A Weekend of Reading

Valerie will be in class all weekend, so I will have the days to myself. Since it is Labor Day weekend, I'm going to try to do as little labor as possible even though I do have a short list of household chores to do. I plan to spend the weekend reading as much as possible and squeezing in a couple of episodes of Masterpiece Mystery that I have DVR'd recently.

I finished reading The Professor and the Madman this morning with my first cup and a half of coffee. I'm not a big nonfiction fan, but I was glad when it was chosen for our book club. While I was reading it, I complained about it being kind of slow. It definitely moved faster toward the end. In the end, I found it interesting but not very exciting to read. I marked a few passages and might post about them later. I need to start posting about books as I read them rather than waiting until I finish. Too often, once I've finished a book, I don't want to go back and relive it in order to write a proper book review post. Usually, I'm more interested in looking forward than looking back, which is what I'm about to do.

Books on my weekend reading list

• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - One night last week I gave in to my book lust and read almost twenty pages of this, and I was hooked. I'm quite proud of myself for resisting the temptation to give up on The Professor and the Madman and move on completely. A couple of years ago, I read Waters' The Night Watch, and I've wanted to read something else of hers ever since. I bought this book very soon after it was released, but I kept putting other books in front of it. Hopefully, it will live up to all the good reviews that I have read about it. I think it probably should since it has been longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize. This book is over 400 pages, so I won't be able to finish it this weekend, but I do plan to get deep into it.
  
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins - This is a young adult book, the second in a trilogy which began with the much-lauded Hunger Games. I loved Hunger Games and am very excited to see how Collins continues the story of Katniss, one of the best girl characters that I have ever seen. This book came out on September 1, and I picked up three copies for my library, which isn't open to students for check out until after this holiday weekend. It's a good think too because I wanted to read it and so did my principal and her secretary. Hopefully, we will all finish it this weekend because I know students are anxiously awaiting this book's availability.
• Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block - Another YA book. When I scanned all my books this week for inventory, I came across this short novel. I didn't even realize that it was part of my school library's collection. The book is about a young man who is trying to come to terms with being gay. I really only heard paid attention to this book because a Christian group has sued to be allowed to burn the copy that is available in the West Bend, Wisconsin library. I decided that I should read it. Since it's just over 100 pages, I shouldn't have any trouble getting it read this weekend.
  
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville - I'm a slow reader and know that I would never be able to read this 500-page book in a long weekend, but I do intend to use a 40% off coupon from Borders to purchase a copy so that I can start feeding my obsession about reading it. Valerie said the other night that it was like I was Captain Ahab. Yeah, I had thought about that already.

So, now it's just after noon and I need to pick a book to take with me to read while I have a pedicure and get out of the house for a while. Later. :-)