Sunday Salon: Indie Lit Awards and updates

So, guess what? The Indie Lit Awards short lists are up! You probably already know this if you are interested in the Indie Lit Awards, but just in case you missed them, you can find the complete short lists here. 

I am a voting member in the Nonfiction division, so I get to read the five books on the shortlist and vote for the finalist and winner at the beginning of March. I won't be reviewing the books until after the winners are announced, but here are the ones I'll be reading, so you can look forward to a marathon of nonfiction reviews once the winners are announced:

* In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
* Lost in Shangri-la by Mitchell Zuckoff
* Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe
* Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku
* The Social Animal by David Brooks

Pretty good list, right? I'm looking forward to all of these and am hoping to dive into The Social Animal this week. For some reason, I am finding myself reading quite a bit of other nonfiction as well. I hardly read any last year -- I was really into YA and discovering how great that genre is. Now I've cooled off a little on YA -- I still read about one a week, but it isn't all I want to read anymore. The way we can change what we read and be interested in so many things is one of my favorite things about reading.

I also thought I'd give you guys a mini-update. After being home from our first vacation (LA/Mexico/Modesto/Visalia/San Francisco) for a week, we took another little trip to LA this weekend for my husband's interview at the UCLA dental school. He had a great interview there and will find out in a week or two if he has been accepted. While he has enjoyed the other dental schools he has visited and has already been accepted to one in Phoenix, we are thinking this school in LA might end up being the right one for us! There is also a really great job that I want to apply for there -- a nurse residency at a pediatric hospital not too far away from UCLA. We've already found some apartments we like that are much cheaper than those in San Francisco and plus, the school is right next to the Los Angeles Temple. While we still don't really know what we are doing, I love that things are finally coming together. My husband also found out that he is being offered the Army Health Sciences Scholarship to pay for dental school, so after dental school we should have some traveling and adventures waiting for us after school is finished as well.

While my husband was off interviewing, I took a class with my grandma and aunt and made this purse:

Okay, that's almost true. This is the instructor's purse -- mine is tan. But I haven't taken a picture of mine, and mine looks just like this other than the color. It was really fun, and I have never made anything like that before, so I was excited that it turned out well.

This week, I am hoping to get caught up in school work (how is it possible to be behind already, right?) , get into my Indie Lit Awards reading, watch tonight's episode of Downton Abbey, and start working out again. Should be busy, but good. Hope you all have a great week as well!