my life philosophy/reading wednesday

You know how people always say they like to give themselves a little bit of time at the end of a vacation to ease back into real life?

Yeah, we don't do that.

I don't know--I get what they're saying, but... We got out of the beach house on Saturday and then went and ate ginormous plates of pancakes and country ham and grits and biscuits at the local diner with L & her crew and my parents, and then I fiddled with my mom's iPad and got her set up on feedly and tweaked her facebook settings, etc, etc, and we went to dinner w/L & her crew again (because our kids apparently hadn't gotten their fill of each other despite living together 24/7 over the previous week) and then I got up the next morning and went with my mom to visit my godparents, who aren't getting any younger, and then we stopped for an actual dinner on the trip home (as opposed to hitting a drive-through and eating in the car.) We could have eliminated all that and gotten the laundry done before the work week started, but that doesn't seem like a fair trade to me.

All of which means, yep, I'm still unpacking. And the laundry is doing just fine on the floor in the kitchen. But I baked the rest of the cookie dough that came back with us, so that's progress, right?

Books now.

What I'm Reading Now
To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis -- I am back to her time-travel books, trying yet again to find large enough blocks of time to keep the characters straight in my head. Also, Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud -- reading at the request of the boys, but enjoying very much.

What I Just Finished
Yay, it was Beach Week, so I actually have something to say here.

Daughter of the Game, Tracy Grant -- Most Regencies gloss right over the whole hey-there-was-a-war-going-on part of the era, but this is not one of them. Everything here hinges on the war and its effects on the characters. I have more of her books on hold, so we'll see how that goes.

The Ashford Affair, Lauren Willig -- This was fine, but I felt like the stories it did tell (the modern-day granddaughter piecing together what happened in the past interwoven with the main story of the past (Edwardian England through to post WWI Africa) as it happened) were far less interesting to me than the stories that were alluded to as we closed out the novel. It also suffered in comparison to the next book--I didn't care so much about how the poor relation came to live with the Earl's family; I wanted to know about everything that happened after the book ended.

A Spear of Summer Grass, Deanna Raybourn -- Also set in post-WWI Africa, and I am glad I left this one for last because it hit all my reading kinks, so much so that I didn't even blink at the first-person narration, which normally makes me crazy. I wouldn't have made it through the previous book if I'd read this one first. Damaged characters, evocative setting, hopeful ending. I'm considering actually paying full price for this one, which hasn't happened in forever.

What I'm Reading Next
Blackout (Connie Willis) I think, though I wish I'd managed to get to it while I was on vacation. I'll just have to take notes this time, so I don't get lost amid all the intersecting storylines when I put it down and don't get to pick it up until four days later.