Jamie's "Resolutions"

While I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions as I break them immediately, I'm making a few of my own this year that I promise to keep.

JAMIE'S NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS
1. Continue with my occasional habit of reading so far into the night that I fall asleep with a book on my face and wake up at 4am with the lights on
2. Continue using receipts, pay stubs, and financial documents as bookmarks so when tax time comes around I can cobble together my finances by recalling which book I was reading and when
3. Continue gathering books on my nightstand like a fiend, as my tottering and ever fluctuating bedside pile is a great place to remember where I put my iPad super safely
4. Continue using other books to weigh down the book I'm reading while I'm eating breakfast and another book to prop it up slightly
5. Continue purchasing giant over-sized books and bookshelves to house the giant over-sized books I acquired and then smaller books to fill in the shelves the over-sized books cannot fit in

and most importantly:

6. Continue being unaware of my somewhat questionable habits and blissfully read into 2014

Happy New Year!

Literary Mad Lib CONTEST!

I've been finally making it through War and Peace by Tolstoy. It's my New Year's Resolution. My trick is to listen to the audiobook while I walk to work from Allston. Not only am I making record progress, but it's also a great book to listen through this mega snowy winter. It keeps me from complaining as I walk through blizzard-like snows when the troops I'm listening about are marching for weeks with no boots. SOOOO I thought I'd pick this scene.

Chase away the snowstorm blahs with this fun lil game from your humble basement dwellers in the UBC!

Send in your completed Mad Lib, and whichever we judge the funniest will get a free used book (priced under $10. Or 10 $1 books. Or 20 .50 cent books)!

On the evening of the last day's _VERB_ an order had been received that the commander in chief would _VERB_ the regiment on the march. Though the words of the order were not _ADJECTIVE_ to the regimental commander, and the question arose whether the troops were to be in _VERB_ order or not, it was decided at a consultation between the battalion commanders to present the regiment in _NOUN_ order, on the principle that it is always better to "bow too low than not bow low enough." So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept _VERB_ and _VERB_ all night long without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and company commanders _VERB_ and _VERB_, and by morning the regiment instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it had been on its last march the day before presented a well-ordered array of two thousand men each of whom knew his _NOUN_ and his _NOUN_, had every _NOUN_ and every _NOUN_ in place, and shone with cleanliness. And not only externally was all in order, but had it pleased the commander in chief to look under the uniforms he would have found on every man a clean _NOUN_, and in every knapsack the appointed number of articles, "_NOUN (1)_, _NOUN (2)_, and _NOUN (rhymes with 1)_," as the soldiers say. There was only one circumstance concerning which no one could be at ease. It was the state of the soldiers' _NOUN_. More than half the men's _NOUN_ were in _NOUN_. But this defect was not due to any fault of the regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands _NOUN_ had not been _VERB_ by the Austrian _NOUN_, and the regiment had _NOUN_ some seven hundred miles. 

E-mail your submissions to ubc@brooklinebooksmith.com! Winner announced next Friday!