I am SO looking forward to delivering this book to the publisher. Even though it means we move into the painful and annoying part of the process: editing (painful) and proofing (annoying).

My wrist felt like it was back to normal on Tuesday. The knitting was calling, but I resisted. Wednesday morning I re-warped the small loom (long story) and though it hadn’t bothered me the first time I warped it, I wound up with a sore and burning hand again. Not too bad today, though.

Slinky has gained a lot of confidence. Perhaps a little too much. He’s started being a bit naughty, scratching carpet and chewing on the laces of Paul’s shoes in the wardrobe just after I go to bed. But yesterday I finally saw him go down the stairs and yes, he does move a little bit like a Slinky. Front legs, back legs. Front legs, back legs.

I finished another book: Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World, which was a biography of the guy who started the synthetic dye industry. Mauve led to many other inventions of modern chemistry, including cancer and malaria treatments. It’s the 26th book I’ve read this year, if you don’t count me rereading five of my own books in order to refresh my memory. I’m wondering if I can get to 30 books before the end of the year. That’d be three times the number of books I read last year. (At that rate, it’ll only take me under four years to read through my To Read List.) But I have one more of my own books to reread as well. Perhaps if I choose short books from the List…

And the List is still growing, as I tackle new sections of my book collection. I’ve added short story collections by single authors and more recent non-fiction purchases, which increased the List to 111 books. I still have to go through short fiction magazines and anthologies and my older non-fiction (collected when I worked for Oxford Uni Press) to root out what I haven’t read and/or don’t want to keep. I’m a bit dismayed to find that, of the 26 books I’ve read this year, only two hadn’t been acquired recently. I need to get some of the old stuff read. And stop buying books!

(update) I’ve now gone through the old non-fiction and found I’d missed the small collection of Fantasy Masterworks, and the list has now grown to 134 books. Eeep!