Wicked Wildfire Readathon: Day 8

Books read today: The Reader
All books finished: Refuge, When Did I Get Like This?, The Reader

10:00 am: So, even though I haven't done any reading yet today, I thought I'd write an update about the weekend. I didn't do much reading since I was on vacation (the visiting-family kind, not the sit-around-on-the-beach-reading kind). But I was able to do a little bit, and I did some before I left on Friday.

Before I left and immediately when I got back, I read Marie Antoinette, which is only getting more and more interesting. My plan is to get halfway through before the end of the readathon (to make my goal), and I'm on good track to get there.

I didn't take MA with me on vacation though, because it's a brick and I knew I would only get snippets of reading time, not enough to focus on it, which is how it really needs to be read. So instead I took Wives and Daughters, which I had just started. That was a really good choice--I started getting pretty into it during my trip and now I'm excited to keep reading. It's so fun to get back to Gaskell! And the really fun part is that I don't know the storyline at all, so everything is a surprise. That rarely seems to happen with classics, particularly ones that are so well-loved as this one.

Anyway, I do have some things I need to get done today, but it promises to be a pretty good reading day!

2:00 pm: Well, I convinced myself to actually pick up The Reader again, and then I kept reading until I finished it. (Not exactly because I couldn't put it down, but because I knew if I put it down and read something else, then I would have to go through the whole process of making myself read it all over again.) I certainly did like the last half better than the first, but it's going to be a tough review to write. I'm really glad I finished it, though.

I finished it while sitting out on my porch, which is one of the best ways to do summer reading, don't you think? And when reading a depressing book, it's always good to have a little sunshine to keep up one's spirits.

Now I have the happy task of figuring out which book to pick up next: Marie Antoinette or Wives and Daughters? It's always fun to be in the middle of two books that equally interest me...