Oof. I flaked on you again, friends! I’m so sorry. In my defense, I tried to write and schedule posts for last week, but I was out of town on vacation and WiFi was spottier than expected – chalk it up to technical difficulties. I’m back now (sort of – vacation is sadly over, but I’m already back on the road, this time for work for two days and then really back from this intense summer of travel… until September, anyway).

Anyway, once again, because it was a heavy travel week, I didn’t do that much reading. I read more than I usually do on vacation, because we were camping in South Dakota and there was a fair amount of downtime while the kids played around the tent. So I got in a few pages with one eye on my kindle and the other on the anklebiters, alternating between enjoying book time and shouting things like “Don’t hit your brother/sister!” or “Hey, that tree is alive!”

So most pages this week were electronic: I finished Someday, Someday, Maybe, by Lauren Graham – and as already reported, enjoyed it. But would have enjoyed it more if I didn’t mistakenly think it was her memoir (it’s actually a light and funny novel about an aspiring actress in New York City). That one’s on me. Then I picked up Elizabeth von Arnim’s In the Mountains, which felt like an appropriate choice for camping (although the Swiss Alps are not quite the same as the Black Hills of South Dakota). It was a quick read, lovely and poignant as all von Arnims are. Finally, on the last day of the trip, I started Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life – satisfying a recent craving for a big literary biography. I’m not quite a quarter of the way through, but really enjoying it so far. It may have been a mistake to start a chunkster right before ending the trip, because I usually try to time my reading so that I finish a kindle book right as I am wrapping up travel. But I’ll be in a hotel tonight and on a long train ride tomorrow evening, so I expect progress. I will report back.

Last book to mention – Midsummer Mysteries (a collection of mostly forgettable short stories from Christie, which I will freely admit I bought because of the beautiful cover). It’s been mostly on hold the last week or so, as it’s a hardcover and I no longer travel with physical books. But I did put myself to sleep last night with one story, so it counts. I’ll finish it when I get home from my business trip on Wednesday.

Hiking Devils Tower in Wyoming! Really, really epic.