Well, this is it – my last library update (at least until the next time), because I’m DONE with this stack!  Most of it was non-fiction, and most of that pretty dense, but I’ve managed to get through every book in the pile except for Far From the Tree, which I might try to circle back to at some point in the future.  It was a better week in terms of stress (not perfect, but better) and I pushed through my last two books from the stack even though they were hard going at points and I would have rather been reading some comfort books.  And now that I’m done, I’m going to reward myself for my perseverance by finishing out my journeys in Fairacre.  But more about that in a minute.  First, my week of reading:

• Took a quick break from the books with deadlines to read Much Ado About Anne, the second book in the Mother-Daughter Book Club series.  More on this to come in my July reading round-up, but I liked it better than the first.  I felt a bit guilty, since I should have been reading She-Wolves, but it only took a day and was a good mental break.  And then there were… still two.
• Finished She-Wolves by concluding the Isabella of France section, then learning about Margaret of Anjou and finally Mary Tudor.  The book was really fascinating, but I was more interested in the personalities that I knew from literature (Isabella and Matilda) or remembered spending ample time on in history class (Eleanor and Mary) than I was in Margaret.  (I need to read more about the War of the Roses.)  She-Wolves was slow going – it was very, very interesting but very, very dense and I had to pay close attention to what I was reading.  And then there was one.
• Read through Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion.  Since my knowledge of the Scopes trial is pretty much limited to Inherit the Wind (which apparently wasn’t an accurate portrayal of what really happened at the trial, but was more a symbolic stand against the McCarthyism of thirty years later) I was eager to learn more about this important moment in American legal history.  And… well… the middle parts of the book, about the trial, were really interesting.  The beginning part (setting up the debate) and the end (media portrayals and continuing attempts to introduce creationist legislation, with litigation immediately following) weren’t as exciting and even got down into “slog” territory.  But I pushed through!  And then there were none.

So, that’s it.  I’ve either read or postponed all of the books in the above stack, and the preceding stack too, and now I feel as though I’ve earned a bit of a break and some light/comfort reading.  On deck I have Changes at Fairacre, which I own, and then Farewell to Fairacre and A Peaceful Retirement, which I borrowed.  And there’s a stack of Mother-Daughter Book Club books waiting for me at the library too (don’t throw things at me – I can renew those and they’re fast reading anyway; they won’t cause any more of these updates, I SWEAR) and I’m still planning to re-read the Anne of Green Gables books and I’m plotting a Laura Ingalls Wilder re-read, too.  I’m going to be all about comfort books for a little while – after the stress of the past few weeks and this dense non-fiction, I think I deserve to kick back now!