Weekend O Books

Exam boards are finished, tutee meetings are over, I have finished the undergraduate teaching year, and celebrated with a small and pleasing party last night (bruschetta, prosecco, faculty gossip), and this weekend is the Weekend O Books. In term time I can usually only read very bad fiction, because I don't seem to be able to afford the headspace to risk being taken over by a book, and because I only get very limited fiction-reading time (early morning and late at night), so I tend to read mindlessly, the way lots of people watch TV (in fact I think in termtime books and telly occupy exactly the reverse of their normative places - I watch very little TV, I'm very selective about what I watch, and I watch it attentively.* Perhaps it's a fan thing.)

Anyway. Here I lie on the sofa, with a pile of books beside me as follows:

Les Mots Pour Le Dire, Marie Cardinal
When Dad Killed Mom, Julius Lester (enthusiastic rec from J)
Bindi Babes, Narinder Dhami (another enthusiastic rec from J)
Suburban Freakshow, Julia Lawrinson (rec from Judith Ridge's blog; I usually either love or hate Julia Lawrinson's books so who knows what I'll think of this)
After Summer, Nick Earls (saw it in the Amnesty bookshop for 20p and J told me to get it)
Where Have All The Boys Gone?, Jenny Colgan (chicklit, 20p, actually bought as termtime reading, may skip)
Bulldozer Rising, Anna Livia (lesbian-feminist sci-fi novel about a structurally ageist society, 20p)
Peter Pan in Scarlet, Geraldine McCaughrean (J put this on my to-read pile months ago, but amid so many dire warnings of its extreme boringness that I haven't read it yet)
Written For Children, John Rowe Townsend (technically work)
No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July (because I loved You And Me And Everyone We Know so much)
In the Name of God, Paula Jolin (Muslim-fundamentalist YA novel, wonder what it will be like, bought it in Stanford last November alongside a Christian-fundamentalist YA novel which wasn't much cop)
The Summer of Love, Debbie Dreschler (YA graphic novel, I keep starting it but not getting very far because I'm finding the art difficult to read).

But! The very top book on the pile, which I have already started and of which I am currently on page 24, is Meg Rosoff's What I Was. It's her third novel, and I absolutely loved the first two but sort of thought there were problems in each, so I am delighted to record that as of this moment, this may be the perfect book.

::sighs happily and returns to Weekend O Books::

*except for the constant knitting, obviously.