Sigh.  These Mondays keep rolling around, guys.  We had a packed weekend with a lot of fun – a Touch A Truck event for the kids (well, mostly for Nugget – let’s be honest, he was the one who really had fun) and errands on Saturday, an hour in the office for me, followed by Taste of Buffalo and a walk in East Aurora on Sunday – whew, I’m exhausted just typing all of that.  We have some big stuff coming up in the next few weeks, and we are trying to squeeze in as much fun as we can now.  I’m staring down the barrel of another packed workweek and already looking forward to next weekend, when I will finally have some relief.  (I think.  I keep saying that, and it has not panned out yet.  But we have a vacation coming up and I’m just clinging to that to get me through the next few weeks of craziness.)

I’ve spent a lot of time reading over the past week – more than I thought I would be able to do, given how crazy my summer schedule has been.  Not all of it has been pleasant reading – I’ve been alternating my library books with a lot of news coverage these days, and I’m not liking the news.  At all.  I don’t think any of us even recognize our country these days.  But, like I do when life gets awful (either close to home or out in the world) I have taken refuge in books, and I ended up polishing off three this week.  First I finished The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson – I liked it, but it wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny the way I have come to expect from Bryson.  The same evening, I finished up High Rising, the first in Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire series.  Aside from some very dated language – which I’ll explain more in my reading round-up post at the end of the month – I enjoyed it.  And then, finally, I blazed through The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, which I’d had checked out from the library for about two months.

Up next on the reading deck, I’m just digging into Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence, which I’m harboring high hopes for.  I didn’t love the only other Pym I read, and I don’t know if Mars was in retrograde or something, because the descriptions of her books seem to be right up my street.  Anyway, I’ll report back.  After that – I just got word that Julian Fellowes Belgravia is waiting for me on the library holds shelf, so clearly that will be happening.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Book Date.  Thanks for the inspiration!

What are you reading this week, friends?