Hey, look at this – a gallery of book covers instead of a picture of just Shirley again! I finally had a pretty decent reading week – attention, time, and ability to avoid doomscrolling were all on my side. At the end of the day, I really, really loved Shirley. It just took me awhile to get into it, and trying to read via a big omnibus collection was not a good strategy. Full review coming Wednesday, so I will reserve further thoughts for that post.

I was out of town last week, visiting my folks for the Fourth of July (we love getting up to the lake during the summer when we can and the timing worked out for us to be there over the holiday weekend this year – always fun) so I stuck with digital reading, getting through A Quiet Life in the Country, by T.E. Kinsey – a fun, light mystery starring a new-to-me sleuthing duo – and Agatha Christie’s A Caribbean Mystery on Audible. Loved the story, but the narrator wasn’t my favorite; she was fine, and the narration was great, but some of her character voices grated on me. Apparently I’m on a mystery jag right now, because when I wrapped up A Quiet Life and Caribbean Mystery (both on Sunday!) I turned to Dorothy L. Sayers and The Wimsey Papers. It’s short – just a collection of fictionalized letters and family documents that Sayers published as one-offs during World War II, some of which seem to have been an excuse for her to flex her philosophy muscle. I’m really enjoying it and will probably wrap it up this evening. And then what? No idea.

Fireworks! Hope you had a great Fourth, if you were celebrating. It’s really summer now!