Snow Day!

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Yeah, that's pretty much me. I love the white stuff, so when it started yesterday (happy Boxing Day to me!) I was very happy to see it. White Boxing Day still counts as White Christmas in my book, as this week between Christmas and New Year's is my favorite week of the entire year, all tucked away between two holidays.

Maybe it's a leftover from school vacations and maybe it's a leftover from family Christmases where lolling about with relatives and leftovers, cavorting in the frozen outdoors until it's time to gear up for New Year's Eve. Maybe I'm still running on peppermint starlights and twinkly lights (guilty) and fumes from reading a book from my special shelf. That's where I keep highly anticipated books for when I've been really really good or am feeling really really bad. These can be treats or therapy. Sometimes both.

Holiday stress drove me to this shelf on the 23rd, and I selected Silk and Shadow by Aola Vandergriff. I had a hunch that our usual Monday Morning write-in at Panera would be taking a snow day, but still planned on going on my own...though being no dummy, I did put my commute on delay. I spent an hour curled on the couch, under the beyond gorgeous afghan my friend Linda made for DH and me for Christmas, and time zoomed by as I turned pages, caught in a complex web of intrigue, emotion, romance and family dysfunction in early 19th century Louisiana. I haven't read a single thing by Ms. Vandergriff that I haven't loved, though her books are long out of print; this one has a 1981 publication date.

I determined to stay under the afghan until I finished and consider that time extremely well spent, but it does bring me back to "okay, what do I read now?" Some books are a hard act to follow. We are in that tucked away week, though, so I think the afghan and I will have ample opportunity to figure something out, and there is a whole new year's worth of reading to plan. I'm hoping to work out a system so I have a good mix of new and classic romances in rotation.

What do you do during this tucked away week? Any reading goals for 2011?