Where has February gone?!  For real!  I know it’s not over yet, but I have shoots, a workshop, and another non-photography workshop every single day until March.  So I’m posting an update on my Book a Week Challenge NOW.  If you followed my old blog, you know that I have/had an extremely long To-Read list, and that one of my goals this year was to finish reading all the books on it.  I therefore challenged myself to read one book per week, figuring that if I don’t add any more books to the list (yeah right…), then I would finish the list before the end of the year. I am posting an update (to keep myself accountable and because I LOVE sharing and talking about books) each month.

The books I read this month include:

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.  5 out of 5 stars.  I always read reviews after finishing a book — and I guess some readers found this book to be pretentious.  So maybe I’m pretentious … haha … but I loved all the philosophy and perhaps obvious thoughts on life and beauty.  Very well-written and enjoyable.  My librarian friend, Maria, recommended this to me.  And I’m now recommending it to you :)

Changing My Mind:  Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith.  4 out of 5 stars. Zadie Smith is a really good writer. I laugh, I cry, I get really into her words and how she weaves them together.  I recommend this book to voracious readers.  She references lots and lots of authors and I can’t imagine reading this book if I hadn’t already read all the others.

Spinning Into Butter by Rebecca Gilman.  4 out of 5 stars.  I don’t usually read plays, but my friend Lindsay is really into contemporary theater and recommended a few plays to me.  I loved this one!  And I realized that reading plays is pretty enjoyable.

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  2 out of 5 stars.  This book was seriously awesome and hilarious for the first 60 or so pages.  But the final 150+ pages were so full of awfulness that I couldn’t stomach it.  Too bad — I really wanted to like it.  I won’t tell you who recommended it, or you might think less of her :)

and, Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel.  3 out of 5 stars.  Parts were great and lots of parts were boring.  I wish she would have written more about her adult (interesting) life and less about her child (boring) life.

My To-Read shelf now only has 26 books on it!!

In other news, I have finally — after searching forever — found the perfect camera bag!  What I mean by “perfect” is that it doesn’t look like a camera bag and it’s not cheesy or ugly at all!  I was incredibly giddy when Kelly Moore released her new camera bag line, which you can find HERE.  The bags look sooo good and I finally feel like I can bring my camera everywhere with me, in addition to my phone, keys, wallet, a notebook etc.  It’s roomy and the faux-leather is soft and textured and looks real.  I got the grey, because I love grey, but she has plenty of color options to suit everyone’s wants/needs/desires.  When my bag arrived I almost screamed with delight.  It was better in-person and the packaging was awesome (I LOVE good packaging!).

The bag was a *tad* stiff and I love things really broken-in.  I used to run over my Chuck Taylors with my car in high school in order to break them in … so I folded the bag in half a few times and put a ton of books and other things on top of it for 2 days so that it was completely worn-in.  I’m in love with it.  And I recommend them to everyone (men’s line soon to come)!