Counting My Blessings

Today was a perfect summer's day. I woke up at 7am, popped in a DVD (The Village), read, started on a new TV series (Finally started watching the Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1 box set I'd bought 6 months ago), fell asleep again, had a late lunch, then went to Greenhills and made some new friends.

The first friend I ran into was this adorable little cutie--I named her Tanya the Tarsier.

My brother's batchmate and my schoolmate from high school, Marnique, has a family-owned jewelry store, and they sell the coolest little trinkets. I absolutely love animal jewelry, so Tanya makes a perfect addition to my family of owls, peacocks, a snake, a starfish, and an octopus.

Then I dropped by Fully Booked, not really expecting to find anything, when the first thing I spotted was Nameless. My Achilles' heel books are: books with gowns on the cover (Anna Godbersen books are probably gown-cover book royalty), and fairytale retellings. I, for one have never heard of Nameless, but hey, it's got a gown on the cover, and it's a retelling of Snow White.

Then I went to the YA section. I was totally prepared to just give it a cursory glance, when I literally did a double take. There, sitting on the shelf in all its glory, was Jen Calonita's third Belles book: The Grass Is Always Greener.

Jen Calonita is my favorite chicklit writer. And that's saying something, seeing how I don't read a lot of chicklit. Any book she writes, I don't care what it's about, I pick it up, no questions asked. My love affair with her books started in 2006, when she started her Secrets of My Hollywood Life series. What was so great about it was that she actually worked in show business, so her writing was spot-on. Anyway, back then I thought it was a stand-alone book. But 6 Secrets of My Hollywood Life books, 1 book about summer camp (Sleepaway Girls), another about reality TV (Reality Check), and 2 Belles books later, she's still going strong.

The Belles series is set in the South, and it shows the world of Southern belles: cotillions, prep schools, politiicans. Each book is a light, fun read.


So today was an unexpectedly good day. I'm happy, no OCD symptoms for awhile, so that's good.