reading (and give-away winners)

Have you ever unloaded a pile of library books from your bag and felt that life was so utterly rich?  I felt that way the other morning after a particularly good library haul. Awake at 5:30 in the morning, knowing I had at least an hour before waylaid by requests for pancakes, I opened a satchel of library books we dragged home the day before, pulled out Markets of Paris and emerged 90 minutes later feeling as though I had been on a great adventure exploring treasures of the antique markets, flea markets and farmer's markets of Paris.

At 7:00, things were still quiet in my house, so I made another cup of tea, gave the cat another scratch and finished the last few pages of The Invention of Hugo Cabret (which had actually been pulled off my shelf and not from the library bag).  Still no interruptions so I started reading this book (which was hiding in another stack when I took the photo above, along with this book and this book).  Oh, we've been rich with such good books lately...

Meanwhile, I've also been enjoying comments which came rolling along in response to this blog post!  I've love hearing from readers because sometimes it's so quiet around here, I wonder whether I've been talking to myself.  Also, it was a thrill for me to read your hopes for the contents of my third book; while no one actually hit the nail on the head, at least four or five of you circled near some of the concepts appearing in the new book and touched on aspects of them.  This made me very happy because I sense I'm on the right track to deliver a book which will be of interest...

Now for the give-away winners: lucky #9 and #28 (chosen via RANDOM.ORG).  Thank you to everyone for joining in the fun.  Please stay tuned for more peg doll give-aways (most likely sometime this coming fall). xo