It's just a few degrees below zero this morning, and I'm waiting for the sun to warm the air a bit before heading out with Sophie. Yesterday we only walked a couple of miles because an exhaustion thing has made me slow way down. After being hit over the head with fatigue, I finally realized I need time to rest and relax before I tackle any new adventures. So yesterday I spent lots of time reading, and I hope to do the same today. After all, I'll be swarmed by anxious skiiers early tomorrow morning.

I finished The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, a book that made nearly every book critic's Ten Best of 2005 list. The cover boasts that the novel is noted for its originality, and I'll give it that. I can also say it's compelling reading from start to finish, but for someone just coming off a three-month moving gig, it was incredibly confusing. My brain struggled to make the pieces fit, and they don't, and I don't think they're supposed to, until the conclusion. The characters moved me, and each had powerful things to say about life that made the book worth the challenge, but somehow the whole novel did not ever truly come together.

A heap of Adirondack-related books sits on the coffee table in the living room. I'm now reading the back-to-nature classic of the early 1970s, Woodswoman:Young Ecologist Meets the Challenge of Living Alone in the Adirondack Wilderness by Anne LaBastille. I tried to read it this fall, but to tell the truth, I was not able to read a single book from the time of our Minerva vacation in September until now. Until my next post, all I'll say is I'm loving it so much, I read every page at least twice before proceeding to the next.