such things that seemed bizarre to me. We had VERY different definitions of normal. All part of the travel experience though….