It's Monday - What are you reading?

I mostly stuck with blogging last week - took a long weekend away then did one last night.  But this one, "It's Monday! What are you reading?" (sponsored by Sheila at Book Journey) has sure motivated me this week to read, read, read!

I was so excited when The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry came in off the hold shelf for me at the public library!  It's British, so there's a few "what the heck" moments with the vocabulary, but it's an interesting book.  It's the story of a newly retired man who gets a letter from a woman he knew decades before.  He responds by letter, and intends to drop it in the mailbox - but just keeps walking.  "He hunched his shoulders and drove his feet harder, as if he wasn't so much walking to Queenie as away from himself." 

I've read The View from Saturday before, but it's the first selection for the 5th grade Book Lovers' Club in the library (reason:  we had enough copies!).  I think it's an appropriate book for that, too, because it's about a group of smart kids . . . and that's my Book Lovers' Club!  I've done a book discussion group for fifth graders before, and it remains the best thing I've done in a school.  I hope the kids get as much out of it as I do!

I just started Why We Broke Up by Daniel Hadler and Maira Kalman.  That's Daniel Hadler, AKA Lemony Snickett.  The one thing that stands out for me with this book is the quality of the book itself.  The pages are really thick!  I appreciate that in a book.  I wonder why more don't do that, or why they did (or how they had the clout to demand it).

And I'm highly anticipating J.K. Rowling's new book, Casual Vacancy, which comes out this week.  I read all the Harry Potter books, but only once, and I definitely am more on the "muggle" side of the wizarding spectrum.  As Daniel Radcliffe said in his SNL monologue, "And to the adults who read the Harry Potter books and devored them, I just want to say, those books were for children. You were reading children’s books."

 

 

What are you reading?