Irregularly Timed Check-in #5

Summer reading is usually the same as winter reading for me, as in, I don’t read more or less at any specific time of year, or read different things depending on the season. I work just as many hours in the summer as in the winter, and our family has never been much for lazy lay-around vacations (my husband believes that 6 cities in 4 days is an excellent pace).

However, I have some vacation days that I must use by the end of the fiscal year (June 30) or they will expire. Therefore I plan to take off all next week. I’m traveling the later part of the week, but from this weekend through Wednesday I will be home, enjoying a staycation, also known as cleaning out my desk, taking bags of things to Goodwill, weeding the garden, burying the bodies, and what have you. But the big question is what should I read???

I need to finish The Passage by Justin Cronin. I am loving it, but it is so creepy and suspenseful that I can’t read it at night, which is when I get most of my reading done. However, before I return to that, I need to finish Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter by Peter Manseau for my book club on Monday night. That will be my priority for the next few days.

At the library I picked up Monica Ali’s Untold Story, a novel about Princess Diana. A friend gave me Love and Shame and Love by Peter Orner. I’ve got a free review copy of Gossip by Beth Gutcheon, which sports a “women in high heels” cover photo (has Gutcheon ventured into chicklit? I bet not; her publisher probably just thinks any novel about women in Manhatten needs that sort of photo). And on my trip next week I want to read Bowling Avenue by Ann Shayne on my Kindle. I wonder how much of this ambitious reading list I will accomplish?