Some bullet point items of the week!
- This weekend my cousin has come to visit. She is thirteen and wanted to stay for week, which I had to swiftly veto. Too much going for a long visit at this time, but we have spent the weekend gossiping, reading and having laughs and good food. She is reading A.C. Gaughen’s Scarlet, Robin Hood fan that she is. It was one of my birthday gifts to her back in May.
- I go in waves of whether I read on my Nook or not. Lately I have been reading a book on it here and there, and I finally finished some books I had been working in for months. Both are books which I had mixed feelings on, so that also might have contributed to how long it took me to read them. One was Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 by Elizabeth Winder and the other was Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by M.E. Thomas. Winders books felt tentative and contradictory at time. It seemed to me as if maybe there wasn’t quite enough for a books on that summer. Thomas’s book seemed largely anecdotal, and while that hold some appeal, it would have helped if it were paired more solidly with research.
- One book that I read fairly quickly, was Deborah Meyler’s The Bookstore, which I reviewed yesterday. There were moment where it really shined, but I felt a lack of coherence in the characters that made for a frustrating read.
- The next task that I will set myself is sorting out the Nook. It tends to collect lots of expired ARCS, so I will need to go through and delete those, and then see what I can still read before my time is up. I rarely get to ALL THE THINGS I have bought for the Nook. Sort of like books I’ve bought versus review copies.
For the rest of the day, I will be brunching and reading Duplex: A Novel by Kathryn Davis. It’s super weird, but also really good. What are you all up to? Anything good?