Each summer, I allow myself a week (well, in this case, three days) to sit in the sun and do nothing but read - and I don't let myself feel guilty about it. I averaged a book and a bit each day, and I may or may not have ended up with some interesting tan lines. . . Either way, it was still a lot of fun!

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - Review (My Classics Club spin book)
Saturday Snapshot - A Weekend Away

The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: the Intersecting Lives of da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped by Paul Strathern (Long enough title for you? Luckily, the book is much more interesting and less pedantic than the title makes it sound.)
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
The Stones of Florence by Mary McCarthy (It's always fun to read a travelogue from 50 years ago.)
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline (This was our book club book for the month. We're meeting tomorrow for lunch and discussion!)
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (Oh, my goodness, I see what everyone is talking about with this book!)

The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence (Not quite what I was expecting, but it's okay so far.)

I'm not entirely sure. Wednesday is Library Day, so I'll soon have a new stack of books to devour. I'm thinking that some Newbery Award winners will make for good summer reading (and help me out on my challenge)!

Last weekend, my husband and I had a chance for a mini-vacation. Friday, we went to the zoo. Then we joined my mother and brother at a rented cabin for the rest of the weekend. It was a very relaxing little getaway. 

The wallaby hopped across the path not three feet away from us!

Grizzly bear from a distance

Feeding time for the seals!

These are pudu. They live in South America, they are the world's smallest deer, and they are absolutely adorable. Look at the little antlers!

Polar bears are my favorite animal, so I was happy to see this guy outside!

This was our view from the cabin.

So I’ll admit up front that I didn’t know what to expect when I read The Count of Monte Cristo. I certainly didn’t expect it to be 1,462 pages long. Yikes. Thankfully, it is a fairly quick read, and it was no hardship to get through a hundred (or more) pages in a day.

It also tells an awfully good story, one that keeps you turning the pages to the very end. The very, very end – things weren’t wrapped up until the last page. It was this plot and story that kept me going until the end, not the characters. Nothing wrong with the characters, certainly. They were diverse and interesting, but mostly in it for themselves with little care for anyone else. Even the Count himself – formerly known as Edmond Dantès. And it was as Edmond Dantès that I fell in love with him a little in the first hundred pages. When he was thrown in prison, my heart broke for him and Mércèdes. But when he got out of prison, he was a totally different person, motivated by revenge, rather than sympathy or love. Therefore, he lost much of my sympathy.

Honestly, though, I couldn’t put the book down, despite all of that. The Count’s plans were so elaborate and fascinating that I just had to keep reading to see what would come of it all. And I wasn’t disappointed once.

All in all, I’m glad I tackled this monstrously long classic. Alexandre Dumas, you do know how to tell a good story.

This was my Classics Club spin book.

Yeah, I missed the whole Monday thing. I was at a cabin this weekend with no Internet (not even a phone signal!). That made doing my Monday post a little difficult. But here it is now, just a day late!

The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay - Review
Game of Thrones Newbie (Any opinions on this? I can't decide if I want to read this series or not.)

Sapphire Blue by Kerstin Gier (Loved this book!)
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (Loved this book even more!!)
Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces by Robert Clark
Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa by Nicholas Shrady

The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior by Paul Strathern (Renaissance Italy was crazy.)

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (I've heard so many good things about this book!)

All right, I need someone to explain the Game of Thrones obsession. I haven't gotten into it yet, but I've been tempted to. I can sum up what I've heard about it pretty much in two sentences:

And yet there's got to be something more to it than those two statements. Because I can never find a copy of the books. They're long, so I don't want to check them out from the library (you can only renew so often). I'm not committed to the series yet, so I don't want to buy them full price from a bookstore.

That means that I've been keeping my eyes peeled for them at any and every used book sale I attend (and that's quite a few). Yet - nothing. Not a single copy of any of the books in the series. Usually a series like this, where everyone jumps on the bandwagon, results in an influx of used books once the craze passes. So maybe the craze just hasn't passed yet. Or maybe nobody is willing to give up their copies because the books are just that amazing, and I'm completely missing out.

The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay is set in a used bookstore in New York City. And honestly, the setting was about the only reason I stuck with the book to the end. What bibliophile doesn’t love a used bookstore? Especially one whose labyrinthine interior allows you to get lost in a world full of books, used, rare, and slightly read.

Rosemary is an 18-year-old girl from Tasmania. Her mother has just died, and she has never known her father. Effectively an orphan, she moves to New York to begin her great adventure. Except her adventure is really not that adventurous. Mostly it involves getting too emotionally tangled with her fellow bookstore co-workers, all of whom have some sort of unusual and often disturbing quirk. Oliver is in charge of the nonfiction section. He keeps copious notes in a notebook, and despite being sexually ambiguous, Rosemary falls in love with him. Pearl is in charge of the cash register. She becomes a mother figure for Rosemary, even though she’s not technically a woman – yet. I guess the cast of characters was just too weird for me. None of them tugged at my heartstrings. In the end, I didn’t care what happened to any of them. The plot is ostensibly based on finding a lost manuscript by Herman Melville, but that’s really only a vehicle for further complicating already complicated relationships.

If by the end I can’t learn to care about a redheaded bookstore employee (what I would secretly love to be!), then there’s something seriously wrong with this book.

Bookworm Problems: Too Many Authors, Too Many Books
Library Loot (First summer trip to the library!)
The Book Blogger Test

King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard (Finished the audiobook while weeding the garden on Friday)
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (Finally finished all 1,462 pages of this one! Woohoo!)
Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King (If you're interested in architecture or Italian history, this is a book for you.)

Sapphire Blue by Kerstin Gier (I got this one from the library on Wednesday. I can't wait any longer to read it!)

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (With a title like that, you know it will be a unique book.)

Lois from You, Me, and a Cup of Tea tagged me recently to answer some bookish questions. I've never done one of these before, so I thought I'd give it a try. Here are my answers!

1) What are your top three book pet hates?

• Dog-eared pages (I'm a bookmark girl all the way)
• Swearing (Who really needs to put that stuff in your brain?)
• An ending wrapped up too quickly (Those just aren't satisfying!)

2) Describe your perfect reading spot.

• A lawn chair in the sun. Summer has been so long in getting here. I have to soak up the sun every chance I get!

3) Tell us three book confessions.

• I don't really like Charles Dickens. I don't know why. And I was even an English minor in college. Blasphemy!
• I make myself read to page 200 before I can check to see how many pages the book has. Weird, I know.
• I rarely buy books at full price. I'm all about the bargain books and used book sales.

4) When was the last time you cried during a book? 

• I honestly can't think of a time I've cried over a book. It's probably happened. I just can't remember. Movies usually make me tear up faster than books.

5) How many books are on your bedside table?  

• Um, ten. I just went to the library last Wednesday for the first time this summer. And since it's now summer and I have time to visit the library and read lots, I will have a large stack of books on my bedside table until September.

6) What is your favorite snack while reading?

• Breakfast. I usually don't snack when I read during the day, but I read over breakfast every single morning.

7) Name three books you recommend to everyone.

• The Bible (And as an bonus, The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel)
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (Yeah, I know that's seven, but you can't read just one of them.)
• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (Or his Nursery Crime series. Or his YA series. Or just about anything written by Jasper Fforde.)

8) Show us a picture of your favorite bookshelf on your bookcase. 

9) Describe how much books mean to you in just three words? 

• Escape, knowledge, delight.

10) What is your biggest reading secret? 

• I own too many books. Okay, that's not really a secret. But I'm coming to the realization that I will never read all of the books I own and - gasp! - I'm kind of okay with that.

Tags 

• Erin at Quixotic Magpie
• Rebecca at Love at First Book
• Joyful at My Cup Runneth Over
• Monika at A Lovely Bookshelf on the Wall
• Jade at Bits & Bobs

Yesterday was Library Day!! The big libraries in my area are all 45 minutes or so away, so I just don't have time to visit them during the school year. But now it's summer, so I made the rounds yesterday. Here are my finds:

Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa by Nicholas Shrady (Isn't the cover fun?)
The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior by Paul Strathern
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence (I've been waiting to get my hands on this one since it came out!)
The Last Enchantments by Charles Finch (I've seen this book around the blogosphere quite a bit, and I never could decide if I wanted to add it to my TBR list. When I saw it in the library today, I decided to go for it.)
Sapphire Blue by Kerstin Gier (I read Ruby Red last summer. Yes, I actually waited a whole summer to read the sequel! But now I can pick up Emerald Green at the library on my next trip.)

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (I enjoyed Fangirl, so I thought I would try another by this author.)
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (Just caught my attention. Sometimes those are the best finds!)
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (So glad they had this one on the shelf!)

I own too many books. And that's a problem for several reasons - lack of shelf space, I'll never read them all, I have no desire to stop buying books, etc., etc. But recently I ran across a too-many-books problem that I hadn't noticed before.

I was at a library used book sale. You know the ones: tables upon tables, boxes upon boxes filled with books to look through. They're mostly sorted, by genre if not alphabetically by author. And there's just so many to peruse. There are a few authors that I always keep an eye out for at used book sales like this. One of those authors is Adriana Trigiani. I haven't read many of her books yet (just two), but I've loved those that I've read. So I'm slowly collecting anything and everything she's written.

Which is why I got so excited at the library used book sale whenever I saw a book by Adriana Trigiani. This happened about 16 times. And when I looked closer, I discovered it was a book I already owned by her. That happened about 16 times. Excitement, followed by disappointment. Bookworm Problem.

Thankfully, the last time ended in excitement. I found a copy of Milk Glass Moon, the third book in her Big Stone Gap series. I've read the first two in the series, and this was the perfect find to add to my Adriana Trigiani collection. If only there hadn't been so many letdowns first!