Why My Mom is Awesome

We met for breakfast this morning, and even though I was trying for cheerful, she could sense that I was feeling down; so as we were waiting for the waitress to ring up the check, she looked straight at me and said, "I know what, let's go across the street and I'll buy you some new books!"


I tried to demur a little, both then and after we'd ambled over to the bookstore, - "I'm an adult, Mom, I can pay for my own books" but she wouldn't hear of it and insisted on paying for the three books I'd picked out as well as the latest Debbie MacComber or Nora Roberts for herself.

My mom is the sweetest, obviously, and this particular cheer-up tactic works just as well today as it did when I was 8 or 13 or 17. I'm in a much better mood now and the weather is beautiful today and I have nothing I have to do today (except laundry and some housecleaning, which pfft) so right after hitting 'Publish' on this post, I'm going to go sit outside and read. All I need to do pick out which one one to start with:

• Life's That Way, a memoir by Jim Beaver. If you watched the HBO series Deadwood, you know who Jim Beaver is, if you didn't...well, first of all, go watch Deadwood, because it the one of the very best shows in the history of television. Then realize that while Beaver was doing such beautiful acting work, in real life his wife was dying of lung cancer and then he wrote a book about that time. I fully expect to bawl my eyes out.
• The Tudors, by G.J. Meyer. I, like so many other people, am FASCINATED by the Tudors. They were totally like a soap opera, only even more batshit! And true! And with such massive political, religious and historical ramifications!
• Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I've never read any of the Discworld series, despite many, many recommendations. For the longest time this was because I had Terry Pratchett confused with Terry Goodkind and my high-school boyfriend LOVED Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule books and made me read them and they started off okay, but quickly became awful and ponderous and rape-happy and also came to symbolize to me everything that made my boyfriend such an obnoxious douche (and then I went to college and the same happened with another boyfriend, only it was Dune and I still hate Frank Herbert) and the point of this insane run-off sentence is that whenever anyone recommended Pratchett to me, my reaction was always, "Ew." But now I've managed to grasp that they are entirely different authors, so I looked at the shelf of Pratchett books in the store and, having no idea where to start, grabbed one at random. 

I think I'll start with Good Omens. It's supposed to be funny and I could use some funny.