Fleuries, Songbook, and Complaints

It is flurrying in Pittsburgh. (Insert over-used pun on "flurry" and "Fleury" here.) No big surprise there. What is surprising is that there has only been one other time while I've been in this overcast city this season that it has snowed. Honestly, I miss winter. The 'Burgh is out-of-whack because of the weirdly warm weather. The Steelers are not going to the Super Bowl; Pitt basketball is just awful; and the Penguins have lost six games in a row--six!


But on to books: I got the new Philippa Gregory book for Christmas with a Barnes and Noble gift card. I haven't had a chance to read it yet what with all of my grad school applications. This is what it looks like.

So pretty.

For my classes, I'm not reading that many books. Boo, I know. And the ones I am reading suck for the most part. For example, we just read (the great majority of) Songbook by Nick Hornby. I don't even know what to say about it. It was dated, boring, and preachy with the ugliest cover you could possibly imagine. What is the point of an ugly cover? Shouldn't someone fix that somewhere along the line? Doesn't some high-paid idiot (like Buddy's biological father in Elf) get paid a lot of money to make sure that book covers are attractive so that when bookstore browsers, a nearly extinct species, judge books by their covers, they are more likely to pick up a certain book and buy it over another? I'll stop. Without further ado:

Hideous. Doesn't make any sense, either.

That's all I've got for you, reader, at the beginning of this heinous semester.