At the moment I am struggling through a huge book - "Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis - that a friend lent me. It's a time travel novel, about a girl who gets sent back to 1320 by a machine/net thing run by academics at Oxford Uni. I say struggle because it's very dense and moves back and forward rather than just being about her in 1320. It's interesting though, so I will keep going. In the meantime I just had to buy and start reading Sue Monk Kidd's new book "The Mermaid Chair". I loved "The Secret Life of Bees" and I have to admit that so far (up to Chapter 5) this one is just not engaging me. It's a novel about a woman who is happily married but somehow discontented, has a crazy mother and has to go and look after her for a while and launches into a disastrous "affair" (so the blurb tells me - I'm not up to that yet). I don't know ... it just feels like many things I've read before. I'm hoping it sweeps me up soon and carries me away!
No writing this week, apart from a speech I have to make on Monday night which is totally scaring me to death. More on this next week, when the cone of secrecy is lifted.
I had written, finally, (during one of the less engaging conference sessions last week) a more or less draft of a picture book I have been playing with for a few weeks so should work on that this weekend. After I finish class prep and a variety of other jobs on my list. No wonder I am hanging out for the school holidays again. And I imagine those writers with kids are dreading them!