The Reading Queue
06 December 2014 -- 340/365
North Providence, Rhode Island
I've always been an avid reader. Much to the consternation of the nuns at Monsignor Bove School, though, I tired of children's books when I was in the fifth grade. Sister Claire Marie wasn't thrilled to find me reading "Confessions of a Dirty Ballplayer" by Johnny Sample, but hey, at least I was reading, right? My tastes trended towards sports biographies back then, but by 8th Grade I was reading action adventure novels. Alistair Maclean couldn't write fast enough for me. In high school, science fiction grabbed my eye, but once in college I read the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and I've been a fantasy fan ever since.
The lower section contains books that I received as gifts. Well, except for Thirteen Days, that is. I'm fascinated by the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so I bought that one on my own. The actual reading queue, though, is on the shelf above it. There are currently 38 books in the queue, and being a Type A personality, I assure you that they will be read in sequence from left to right. There's no skipping around in that queue. You'll notice that there's now a Nook front and center. I received that Nook as a Christmas gift last year, and I love it. So the pattern now is to read one book from the queue, followed by one from the Nook. (Yes, I do have a queue on the Nook as well that works very well with what's on the shelf.)
Hopefully this will be the last of the "Safety Shots" for a while. Someone most generously gave me the mother of all chest colds during the week, and I've had no desire at all to get out of the house except to take my daily walk (which I have not missed since September, 2009) and pickup my cup of Dunkin Donuts iced coffee.
Post processing started with a classic filter in Topaz B&W FX. I adjusted color sensitivity sliders, adaptive exposure, regions, contrast, boost black, boost white, and protect highlights. A levels adjustment was added in PSE.
Here's the high res version in Smugmug:
http://kannafoot.smugmug.com/Photo-Challenges/PAD2014/i-3hQTgdv/0/XL/2014%2012%2006_0007%20copy-XL.jpg
